You can never draw a line and claim your work is done in today’s world. Because it never is. Especially in the spectrum of technology. If you are under the impression that mobile applications seemingly small with limited operations are merely software on a smartphone, think again. At this juncture, they are used for almost everything. Therefore, they are the most preferred digital tool and one of man’s most significant innovations. Today, enterprises have entered a cut-throat competition to tap into the 5.29 billion mobile users pool globally. As a result, there are 1.85 million different applications available for users to download.
On the other hand, according to reports, Google removed 700,000 applications from Google Playstore in 2019, deeming them ‘obsolete’. Therefore, the only way to thrive in the influx and remain in the competition is to create user-friendly experiences, retain customers, and ensure bug-free applications. However, this is possible only when you provide end to end application maintenance and support services for a seamless user experience.
This article will explain everything about mobile app maintenance, why it is needed, what all services are included in the plan, types of mobile app maintenance, and lastly, the cost of such upgrades.
Why is there a need to maintain and support mobile applications?
Following the latest upgrades
A particular mobile application requires frequent updates to incorporate new functions and features in the Android and iOS App store. Regular up-gradation of the application increases scalability and enhances performance and security. Also, upgrading the application with the assistance of professional App Developers in Dubai can significantly reduce the application’s downtime and minimize the risk of failure. Even the app stores have standard guidelines, which you must abide by. Failure to do the same may get your listing rejected. Consequently, if your application experiences a downfall in the rankings, then know that the operating platforms have gone on a clean-up drive and removed your application from the app store. Thus, it only emphasizes the necessity of updating your app as per the latest features and APIs.
Revamping the application’s UI/UX design
User Interface (UI) and User experience (UX) are the most vital features in capturing a user’s attention. However, these two features depend entirely on the application’s success rate. Therefore, it is crucial to pay dedicated attention and effort to design elements and upgrade them now and then. Furthermore, suppose you wish to enhance the design factors of a particular application. In that case, you must follow the particular guidelines prescribed by the app stores and make it ideally interactive, incredibly intuitive, and inconspicuous or straightforward for every user to connect with it.
Identifying and fixing issues and bugs
Failure to remove unidentified bugs, errors and irregularities can result in application failure, frequent downtime, degraded UX, and ultimately detrimental to the brand’s credibility. Thus, regular checkup and maintenance by identifying and removing the hidden bugs improves the performance and enhances the code’s quality, fixing issues concerning functionality resulting in a smooth and faultless performance.
Maintaining an optimum level of security
Security is a significant concern of the everyday world. One always has to be cautious of cyber hackers and spammers as they can find loopholes in the code and attack the data, privacy and functionality. Therefore you must keep your application encrypted with the latest security standards. For this, you would need the end-to-end support of application maintenance service providers.
Reducing loading time
In today’s high paced life, nobody likes to wait, especially not for the application to load and therefore. Therefore, applications that operate fast can grab more attention, leading to higher conversion rates and more profit. On the contrary, if the application experiences regular or partial downtime, it negatively impacts the user’s end and generates substantial losses in revenue. Thus, the practice of application maintenance must take place regularly to prevent downtime.
Advantages of maintaining and updating a mobile application:-
There are substantial and clear-cut benefits of keeping your mobile application updated, in furtherance of the fact that it keeps you in the league, like:
Delivering ideal user experience
Reportedly 20% of the millennial smartphone users in 2017 uninstalled applications solely because of the logo appearing improper on the device. Therefore, it is evident that users are no more ready to compromise even a bit, be it features, functionality, or appeal. By revamping the app’s UI/UX layout and making it more interactive, you will attain,
- Improvement in user retention
- Significant increase in customer loyalty
- Develop long-lasting relationships with users
- Get better feedback and good reviews
- Increase in traffic
- Increase in conversion rate
Increased Return on Investment(ROI) in the long run
Updating and maintaining your application does not just benefit the other party, i.e. users. It, in turn, benefits you in the long run in terms of financial aspects since you can devise new ways to curtail cost and gain new active users in one go. In addition, with regular maintenance, you can negotiate bug fixing costs over a more extended period.
Negating downtime and loss in revenues
Downtime for any company or brand generates a tremendous loss in revenues. Big brands like Amazon, Blackberry and many more have suffered a massive loss in the past because of not timely updating their application and customer usage.
