15 Apr
08 Dec
Apps for phones are growing exponentially in number and quality. They can be very handy and save time as well as money. Essentially, they provide the right information when you need it, where you need it.
At CIS we’re supporting clients in building apps, however, it can be a time consuming and costly process.
To build apps for smaller select groups of people does not seem, at first blush, feasible until I came across the company called APPMachine.
This company has built a toolset that allows you to build a complete app in only a few hours.
By using their out of the box toolset you can bring complete smart phone functionality that exists in most apps. In addition, it has tools to write your own specific building blocks.
I was intrigued so decided to test it.
As a director of a local Golf Club I decided to test this by building an app to improve my interaction with the club and social media. I find the web interface slow and cumbersome. It is a mobile friendly website but it is a website which, as most of us know, is not really mobile specific. Finding things requires many key strokes and a lot of adjusting on the screen to read what is written.
My criterion was to use just one click for all the specific access points. If I want to see all up and coming events at the club, then one click was all I want to have to press to see the information. The present method requires as many as 8 clicks to get to where I want to go to on the website.
If I want to contact someone – just a click to see the list, one click to ring. If I want to see the Facebook and Twitter feeds – one click, news feed - one click. I even want an easier way to book a round of golf - this turned out to require the same number of clicks but it resides in the same app as everything else so it’s still convenient. As the owner of the app I can send push notifications and even specific info if this app was used by the rest of the membership. All the normal tools and more you would expect in an app.
Now if I wanted to publish this app and make it available to the Golf Club members it would cost me a small monthly fee. It would also cost a one off fee to register this with Apple, Google or Microsoft and would take about a month.
The up side is that you have a low cost method of developing apps suitable for small groups, teams, social groups, small companies even departments within companies. I suggest you check it out at www.AppMachine.com It could be a convenient way to develop your next app idea.