App development industry small, but strengthening
Photo/Rebecca Goldfine
George Dooley, at his home office in Cumberland, is offering an affordable app for businesses
For the past eight years, George Dooley has designed hundreds of web pages for small businesses from his home office in Cumberland.
Now, he's added a new service that he says will help small business owners keep up with the times: an affordable and basic smart phone app, with texting capabilities, for a startup fee of $147, and a $97 monthly fee thereafter.
"More people are accessing the Internet through their mobile devices than their laptops," Dooley says. "However, very few companies have started taking advantage of where the shift in the Internet is going."
By launching his new business, BizAppFusion, Dooley has jumped into the budding industry of commercial apps for mobile devices. Apps are considered the next possible marketing frontier, but at the moment, there are just a handful of companies in Maine offering apps, and few developers designing them. Those who do say they are seeing growing interest from businesses, mostly from outside of Maine. That, however, could change.
"In America and in Maine, smart phones are not as big as they are in Japan," says Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media on Commercial Street. "But soon it is going to be a tool of the masses. We're going to see this continuing to evolve, and we are just poised to see it explode."
Josh Valentine, president of the nonprofit Maine Marketing Association and chief marketing strategist for Promenade Media in Portland, says that while "things are definitely picking up in terms of mobile marketing, I haven't seen a large uptick in Maine, only because there aren't many developers in Maine."
To help build this industry, a small group of mobile application developers has begun meeting monthly at Dirigo Design & Development, an online marketing company on Exchange Street. In just three months, the iApp group, as they call themselves, has grown from three members to about 10, and is expected to continue growing as word gets out, says member Raphael DiLuzio, a professor of new media and art at the University of Maine and a consultant for Dirigo Design.
Eventually, the group would like to invite companies to make pitches to them for new app ideas. "We're providing the forum, place and set-up for the sharing and cross-pollinating of ideas that we hope will lead to more innovation and excitement in the entrepreneurial community here," DiLuzio says. The next meeting is April 14 at 6 p.m.
Despite the growing number of iPhone, iPod Touch and Android users, it might not be the right time for some companies to invest in apps, warns Valentine. The price for a custom-designed app can run into the thousands of dollars. Tap Tapas on Fore Street, which makes apps for companies like Toyota Australia, charges a minimum of $25,000 per project, according to co-founder Michael DeSouza. He says, too, that his company is booked several months out. "I'm at the point where I'm turning down work," he says.
Kerry Gallivan, the president and founder of Chimani in Yarmouth, which builds apps for national parks, says most companies can expect to invest three times as much on a new app as they spent on their website.
Dooley of BizAppFusion, on the other hand, charges far less money because he has a six-page app template that he can customize for a business, he says. With this, he also offers a texting service so companies can send out texts to customers.
Dooley says if a client wants more functionality, he says he can do that cost effectively for them. "We're trying to help the small business owners get the presence they need," he says.
While this kind of app is cheaper than building one from scratch, it does have its limitations.
"It is pretty much a business card," Gallivan says. "They have something listed in the app store and in that sense it is serving a purpose about what your company is; it is a brochure. But if you're talking about doing an app for a unique function, something more innovative, that is where those cookie-cutter solutions won't work, and you need to do custom development."
But before business owners pay for a customized template or invest in a more expensive unique app, Valentine says they should evaluate whether their customers would welcome it.
"I don't think it is absolutely necessary to have an app unless you are going to be developing something that somebody is going to use more than once," Valentine says. Just recently, he says he cleaned up his iPhone, deleting 20 apps that he installed but never used. But companies with repeat visitors, such as Amazon or eBay, would more likely benefit, he adds.
Valentine advises a business to optimize its website for mobile access so it looks good on a tightened screen. Once that's accomplished, Valentine says businesses should focus on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, to engage with customers.
If a company does invest in an app, DeSouza says they have three options: The app could be a means to increase a company's visibility on a new platform; be used within a business, such as to manage inventory; or be a source of income (for instance, a personal trainer might develop a $1.99 app offering diet and exercise tips, Brooks says). And the app could be both a source of revenue and a marketing tool.
"Everybody is interested in doing this now," DiLuzio says. "We want to be able to be instantly on and instantly in communication with one another. The apps are really important to our time and our culture and our way of socializing and being modern humans, and every company that can find a way to participate in this will."
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