More organizations are investing in mobile apps each year, and for good reason. According to BuildFire, 90 percent of mobile time is spent on apps, which marks a notable opportunity for any business with an app idea.
Whether you want to increase sales, improve the user experience, or complete some other goal, apps can help you tap into a growing audience. Of course, you need to build an app first before you can reap any of the benefits.
There are multiple routes a mobile app development company can take to achieve this goal. As with any business decision, it’s imperative to find a path that can deliver the best, most cost-effective mobile app for your needs. At Aztek, we firmly believe that the Ionic Framework gives you the best of both worlds.
What is Ionic and Why is it Good for Business?
So, what exactly is Ionic? In more technical terms, the Ionic Framework is an open source mobile UI toolkit used to build high quality, cross-platform native and web app experiences. In short, it’s a means to help you cost-effectively build a quality mobile app for both Apple and Android devices.
The ability for developers to use a single source of code for different experiences is a major advantage if you plan on having your app available for both Apple and Android devices. Simply put, coding for Apple and Android devices are very different processes. Without a hybrid framework, a developer would need to write different sets of code for the same mobile app. Ionic cuts out unnecessary extra steps without sacrificing on quality, and can potentially increase your ROI by roughly 230 percent compared to native development.
While there are other mobile frameworks like Microsoft Xamarin and Native React available, we found Ionic had some key advantages that make it a superior option. Here are five major reasons why we find Ionic to be the best solution for our clients.
The code you write is the same base code for web applications
One great perk of Ionic is that you can turn to a web developer instead of a specific native mobile developer for your app. Depending on your location, there are typically more general full-stack developers available than native developers. Ionic uses a combination of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, which just so happen to be front-end languages that play into Aztek’s strengths.
The framework also integrates with modern libraries like Angular and React, which means your developing team can use the latest and greatest skills to make your app. This alignment allows us to build iOS, Android, and Progressive Web Apps based on the modern web standards we already know and excel at instead of forcing you to find a niche solution that may not fit your exact needs.
More cost-effective mobile app development
Do you know what’s better than paying for the same app twice? Only paying for it once. Without a hybrid framework like Ionic, you may end up paying multiple people to work on different coding bases for both iOS and Android development.
Not only does this approach multiply the total amount of work for developing a single app, it also complicates future updates. Separate code bases can run on different schedules and may not deliver the same outcome if different native teams work on them. A single code base will help you cut down on extra resources and ensure that end users on every device receive the same features and functionality.
Better turnaround times
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that it takes less time to make one app instead of two different versions of that same app. With Ionic, a developer can set up a design system and the framework will be able to reuse UI components to show them appropriately in both iOS and Android themes. From there, Ionic gives developers the freedom to adjust certain aspects of the design for different devices.
By using Ionic, you only spend extra time (and money) doing device-specific work if you need it. This process leads to a more streamlined development and review process with Ionic than multiple versions. In the end, these benefits can allow your mobile app development company to deliver cross-platform apps two to three times faster than if you took a native approach.
Lower native-specific costs
One issue with native app development is that you may end up paying for features specific to a certain type of device. For example, you may need some form of ecommerce component, but you won’t need to shell out specifically for Apple Wallet.
Ionic allows you to strip out these costs while still adding any cool bells and whistles necessary. That means you only pay for Ionic plugins and other functions that naturally make sense for your mobile applications instead of having your budget bogged down by native-specific features that don’t matter.
An active, supported framework
While we’re big fans of Ionic, Aztek isn’t the only company to embrace the framework. Massive organizations like GE and Target have switched to Ionic for the same reasons that we’ve already mentioned.
With millions of users around the world, we felt comfortable knowing that Ionic had enough backing to make sure our clients won’t get stuck with an unsupported framework in the future. Fortunately, Ionic’s level of growth helps ensure that the apps we build will have plenty of support and stability for years to come.
Ready to invest in a new mobile app? With Ionic, our team of web developers can build you a quality mobile app that helps you achieve your business goals. Contact us today to see how we can help grow your business through mobile app development.
