01
App or website? The honest answer first
Most businesses that ask for an app need a website. An app has to be downloaded, installed, updated and kept on a phone that is already full. That is a lot of friction for a customer who buys from you twice a year.
An app earns its place when one of these is true: people use it often, it must work without signal, it needs to send notifications, or it needs the camera, GPS or fingerprint reader. Booking systems, delivery driver tools, stock counting on a warehouse floor. Those are real apps.
If none of those apply, we will tell you so rather than take the bigger cheque.
02
Android, iPhone, and why one codebase saves you money
Android phones and iPhones are different machines that speak different languages. Historically you built your app twice, paid twice, and then paid twice again every time you changed something.
One codebase means we write it once, in a framework like Flutter, and it builds into both an Android app and an iPhone app. Roughly one and a half times the cost of a single platform instead of two. When you want a change later, we change it once.
03
What coding actually means here
Code is a list of instructions written precisely enough that a machine cannot misunderstand it. Nothing more mystical than that.
Different jobs use different languages. Dart or JavaScript for what you see and tap on the phone. PHP or Node on the server that holds your data. SQL to ask the database questions like which orders came in today. A developer picks the language the way a builder picks a tool, by the job rather than by fashion.
04
The half of your app you never see
The app on the phone is only the face. Behind it sits a server: a computer on the internet that stores your data and decides who is allowed to see what.
This matters to you for one practical reason. If two staff members use the app on different phones and both need to see the same live list of jobs, that list lives on the server, not on the phones. Almost every app needs one. Budget for it.
05
Getting into the Play Store and App Store
You cannot just hand someone an app file. It goes through Google and Apple’s stores, and both review it before it is allowed in.
Google usually takes a day or two. Apple is stricter and can take longer, and will reject an app for things like a missing privacy policy or a login with nowhere to sign up. Google charges a one-off fee to open a developer account, Apple charges yearly. Those accounts should be registered in your name, not ours. They are yours.
06
Push notifications, and how to not get uninstalled
A push notification is the message that appears on a phone when your app is closed. It is the most powerful thing an app can do, and the fastest way to get deleted.
The rule that works: notify about something that happened to that specific person. Their order shipped. Their booking is tomorrow. Never send a message that just says you miss them. That is the notification people uninstall over.