In recent years, mobile app development has become more common for most organizations because of its revolutionary way to interact with end-users. Here, end users might be customers, employees, or services like IP enabled electronics. Few of the reasons for an organization to consider mobile app development are:
- Engaging directly with their customers
- Getting new business opportunities
- Internet of Things
When an organization starts to develop/use a mobile app, there are many available platforms to choose from. It is always hard to select among them. Below are the points to be considered before an organization selects its development platform.
Understand The Target Audience
The organization needs to look at whether its target audience uses smartphones or PC. If their target audience is mostly using PC, then they can spend minimal effort on their mobile app. If your app seeks a lot of user’s time and you don’t want the user to go away with minimal interactions, then you need to think beyond cost and time. For example, Facebook and Amazon want users to spend a long time on their apps to improve the ROI. The longer the user stays on the Amazon app, the more likely he will buy something from Amazon.
Organizations need to put their potential customer’s needs first.
Consider The Technical Requirements
The organization needs to evaluate what are the required features in its mobile app. If your required features are depending heavily on device capabilities, it is best to choose native development. In cross-platform development, we need to evaluate whether frameworks are available or not for each individual feature.
Sometimes, we may not get all the native frameworks. Also, when using different social SDKs and other tools for your app, it is best to check whether the vendor has implemented its SDK for your chosen platform. Since most of the developers nowadays are using the native platform, so if any vendor wants to create its own SDK, it will most probably think about the native platform first.
Moreover, both Android and iOS have some features that are only available for their native apps. A good example is Render Script, a computation engine that operates at the native level, allowing you to accelerate your app when it requires extensive computational power (many photo rendering apps uses it). So it is important to always consider your requirements first.
Role of User Experience
Generally, an average user spends nearly 2 hours 42 minutes per day on the mobile phone, in which he spends about 2 hours 19 minutes on mobile apps only. Also, 25% of apps are abandoned after a single day due to poor user experience (UX). So UX plays a key role in the success of your app.
Native app development uses system interface components, which are well known by users and also allow developers to create meaningful, descriptive transitions and transformations, which help in maintaining the workflow. The same cannot be achieved through hybrid apps without compromising the performance of the app. Thus, hybrid apps cannot deliver a completely native experience to the users.
It is also a fact that users rarely give second chance to apps with bad UX. So it is up to the organization how to present their apps to their customers. If your app needs a richer UI and more UI functionalities, then it is better to choose the native platform. If your app has minimal UI functionalities with simple good-looking UI, you may try hybrid development.
Budget Constraints
Last but not least, it also depends on your budget. Hybrid app development is more cost-effective when compared to native development. Few hybrid development SDKs, provide certain tools to reduce development time, which affects the cost as well. You do not have to create two separate versions for Android and iOS: instead, you can get one app ready for both platforms.
With native app development, the cost of maintaining multiple code bases will be much higher than in the case of a single code base. Moreover, native app development requires more developers than hybrid app development.
All the above factors play major roles while choosing the development platform. The following table describes the pros and cons of native and hybrid app development.
Finally, try to answer the below questions to choose your app development platform, which simplifies your confusion:
- You have a very simple app that will not really need any complex functionality in the future (for example a cinema ticket booking app). In this scenario, hybrid development might be a good choice. Finally, try to answer the below questions to choose your app development platform, which simplifies your confusion.
- Do you want to use native features in the mobile app? Here good choice would be native app development.
- How quickly do you want to take it to the market? As we discussed above, hybrid app development takes less time than native app development.
- Do you have a separate budget for each mobile OS? If “Yes”, then choose native app development, as it will give more UX to the end-users.
- How often do you need to update your mobile app? When the application is expected to be getting more functionality based on the feedback from your early adopters, a native app is a way to go.
- Do you want to have the best user experience? If you want to create an awesome user experience, the native app approach would be better. A hybrid app can never match the level of creative user experience that you get in a native app.
