Long gone are the days where you would think of a great idea for an app, and then spend even longer wondering how to bring it to life.
Google recently announced that they are purchasing a company called Appsheet, a no-code mobile app development platform. Valued at a cool $60 million, it is to no surprise that the scope of just who can build an app has exploded over the years, and Google most definitely see potential in this space.
Despite working in technology for the last 8 years, I’d still quite happily consider myself a complete noob when it comes to software engineering. What I have learned, however, is that there isn’t much you can’t teach yourself, or use a search engine for. But here’s the thing. If I had a desire to teach myself to be a full stack software engineer, I’m pretty confident that I’d be able to reach the level of competency required to be building and deploying great applications……..within several years (at least!). The complexity involved in great software architecture and engineering shouldn’t be overlooked, but I’m not claiming it’s rocket science either. Much like any profession, you get better with experience. But this doesn’t help much if time is of the essence. Missed opportunities have a cost, after all.
So, if you have an idea for an app, what do you do if you can’t code? Currently, you can do one of a couple of things. Partner with someone who can code, then build and deploy it together. Or, get some quotes from app development agencies and go with the one you perceive to have the best value, with some hope that you’ve communicated your desired product comprehensively enough, so that the end result somewhat resembles what you envisioned. The latter isn’t cheap either, and in most cases, you’ll get what you pay for.
However, there are other reasons to proceed with caution when outsourcing work. It isn’t always easy to translate your requirements into a product. It shouldn’t be super difficult, but there is a lot to think about, both tangible and intangible. There’s a great book on usability called ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ that attests to this, where the main principle states that a good app or website should be intuitive enough, so that a user doesn’t have to think about where to click or navigate to. And the truth is, it can take a lot of work to make something simple to use!
Consider what you want the user journey to be when someone clicks on your app. In fact, should your application be a web app or a native app, and why? Either selection may have an impact on time/effort (and perhaps in turn, cost). When a user clicks on your app, what happens? Is a splash screen displayed, or does a log in / sign up box appear straight away? Is there a transition? What information do we want to get from the customer when they sign up? Lots of data is great, but if you ask for too much information up front then your on-boarding process could be cumbersome and people might drop out of your journey. However, if you ask for too little information, it might not be enough to facilitate the experience you want.
For example, if you wanted your an app to display a message with a personalised greeting — i.e. “Hello, Tom”, then you need to request this information from the user at some point. However, what if you want to allow the user to log in using their Facebook or Google credentials? I logged into the ASOS website using Google, and now I see the below:
It’s not a bad experience per se, but for whatever reason, I only had the initial of my first name set up in Google, and now, for ASOS (and several other websites where I have registered using my Google account), I am addressed only as ‘J’.
And all of this before we’ve even logged in, guys! App development agencies do not have your vision, so they can only do their best with the information you give them, and translating what you want into actionable development work is a skill in itself.
The last thing you want is any assumptions made to cost you more than is necessary.
This brings us nicely to the ‘no-code’ environment…
In my pursuit of app development for non-coders, I’ve personally built and deployed applications with a great platform: bubble.io. I’d also like to try AppSheet at some point, as they have some decent out of the box integrations, which could prove useful later on. At first glance, it seems somewhat more intuitive than Bubble, which does have a slight learning curve to overcome first. However, with YouTube tutorials and great forums out there, it’s unlikely that you’d be stuck for too long.
How do no-code app builders work?
Known more popularly as ‘visual programming’, essentially, all coding is done behind the scenes. You, as the owner of your vision, simply indicate the steps or ‘workflow’ required for a user of your app to follow. If something is clicked, what happens next? That kind of thing.
Think that a tool like Bubble.io might not allow you to make something complicated enough? That may or may not be the case, depending on your idea. Bubble is a tool that produces a web app — i.e. you need to use a browser to navigate to it (although there are ways to transform it into a native app at a later stage). Depending on the functionality you need, however, this may not be suitable. For example, one use case for a native app (i.e. you download it from your app store) is that you need one to be able to access your contacts on your mobile phone. So, if your app has a need to view and select any of the data on your phone, (and you cannot accept a workaround), then the native app journey may be better. Also, need to push timely notifications to a user? A web app can still achieve this.
Bubble has been known to produce apps similar to AirBnb and Tinder, and includes a plethora of out of the box drag and drop style functionality, including chat functions, calendars, maps etc, so can actually achieve quite a lot! Here are some great examples:
- Good Gigs: providing a platform for freelancers: https://goodgigs.app/
- AirDev: ironically, an agency specialising in visual programming: https://airdev.co/
For the development of a first release product or Minimum Viable Product, this is definitely the way to go if you don’t have a technical background, as you can get something up and running within weeks and not months. For startups wanting to gain traction, and gather feedback as early as possible so they can continually improve, time is critical! And whilst you will have enough on your plate working out every tiny detail of the journey a user takes when navigating your app, at least you have control of your own progress and all it will cost is blood, sweat and (maybe) some tears!
