Introduction
One of the most important investments a business owner can make for facilitating the company’s growth is building an online presence. No one will deny that running some businesses becomes almost impossible now without a web or mobile application, as well as some kinds of additional software.
However, if you don’t have any of those yet, you’re probably faced with the choice of whether it is better to develop a bespoke solution or to use a ready-made one. In this article, we would like to discuss the advantages of the former – bespoke web development.
Main Advantages of Bespoke Web App Development
Designed to Meet Your Goals
Whatever the nature of your business is, the last thing you need is to drive traffic that ultimately doesn’t convert into your core business goals. The biggest advantage of bespoke web applications is that they can be specifically designed for these purposes, allowing you to target your investments where they are needed most and measure that success once the app is launched.
You can add whatever functions and systems you need. It’s flexible – as your business changes and grows, your app can be tailored to reflect that development. For example, you can create an ordering system that is unique to you and provides all the information you need for your specific business.
Remember, your web application will have to grow alongside your company, and how you use your platform is just as important as how your users interact with it.
“Out-of-the-box” solutions are for the mass market – you are just one of their many clients, and the features you need may not be available. The platform options are huge, but there may be operations that you need now or will need in the future that are simply impossible to carry out with the toolkit given. This means adapting your business to a “standard” platform, not the other way around.
Unique Design Abilities
Using building templates restricts you from creating a fully custom design with built-in themes and functionality. This can lead your web application to look like the apps of many other users of this template. It may also not have enough functions to suit your business needs.
Having your application custom built will ensure that the design will be created specially for your app to cover all the specific needs and peculiarities of your business, and you won’t be bound by the restrictions of preset building templates.
You can freely develop your own special navigation panel, for example, or a shopping cart, in case you’re going to develop an e-Commerce app. Also, there are endless possibilities for third-party integrations that are only bound by the technical capabilities of your app and your common sense. All these abilities give you outstanding functionality and performance to engage your customers and expand the business.
Automation of Business Functions
Bespoke web application development can give you an opportunity to create scenarios of business functions automation. Everything just depends on your business needs. For example, a special script can collect information about users’ engagement with your website and form a list of statistics for you to use in the future. One more scenario you could implement is the analysis of users’ behavior and the highlight of potential leads that could be gathered in your integrated CRM. As you can see, the possibilities are almost endless.
High Security
Bespoke web applications can be more secure than the “out-of-the-box” ones. When you partner with software developers, you have full control over what happens on your platform and how your application works. The simple truth is that security is especially important when customers share their data and reveal payment details.
If you’re dealing with security concerns like sensitive financial information, working with a development company has clear advantages. Your team needs to be able to provide expert guidance on how to maintain digital security and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance. You shouldn’t hesitate to pay extra for the latter, given the potentially devastating financial impact of not complying with security protocols.
The ability to avoid data breaches or security issues is also paramount to success, especially if you are sharing data between systems. Working with a dedicated development partner with integration experience can help mitigate this risk, as they can recommend the best solutions and create reliable and secure APIs to connect your disparate services.
Software Independency
A bespoke web application is your intellectual property. There are no outside developers you’d need to bring on board to take care of your intellectual property and keep plugins up to date because you just don’t need it in a bespoke solution.
Having a single code that you own, without any additional add-ons or third parties that you would otherwise depend on, is a big advantage of custom web app design. Notably, when the system is yours, you can easily adapt to the growing demands of your audience and scale smoothly without having to rely on any outside sources.
For example, with an “out-of-the-box” solution on your web app, there will likely be a number of plugins that need to be constantly upgraded in order to apply updates to the application’s other components. When the plugins stop updating, you will have to either stop updating altogether (causing massive security risks) or uninstall/change the plugins you are using.
Better Scalability
Everyone expects their business to grow and evolve, but if your application is made with the help of some building template, then it could lead to problems with its scalability. Such a template might not be ready, for example, for a sharp rise in users or traffic flow from many countries and will simply crash or lose in performance.
The other factor is that while a template like that can be enough at first, the need for new features may arise later down the line, and the risk of important new functionality being absent is very high. In other words, the ability to adapt to the new needs of your business is one of the advantages of bespoke web application development.
Ongoing Maintenance
While the aspects of cost and time play an important role when evaluating the options available, product life after launch also matters. Customized products allow you to report a bug and quickly have it fixed by skilled programmers, with your request being their top priority.
Bespoke products usually come with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure that your request is dealt with in a timely manner. This allows you to report problems and bugs to experienced developers who are already familiar with your application and are able to fix any error in its code very quickly.
In addition, entering into a service agreement lowers the cost of tracking and monitoring traffic, crashes, and other emerging vulnerabilities. Any good development company will offer this service; you will also benefit from the developers’ industry expertise, as they are more likely to know about potential issues that you wouldn’t be able to notice otherwise.
If you have an “out-of-the-box” product and it’s broken, who will you go to? If there is no agreement that obliges your supplier to respond to your complaints and fix problems as soon as possible, the bug can be left unchanged for weeks, months, or even years – and this can pose a serious business problem.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a lot of aspects pointing to the superiority of bespoke web development over getting an “out-of-the-box” solution. Of course, everything is possible: you may get really lucky and find a ready-made solution that perfectly fits your business needs. But that kind of situation would be the exception rather than the rule. If you do choose bespoke custom web app development, then it’s important to carefully select the right partner for that purpose. The Bamboo Agile company can help you in developing a solution that is going to fit all of your business needs, no matter their complexity. All you have to do is contact us and schedule a free consultation with our specialists. Let’s enhance your business together!
