Top iOS & Android App Design & Development Companies

Well-developed and designed mobile apps give the power to consumers, enabling them to interact with a brand from the palm of their hand and with the click of a button. This strong attention to user experience encourages users to engage with a brand on a more frequent basis and with stronger loyalty.

There are several top app design features that increase user engagement. These include 24/7/365 chatbot assistance, embedded contact information, interactive maps, seamless reminders that automatically integrate with your native calendar, simple and intuitive navigation, and more. What’s better? Consumers prefer mobile apps instead of mobile websites because of their customer-centric designs, and 61 percent of consumers hold higher opinions of businesses with strong mobile experiences.

Great app design and development agencies work with brands to create stunning mobile experiences that foster trust and fill a void for consumers. This additional branded platform reinforces a business’s morals, products, services and general expertise, making the company as a while more valuable for consumers in the market.

Visibility and recognition is the key to capturing new consumers and transforming them into returning customers. Consistent and regular branding is shown to increase awareness and overall trust in a company, resulting in brand loyalty and higher revenue. Plus, up to 80 percent of consumers ignore web page ads -- and even say they diminish their trust in an overall website. In a mobile app, consumers are free from pesky ads and are able to concentrate on the information a brand wants to communicate.

Developing a new mobile app is the perfect opportunity to gather new and useful information about your customers. Through brand-new onboarding processes, gamified interfaces, and even permitted access to other apps such as contacts and calendars, businesses open up a wealth of information by created a user-friendly app.

Top app developers can help brands create a seamless experience for users that simultaneously collects data legally and unobtrusively. Then, companies can harness that user data to improve various marketing efforts, such as targeted ads and email and marketing automation campaigns, or tailor better products and services towards consumers. This new connection to customers provides long-term growth benefits to any business.

Perhaps most importantly, investing in mobile apps could produce a strong return on investment for businesses -- particularly those with strong online presences or e-commerce shops. Studies predict that mobile apps will generate approximately $189 billion in revenue by 2020.

Consumers growing reliance on smartphones pushes us closer to a mobile-only world. By 2019, we’re expected to see mobile devices capable of handling 5G, which is known for super-speed and strong connections that rival desktops and traditional computers. Plus, plenty of reports increasingly speculate that we’re heading to a time reliant on smartphones alone. By developing a highly-functional mobile app that your consumers enjoy using, you’re one step closer to surpassing the competition on the way to the future.

The professionals working on your mobile app are far more important than the agency at large. These are the experts who will be trusted with creating an on-brand product that is user-friendly, simple to navigate, and works well for your consumers.

So, don’t just trust a top agency’s reputation. Instead, dive into each particular team member, and request the right agency employees whom you believe will make your project a smashing success.

• Who will be working on this project?
• What will their role be?
• How dedicated to our project will they be? Will they be working on other projects?
• What is their experience?
• What similar projects have they worked on? What were their role and the overall outcome of the project?
• What unsuccessful projects have they worked on? What did they learn from them?
   

The best app design and development agencies adhere to a strict timeline and creative process that identifies important mobile app features, then executes them in an appropriate period.

Clients should feel confident in the agency’s ability to conduct research, communicate information, and make sure they are finalizing the deliverables you need on time. The following questions will help you determine if a great agency can back up their strong work with excellent organization.

• How will the team determine the features and app qualities that are important to our users?
• How will the designers and developers strike a balance between creative design and technical logistics?  
• How will you determine the project timeline?
• How do you plan to keep to project on track?
• Will we have a project manager?
• Who will be our point of contact?
• How often can we expect prototypes, meetings, drafts, and updates? Are those capped at a certain amount?
• How do you plan to manage interdepartmental communication between designers and developers?

Well-respected app design and development firms will have plenty of success stories to share with potential clients. These previous projects showcase the actual expertise of an agency and their in-house experts and should detail the problems solved, how long the project took to execute, and how the final mobile app improved the business.

Research each potential agency’s portfolio on your own, then ask them specific questions about their experience to ensure they have business-building substance behind their beautiful designs.

• What are some similar projects you have worked on? What was the end result?
• Tell us about some of your favorite design or development projects. Why were they so enjoyable and why do you think they were successful?
• Share a project that didn’t produce the results you had hoped for. Why was that project challenging, what would you have done differently, and what have you learned to future projects?
• Do you have experience in our industry? How did you get it?
• Do you have experience achieving a similar business goal?
• What clients have you previously worked with? Would any of them be willing to speak to us directly about their experience collaborating with you?

