The Mobile Product Roadmap: Extending Your Web App to the iPhone

Mobile Solutions For Software Providers

Whether you’re a Web 2.0 startup or enterprise software vendor, you’ve built a business of helping customers get stuff done using your software. No doubt you have some users asking for a mobile edition, but lots of users ask for lots of things.

All hype aside, extending your web app to mobile is best viewed as a business opportunity, which you can evaluate with the right questions:

• What mobile functions would be most valuable to your existing customers?
• How can you increase the average revenue per user by offering a mobile edition?
• How would offering a mobile edition increase loyalty and recurring revenue?
• Could you attract new customers and grow revenue by entering mobile channels like Apple’s App Store?
• Do you have any mobile-only competitors who may be gaining ground?

Answering those questions should help clarify whether it makes good business sense to serve mobile users in the future. Cool mobile technology rarely beats bad economics, so if you’re still forming your mobile strategy, check out our mobile planning kit for ideas and advice to help you evaluate your mobile opportunity.

If going mobile is the right business decision, the next question is how to get it done. No doubt you have strong technology expertise, but you may find it surprising how much time and energy your team could spend in becoming strong at mobile development and integration.

MindSea offers an alternative model for qualifying software companies:

• We bring expertise in mobile development and integration.
• You bring the vision of how to extend your software to serve mobile users.
• We jointly plan out a mobile application or web interface, including support for iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry platforms.
• We deliver the mobile components, working as an extension of your team.
• We can also provide training and ramp-up to help your team become proficient in mobile development for ongoing releases.

Through this approach our customers are able to rapidly deliver mobile editions of their existing software, without the long ramp-up period of starting a mobile development practice internally.

Planning your mobile edition or curious about pricing? Get started with our free Mobile Planning Webinar, call us at 1 (888) 390-5150, or email us at info@mindsea.com to arrange an initial call.

Get Started Today: Mobile Planning Webinar

Get our on-demand webinar and toolkit, where we answer the tough questions of how to go mobile:

• How can we assess our growth opportunity of going mobile with new and existing customers?
• How do we prioritize the key functions and platforms that will make our mobile app successful?
• What approach should we take to building on multiple platforms including iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android?
• What is the price of creating a typical mobile app?
• What are the common traps of mobile development, and what are the pro’s and con’s of partnering with a mobile team?

On a tight timeline? Call us at 1 (888) 390-5150 or email us at info@mindsea.com to arrange an initial call.