How can insignificant changes in mobile app design increase the development price?

We will answer this question, but first, let us provide a background on how mobile app designers do their job and how is the price usually determined.

“I don’t pay for downloading and using mobile applications, so they are free!”

Have you ever thought something like this, or have you ever heard such a thing? Well, even if the answer to both of these questions is “No”, that’s still a common mistake that a lot of people make. And it would be alright, but this mistake usually leads to a wrong conclusion — unfortunately, many of those people, who want developers to make an application, are sure that if there are plenty of free applications, there are plenty of developers who are ready to work for food.

However, everyone who knows how to design a mobile app agrees that it is a very hard work. We are used to hundreds of thousands of both free and paid applications in App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store etc., but most of the users haven’t ever wondered how many efforts are usually dedicated to developing each of these applications. Well, almost each of them — no one annulled applications developed on a napkin. But has anyone ever heard about the majority of such applications?

So, we can, therefore, say that a lot of efforts are needed to design a mobile app that will maximize profits and arouse great popularity among people. The process of a mobile application development is creative, difficult and time-taking, and, finally, to develop a good mobile app design we need inspiration and time. It’s natural that all such processes should be paid equally, isn’t it?

The cost of the application is usually determined by a few factors. Although there are no generally accepted standards of pricing for a work of a mobile app designer, the average price is about $6,500 for a simple application for one operation system. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the price for very complex applications made by a high experienced mobile app design company can raise up to $1,000,000. And it’s not the limit!

Price factors

But let’s talk about the factors the price depends on, and how can the changes, even the small ones, influence the price. So, among these factors are:

• The number of operation systems the application will work on. The application, developed for Android only, will, of course, cost less than the one designed for Android, Apple iOS, Windows 10 Mobile and for BlackBerry OS. You may think that it’s not a problem at all, but this process is usually very time-consuming and complex.
• A number of devices that will be supported. The application developed both for smartphones and tablets will be more expensive than the application made only for one of them. It may seem like an insignificant factor to you, but to enable the support of tablets the developers may spend an amount of time that may be comparable to the creation of a new application!
• Work complexity is another important factor. Every mobile app development company knows that developing an application is a complex process that includes audits, researches and design itself. So, in simple words, the more the company has to do, the more you have to pay.
• Geography is important, too. American developers will not work for the price Georgian ask for… But don’t think that the more expensive the developer is the higher is the quality of the product. Developers from the eastern part of Europe are just as good as their American colleagues, and they are especially good in mobile app design. Software developed by them has always been at a high level, and the advantage is that their work is quite a lot cheaper — whether you’ll pay $100,000 to the US developers or $40,000 to the Georgian ones, you will still get a high-quality application.
• The complexity of the mobile app UI design influences the price, too. UI is for User Interface, and it stands for all of the visual elements you see while using an application. All the icons, buttons, images and animations and other visual elements you get used to, are actually UI design, and the complication of these elements increases the price exponentially. The applications with best mobile app designs are usually very expensive, so make calculations carefully before asking for “one more short animation” — although it doesn’t seem like a serious work, it can seriously influence the bottom-line price.

So finally, it all depends on a complexity. Even small changes that make the process of the development more complex or time-consuming will make it more expensive. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve decided to add a new animation and image, or you want your application to be supported by another phone on Android, or you “just” want to add a new feature that will use, for instance, an accelerometer of the phone — the price will increase consequently. You shouldn’t be afraid of it, but you should be aware of the fact that there aren’t “insignificant” changes in the development of the application. Unfortunately, almost all of these changes will increase the total price.

Igor Belonenko