Q&A with BuildFire on how businesses should approach app development
Below is a Q&A session with Ian Blair, founder of BuildFire, a no-code app creator for iOS and Android that simplifies app development for businesses of all sizes. Ian is a member of the Forbes YEC Council and an innovator in the app development space with more than a decade of experience creating apps for small businesses and Fortune 500s alike.
Founder of BuildFire
Do you need an original idea to build a successful mobile app?
Having a great idea is obviously helpful, but you definitely don’t need a unique idea to build a successful mobile app. In fact, some of the most profitable apps I’ve seen just replicate a proven concept that’s been used countless times by other businesses.
Rather than trying to be the next unicorn like Facebook or YouTube, you can simply borrow and improve upon existing ideas.
Here’s a really simple analogy. Saying you need an original idea to build a successful app is like saying you need an original idea to have any successful business. This would mean nobody would open a new car wash, laundromat, barbershop, or restaurant because the idea isn’t unique. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
How can businesses make money with mobile apps?
Beyond the obvious, like selling products, services, digital goods, or ad space, one unique and often overlooked way to make money with apps is by improving internal efficiencies. Rather than looking at how you can sell more of something to your customers, look for ways that an app can make your existing processes even better.
Things like hiring new employees, training and development, and other HR self-service tasks can easily be implemented into an employee-facing mobile app. I’ve seen businesses develop apps with a single HR feature that saves them hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year of deployment.
More revenue is nice, but it isn’t always the answer. You can make money by thinking outside the box to generate higher profits from your existing revenue streams.
Can businesses survive without an app?
Yes, businesses can survive without an app. But who wants to just survive?
If a company’s primary goal is survival, then I think they’re taking the wrong approach. Apps can help organizations thrive in their industries and gain an edge over their competition.
We recently created an app for a business that was doing just fine before the app launched. Post-launch, they opened a new location and partnered with a national association that’s highly accredited in their industry. But they didn’t stop there.
The app was so successful that the company decided to white-label it and resell it to other businesses. Now they have over 50 different clients using the app nationwide, which is basically a side project from the primary business model.
So to the point of survival. Would this business have survived without creating an app? Probably. But the survival mindset will never help you 10x or 20x your company.
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give a business owner interested in creating an app?
Start with one thing first. All too often, I see someone who wants their app to do 20 different things. Not only is this intimidating to build, but it stretches the development timeline and pushes projects over budget.
It’s much easier and more attainable to create an app that solves just one problem. You can always add extra features and functions in the future. But oftentimes, you realize you didn’t need all those extra bells and whistles to succeed. The best apps are usually pretty simple.
What’s the most common mistake made by first-time app builders?
The most common and often biggest mistake made by first-time app builders is not truly understanding the why behind the app. They want to create an app just for the sake of having one but fail to validate the idea.
If your app isn’t solving a customer’s problem, an employee’s problem, or otherwise improving internal efficiency, you really need to take a step back and look at what exactly you’re trying to achieve.
It gets messy when you dive in without a true North Star to follow, and the app ends up having no identity. First impressions are huge with mobile apps. So if a user opens your app and it doesn’t meet expectations or do anything to make their lives better, the chances of them reusing it are slim.
What’s your five-year outlook on the mobile app development industry?
In the next five years, I expect mobile apps to penetrate smaller businesses at a higher rate than the past. That’s because the barrier to entry has been significantly lowered. Gone are the days when you needed to have $500,000 and a team of developers spending 18 months just to launch your app on a single platform. Today, anyone can create an app without writing a single line of code, and you can launch it in less than three months.
I’m also expecting more mid-sized businesses to launch multiple app versions for different user types. We’ll see brick-and-mortar retailers that have an ecommerce app as well as an employee-facing app to manage things in-store. Gyms will have an app for members, a separate app for their personal trainers, and even a third app for HR and administrative tasks.
With tools like BuildFire out there, is there really a need for mobile app developers in the future?
There’s definitely still going to be a need for skilled app developers in the foreseeable future. Certain types of apps, like gaming apps and virtual reality apps, still require custom coding to truly deliver the best user experience.
But the vast majority of businesses don’t need to hire a developer to create an app anymore.
The cool part about using a tool like BuildFire to create an app is that it’s still developer-friendly. So you could use it to create 90% of the app just by relying on the existing infrastructure and plugins. But if you need something that’s truly unique or customized to your business, you can use our own developers or leverage our in-house development team to create that custom feature for you.
About BuildFire
BuildFire is a no-code app BuildFire for iOS and Android. Simple enough for non-technical users but powerful enough for the pros, BuildFire offers limitless scalability at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional development. Over 10,000 mobile apps have been created with BuildFire since the company first launched in 2014.
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