Are you a young start-up wishing to create your own mobile app? Fierce competition is pushing app makers to introduce outstanding apps that entice the audience. For the same purpose, several apps are getting involved in keen competition. In this respect, you decided to call on a mobile agency for your app design.
What a ridiculous idea!
Here are 5 situations where you absolutely ought not to resort to outsourcing for your mobile app design:
1. You are (very) rich
A mobile factory? You need to have your own factory in order to succeed. Setting up your own team is not that tough. You will only need to recruit at least:
- A UI / UX for your app graphic and ergonomic design
- A Project Manager, your real right-hand man who will decline all your wildest wishes in technical specifications for the development team
- Two or three engineers specialized in the field of servers and databases together with IOS and Android (if you want things to be well done, pick specialists)
- A growth hacker to increase your user base
2. You want to centralize your mobile app knowledge on a single employee
He will hold the title of Chief Technical Officer (CTO). The supreme grail. This seems quite good. All start-ups have one, so why not you? Surely, if he/she leaves taking all your company’s know-how, you will have no plan B, but you will end up finding a solution…
3. Your trainees can do it all
Julien and Sabrina seem to be bored around the coffee machine. Watch two or three tutorials on YouTube and here we go. Test-driven design? Continuous Integration? They did not learn it at school. No need to make a stable and scalable product.
4. You want to be fully involved in the technique.
Your company’s growth, strategy and development must remain in the background.
The thing that matters the most is the technique. The rest will follow. You prefer to spend hours on a rebel code rather than prospecting your customers or building your brand. You are right!
5. You predict a (strong) immediate profitability.
You plan to pay wages since the first month and make profits the second month.
Your plan is unstoppable:
If you chose to build your own mobile factory, the app will inevitably be ready in two months and profitable in three.
But, if you chose to have your trainees, Julien and Sabrina, design it, they will not be paid.
Not convinced?
Do you choose to entrust a team of experts with the mission of designing your mobile app?
If despite our warnings, you decide to outsource the design of your mobile app (we will have done everything in our power), here are some (good) tips to limit the damage and select the right mobile agency.
- Identify at least 3 agencies. To be certain that it is indeed a real mobile agency that employs real engineers, and not Patrick and Sonia, a couple of ex executives in project management who have set up their digital agency which is only specialized in outsourcing (off shore), look at the agency’s social networks. In fact, the identity and brand say a lot about people.
- Put them into competition: study at least 3 or 4 different offers while always relying on the same brief that you have written.
- Ask about the agencies’ references and review the projects they have dealt with. Focus on figuring out the difficulties encountered and how they were solved. Then, call the customers to check.
- The agreement between the agency and you is vital in order to obtain the sought results. Choose an agency which you believe you will be able to trust and with whom communication is simple and spontaneous.
