Reasons to Consider Cross-Platform Development for Your Business App

Living and working in the world of technologies and digits imposes its rules on us. Lots of startup and seasoned business owners go online to boost their chances of success and win more potential customers. One of the most effective ways to do so is creating a dedicated business app that will showcase your brand and a wide selection of services and goods offered. What’s more, your app can go a long way towards helping you directly communicate with your clients and cultivate customer loyalty. There are tons of other reasons why your business can benefit from an app, and you probably are aware of them. You even might be willing to dive into the development process, but there is one thing that may set your progress back. And this thing is a modest app development budget. Luckily for beginner and not that rich developers, there is a wide variety of effective tools and methods that allow putting together a decent app without going bankrupt. In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at cross-platform development, one of the most cost-effective app development methods that can help your business gain momentum, develop, and prosper.

• That being said, cross-platform app development isn’t the only option at your disposal. Read here about other app development approaches and tech stacks.

What is Cross-Platform Development?

As its name suggests, cross-platform development allows creating solutions capable of running on various platforms. In other words, you won’t need to fork out for developing different versions of your app to make them compatible with both iOS and Android platforms. If you employ cross-platform development tools, you (or professional developers you’ll hire otherwise) will create one code for a single app that can work across platforms. The pluses of such an approach are obvious. But let’s take a closer look at some the benefits you’ll experience if you opt for this development method.

Faster and Cost-Effective

As you might realize, designing a cross-platform app can save you a bundle you would otherwise spend on creating several different solutions for different platforms. If your budget is quite modest and you cannot afford to create full-blown native apps, cross-platform development is something you should definitely set your eyes on. Thus, you’ll save money and get a quick turnaround. You’ll be able to take your product public sooner and start reaping benefits.

Easy to Maintain

There is a common misconception that the app development process ends once the end product hits the targeted app store or goes public. When designing your business apps, you should be ready to allocate some costs for maintenance purposes in the future. Even if you design a modern, robust, and well-performing solution, there will come a time where you’ll need to spruce up some of the existing app features or options, make updates, and improve your app’s overall performance. But if you have just one app to focus on, this allows reducing maintenance costs.  With a cross-platform app, you’ll be able to sync updates across all platforms. What’s more, cross-platform solutions can be updated automatically for each user since they are accessed via the Internet. This means your users can enjoy the latest version of the app all the time.

Ability to Reach More Potential Customers

Since cross-platform solutions are compatible with multiple operating systems and devices, the odds are good that more, much more users will notice and start using your app. This will drive more traffic to your business and win more loyal customers.

Reusable Code

As we’ve noted earlier, cross-platform development implies creating one code that can be subsequently reused if a need arises. Your developers can use one and the same code to make your business app compatible with, say, Linux, or Windows platform. There are dedicated tech stacks like Xamarin that can accelerate this process by enabling you to share written code across various platforms, thus making the entire development process a lot easier.

Cloud Data Integration

Last, but not least, cross-platform apps can be easily integrated with clouds, which is ideal for businesses. You’ll be able to save required data at any time and access it whenever necessary. You can even create a cloud-native app to expand your business opportunities. And such tools as nodeJS can help you with that. The single code can be easily coordinated with different plugins and extensions, which makes for a more efficient and scalable business app.

Now that you’re aware of the benefits inherent in cross-platform development, you may consult a team of experienced developers to see if a cross-platform app is a viable solution for your business.