Fostering a professional partnership with a great design and development agency is complicated, and one of the smartest things you as a client can do is to create a signed, legally binding contract.

Although this hiring step is time-consuming, detailing the price range your project will fall in, the deliverables you will be provided, and the outcomes you can expect will make the entire collaboration process smooth and positive, and breed better business results. Plus, top app agencies will have no problem telling you their price structure and signing contracts, because it protects them, too.

• What is the minimum cost of your services?
• Are your prices per hour, per month, per project, or per results?
• What costs and deliverables are outlined in our contract?
• What outcomes can we expect from the project? Will this be detailed and agreed upon within the contract? Why or why not?
• Can our legal time look over the proposed contract and suggest edits?
• Would you sign an NDA?
• Are there any programs, services, or other items that might cost extra during the project? About how much will they cost?
• What is the maximum amount this project will cost? Would you include that figure in our signed contract?

Strong organization, clear communication, and a detailed timeline are the hallmarks of a great app design and development agency. By sharing their overall process, team structure, programs they use and more, an agency is telling you that they are confident in their method and trust you as clients.  

Thus, the best app development agencies will be forthcoming about their creative and logistical process. Don’t waste your time with a firm that hides information or acts secretive with the trajectory and timeline of a project. Instead, invest in an agency that values you as an equal professional partner, and keeps you in the loop from start to finish.

Reputable mobile app firms have access to the best designers and developers in the world, which puts the fate of your product in capable hands. What’s more, these professionals are in tune with the latest design trends, ensuring they produce a state-of-the-art app design that still maintains high functionality.

Before you hire a specific agency, take the time to learn about their individual team members. Understand their work experience, successful projects, and even their overall design aesthetic. The best designers will engage your target demographic by transforming their style to match your brand, not creating a mobile product that fits their personal mold.

Beautiful portfolios and mobile app case studies are a great stepping stone to understand the work an agency can produce, but if you really want to understand, search for specific client referrals and testimonials.  

As outside third parties, former clients will give you a more candid inside look at what a professional partnership with an agency will truly be. But be wary of firms who hesitate at giving client information -- especially without a strong reason. Although there is some client privilege, most agencies who don’t have a single client reference willing to speak on their behalf likely don’t have many happy customers that they feel confident involving, which is a sure sign you should find a better agency.

Great app design and development companies also provide strong goal-setting, project management, and keep each and every team member focused on the important objectives. These goals and their results are imperative to your brand’s overarching success.

For example, if you spend thousands of dollars on a mobile app, only to give users a digital platform with poor usability, subpar functions, and constantly-crashing features, you’ll amass negative feedback and alienate many consumers -- possibly forever. Because 52 percent of consumers say a poor user experience makes them unlikely to engage with a brand in the future, it is imperative that you find a top design and development agency that can help you determine actionable objectives that your users will appreciate, then actually deliver them.

For a mobile app to be successful there must be something about it that encourages the user to engage on a regular, ongoing basis. If you’re working with a top app development agency, they will work to ensure that the app gives users a compelling reason to return to it often. Doing so could mean adding a sticky functionality, or including an area of the app that houses compelling, frequently-updated content. Getting a user to download an app is only half the battle. Encouraging them to return to it routinely is key to making sure it doesn’t get deleted as quickly as it was installed.

A major part of the mobile app process at any top app design company is quality assurance (QA). The QA phase of the project entails rigorous testing of the app prototype, where every aspect of the app experience is tested for errors, bugs, and usability problems. Before entering an agreement with an agency to build an app, make sure that a quality assurance phase is accounted for and that the agency’s QA process is clear. Failing to engage in a rigorous QA phase can result in endless usability issues which will ultimately dissuade users from engaging with the app.

There are thousands of useful apps out there in the mobile marketplace, but most of them simply never get discovered by their intended audiences.. The best app development companies understand that marketability is key to an app’s success, and many will offer marketing services to ensure the app is getting out in front of the right users. App marketing helps customers discover new apps they’ll love and with boost both discoverability and ROI in the long run. Having built the app from scratch, there are few other companies better positioned to market it than the team that helped bring it to fruition.

User-friendliness is one of the most essential qualities in a mobile app design. The best app design companies know which elements align with a positive user experience and which do not. Today’s mobile apps exist in an incredibly competitive marketplace, so offering the best experience possible is crucial if you don’t want to risk losing users to a competitor. The right team will make user experience a primary focus of their design process and will strive to provide innovative solutions to usability problems.