Mobile App Development
Sometimes a website isn’t the right answer.
A mobile app can provide a simpler, faster and more focused way for customers to interact with a business, access a service or carry out a particular task.
Somerset Web develops mobile applications and browser-based app experiences around genuine business requirements rather than novelty. The starting point isn’t “we need an app” — it’s understanding what the app needs to achieve and whether an app is actually the best way to achieve it.
We develop native mobile applications for iOS and Android as well as progressive web applications that can provide an app-like experience directly through the web.
Native iOS and Android Apps
Native apps are particularly useful when a service benefits from being installed directly on a customer’s phone or tablet.
They can provide a focused user experience, integrate with features available on the device and be distributed through Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Somerset Web has practical experience developing and publishing mobile applications for both iOS and Android, including taking apps through the submission and store review process.
Depending on the project, an app might include:
- Customer accounts
- Location-based information
- Maps and directions
- Search and filtering
- Payments and purchases
- Subscriptions
- In-app purchases
- Saved content and favourites
- Remote data and APIs
- AI-powered features
- Content managed from a web-based system
The technology is chosen around what the application needs to do rather than simply because a particular platform is fashionable.
Progressive Web Applications
Not every application needs to go through an app store.
A progressive web application, or PWA, runs through the browser but can provide many of the characteristics people associate with an installed app.
For some businesses this can be a particularly effective approach because customers can start using the service directly from a website without first visiting an app store.
PWAs can be well suited to services such as:
- Online booking systems
- Collection and delivery services
- Customer portals
- Order management
- Appointment systems
- Account-based services
- Internal business applications
They can also work across different types of device from a common application, reducing the need to maintain completely separate versions.
Booking and Customer Service Apps
An app becomes valuable when it makes something easier.
For a service business, that might mean allowing customers to register, select a service, choose a date, make a payment and subsequently manage their order.
Behind that apparently simple experience there may be a much more substantial system handling customer accounts, availability, payments, administration and communications.
Somerset Web develops both the customer-facing application and the systems required behind it, allowing the different parts to be designed to work together from the outset.
Payments, Purchases and Subscriptions
Many applications need to take payments or manage paid access.
Depending on the type of application, this might involve online card payments, recurring subscriptions or purchases made through an app store.
We can develop applications that integrate payment and purchasing systems appropriate to the platform and the service being provided.
That includes web-based payment systems as well as subscriptions and in-app purchases within native mobile applications.
The important part isn’t simply adding a payment button. The application also needs to handle what happens before and after the transaction: customer access, order status, confirmations and the administrative processes behind the service.
Apps Connected to Your Website and Business Systems
An app doesn’t necessarily exist in isolation.
It may need to retrieve information from a website, communicate with a database or connect to an existing business system.
We can develop the web services and APIs required to allow those systems to communicate securely.
This can make it possible to manage information centrally while making it available through a website, an iOS app and an Android app.
For content-driven applications, that can mean updating information once rather than maintaining separate sets of content for every platform.
Location-Based Apps
Mobile devices are particularly well suited to applications involving places, routes and location-based information.
An app can combine maps, directions, points of interest and detailed content in a format that’s easy to use while somebody is actually out and about.
We’ve developed applications that use location-based content alongside remotely managed information, allowing the app itself and the web-based data behind it to work together.
The same principles can be applied to tourism, visitor information, property, field services, deliveries and other businesses where location matters.
AI Within Mobile Applications
Artificial intelligence can also form part of an application when it provides a genuinely useful function.
Rather than adding AI simply because it’s available, we look at whether it can make a particular task quicker, easier or more useful for the person using the app.
That can include generating or interpreting information, working with user-provided data or providing functionality that would be impractical to build using conventional rules alone.
As with the rest of the application, AI is a tool rather than the product strategy.
The Systems Behind the App
The mobile interface is often only one part of an application.
A business may also need an administration system where staff can manage customers, content, orders, products, availability or other information.
Somerset Web develops bespoke web-based systems alongside mobile applications where required.
This means the public app, database, administration tools and supporting website can be considered as parts of one system rather than unrelated projects built by different suppliers.
Our web design and development and website hosting services can also support the web infrastructure required behind an application.
From Idea to Working Application
You don’t need to arrive with a technical specification.
A useful app often begins with a much simpler description of a problem or an idea:
“This is what we’d like our customers to be able to do.”
From there, we can work through the user journey, functionality, technology and supporting systems required to turn the idea into something practical.
That may result in a native mobile app, a progressive web application, a conventional website or a combination of technologies.
Choosing the right approach at the beginning can avoid a great deal of unnecessary development later.
Mobile App Development in Somerset
Somerset Web develops mobile applications from Somerset for businesses and organisations in Somerset, Bristol, Bath and further afield.
With more than 25 years of experience in web development, we can look beyond the app screen itself and consider the databases, APIs, websites, hosting and administrative systems that may be required behind it.
If you have an idea for an app — or simply a business process that you think could work better digitally — you don’t need to know which technology you need before talking to us.
Talk to Somerset Web about what you’d like people to be able to do, and we can work out the most appropriate way to build it.