Security
The quest of cybersecurity pilots the constant advancement in technology. The assistance of a Mobile App Development Company in Dubai in getting your application regularly updated strengthens the app’s security, keeping user privacy intact and data theft at bay. Being in tandem with the latest security protocols is the need of the hour. Regular maintenance and update work as a vigilante mechanism against hackers.
Types of mobile application maintenance:-
Emergency Mobile Application Maintenance
These are those dire moments when your application experiences unexpected breakdowns, slow speed, dysfunctionality and other issues. Then Mobile Application Development Companies in Dubai provide you with real-time application maintenance and support, bringing your app back on track. They also provide quick fixes and resolutions that enhance your applications’ basic functionalities.
Perfective Maintenance
This is the kind of maintenance where you try to keep your application by the latest trends and features. Therefore, with perfective maintenance, you can upgrade your app, incorporate the latest market trends, adopt new features, and enhance user engagement.
Adaptive maintenance
This is the maintenance that is eventually done to incorporate mandatory changes and necessary adjustments in-app. In addition, specific alterations are made to the application’s operating system, software environment, and specific changes to the hardware.
Corrective maintenance
In this form of maintenance, specific corrective measures to upgrade features, fix bugs and remove errors are made to the application to eradicate the flaws in the system of the application.
Now that we have established how imperative it is to maintain and update your application through the constant support of App Developers in Dubai, you must be seeking to know the approximate cost of maintenance.
The expense of upgrading and maintaining a mobile application
Once you have published your application on the app stores, you may wish to monetize your app’s Daily Active Users (DAU). Monetizing DAU gives you knowledge about the number of installations and users engaged with the application. On the other hand, Monthly Active Users (MAU) gives you monthly data and statistics knowledge. So with DAU and MAU, you can assess the performance of your application.
Maintaining an app generally involves additional costs and can be higher than the first year, around 50% of the total development cost and falls 15-25% for each year after that.
On average, a mobile application owner has to spend USD250 to USD500 monthly for the excellent performance of the application on an initial basis.
One can estimate 20% of the investment one makes during the initial phase of mobile application development when computing the cost of maintaining software. For instance, if your development cost incurred is USD200,000, you will have to spend around USD40,000 per year as an approximate estimation to manage and maintain your application.
However, the cost of maintaining a particular mobile application can never remain static since it depends on several factors like,
- The operating system (Android or iOS)
- The method of developing the application (Cross-platform or Native)
- Expense Head
- Servers
- Number of features and functionalities incorporated (payment gateways and push notifications)
- Types of errors and bugs probable
- Technologies and APIs
- The frequency of testing the application
- Nature of emergency during emergency maintenance if need be.
Delving deeper, there are more aspects one has to consider when accounting maintenance cost of an application like,
Hosting
The cost of developing the application includes setting up a server and the cost of app hosting. Hence, one has to choose the type of server they need for their application and compute the app hosting cost accordingly.
On that note, it is needless to say that the data type determines server resource; that is, one has to ascertain whether the app data is static or text-based or dealing with data transactions in the form of audio and video. In that case, one will require more memory, server CPU, and disk space for the rich amount of data, thus increasing the cost of maintenance. As a result, the price of the app hosting server varies on factors like content, number of active users, projected growth and more.
Analytics
As already established, application crashes, bugs and glitches have to be analyzed, monitored and fixed regularly, which calls for tools like Google Analytics which have real-time data insights. Checking the user’s expectations and behavior, taking swift decisions, and delivering the content accordingly is easy with the help of some advanced tools, which have a cost. You have to take one on board that suits your business model.
Third-party costs
You pay for the license while developing the app; in addition to that, any additional feature you incorporate in the app with the assistance of a third party requires extra investment, which you have to consider while calculating the overall cost of support and maintenance.
In short, developing and publishing an application is just the beginning of a long and intensive journey, which can be fruitful if you adopt the necessary practices right. As long as you keep an eye on factors like license and certifications renewal, updating the user interface, updates and incorporating the features and functionalities in vogue in the market, add new features from diligently considering customer feedback, update analytics reports to be aware of your application’s churn rate and retention, track bugs and deal with technical issues and glitches efficiently, you are all set to soar high. All of this is possible only when you diligently devote and display measures to maintain and upgrade your application regularly.
