The industry of web application development is constantly evolving with the introduction and adoption of new technologies (e.g. Chatbots, Recommender system, etc.) to meet the increase in demand of customers’ expectations. Companies must have a sound strategy in order to continue interact and communicate with their customers as well as potential ones, all so that they convert and retain their customers – keeping shoppers happy and loyal.
In the past, a website provides information, together with a support hotline would be considered sufficient to meet customers’ expectation. Today, things have changed. Customers demand a lot more from businesses. They want to connect with a brand directly from their website or via social media. Furthermore, customers also expect to be able to find the information regarding the products and services they’re interested in, and shop for those products and/or services on an instant basis, directly from the website. All this is preferably done through only a few mouse clicks, and with as little friction as possible.
Even though we’re living in a mobile first world and mobile application has become widely popular, web application is still a major channel for consumers to interact and communicate with brands. Progressive web apps (PWA) is among the latest software trends which fulfill the mobile-first requirement of business, providing a mobile app – like experience to customers, on an instant basis. Since PWAs can be access directly via web browser on any devices, there’s no need for users to complete multiple steps such as visiting app store and download. PWA also helps eliminate the need of having the right kind of device in order to use PWA, which is advantageous compared to browsing a mobile app.
Custom web application development aims to solve various technical related problems such as cross-platform, and cross-browser compatibility, as well as security and scalability. Moreover, advanced custom web applications can also help businesses to provide a high level of personalization, bringing a unique and interesting browsing experience, thus connecting with their customers better.
Custom software development companies provide a range of services to help business organizations solving challenges which are specifically related to their business, improve business process and increase profitability. However, customers companies may ask themselves whether investing in the developing of such a custom web application would be worthy.
Reasons for Custom Web Application Development Considerations
Before finalizing the decision of embarking on a custom web application development project, businesses should consider the followings:
#1 Respond to Changes
We’re currently in the midst of transitioning to a digital economy, where many of our daily activities are currently done with the assistance of technologies, including shopping and many other leisure activities. Customers demand to have a convenient and simple online-shopping experience with as little frictions as possible. Where out-of-the-box solution can’t provide this, custom web application development delivers.
#2 Meeting Customers’ Demand
Consumers are currently experiencing all the benefits of custom web apps from various businesses, especially large corporation or tech industry leaders. Thus, it’s inevitable that they will ask for the same from your business websites or it’s likely that they will move to your competitors.
#3 More Choices for Businesses and Consumers
Many consumers find it inconvenient and unnecessary of having to visit app store and download the mobile app from the store. Web applications, on the other hand, only require customers to access via browser. Thus customers only need to visit the website to check out business brand instead. Similarly, depends on the nature of their business industries, organizations may find that a custom web application is sufficient and can function efficiently as a digital channel for their business – without the need of an extra mobile app. Otherwise, custom web app is also perfect to work as a compliment for the mobile app.
#4 Pleasant App Experience
Providing a smooth and mobile app-like experience is critical in order to ensure success in the digital economy and mobile-first world. Transitioning to PWAs can help businesses achieve this, however, not all are ready for this new technologies. Thus, companies need to have pay particular attention to mobile-app experience even though it’s custom web app development. Outsourcing to an experience web application development company is a good solution to ensure a pleasant user experience.
#5 Cost-Effectiveness
There are cases where out-of-the-box solution can be too costly for business and building a custom web application is the solution that is technically and economically feasible for the business challenges companies are facing. In particular, many businesses do not follow a standard model, there might be a lot of custom features which companies need to integrate to the out-of-the-box-solutions that are available off the shelf.
#6 Automation
More than just a responsive web application rendering perfectly across a wide variety of devices, custom web app can also integrate with other business applications – whether it’s legacy on-premise system or cloud app – in order to bring more efficiency and streamline business processes for companies. As a result, this helps business to automate their processes, increase productivity of employees.
#7 Flexibility
As mentioned previously, custom web application development is capable of integrating to a number of different applications, whether it’s legacy system or cloud app. Similarly, custom web application itself can be deployed on either the cloud or on-premise, providing businesses the flexibility that OOTB solution might not have some time. This also offers a flexibility in regard to the security aspect that is critical of custom web application development.
Better than Out-of-the-box (OOTB) solution
Take into account all of the above factors, custom web application development seems to be a better choice for businesses as compared to . This is because custom web application is built with a focus on the essential business features while OOTB solution may provide unnecessary features that are no need for companies in a particular industry. Thus, business organizations only need to build the features required of the application, and more importantly, development costs are incurred for those features only – result in a better and more cost-effective solution.
For example, many companies in E-commerce industry will definitely need to interact and communicate with their customers via Social Media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.) together with custom E-commerce software and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and more for their custom web application. An OOTB solution is rarely capable of filling these requirements. On the contrary, custom web app development typically will be able to integrate all these popular modules, eliminate the needs of switching between multiple apps to retrieve data – thus, making the entire business process become more seamless with less frictions. Additionally, the custom application is built responsively to support all the devices natively.
Conclusion
Team of skilled and experienced custom application developers know that each business is different and so are their needs. When it comes to custom web application development, the custom features is specially depended upon the specific business requirements. Hence, it’s critical that the development team spends sufficient time to identify the exact project goals and requirements before starting to write those first lines of code. This allows the team to propose the appropriate technologies and solutions to customers companies.
Side-notes:
As a leading custom software development company in Vietnam, TP&P technology is highly experienced in creating custom web applications for a wide range of businesses, help solving various industry related problems.
Contact TP&P Technology today to see how we can assist with your custom web application development project from scratch or at any stage of the development.
