As a marketing tool, custom app development is available to any business owner who is capable of identifying and hiring a competent developer. This is evident from the fact that company-specific apps are increasingly prevalent among businesses both large and small. They may be used directly for purchasing, as a means of communicating promotions and other information to consumers, or as an invitation for two-way interactions between the customer and business, including reviews, recommendations, and service requests.

On one hand, app development might represent a convenient way of maintaining engagement by allowing customers to reach your company with one tap on their mobile device, instead of opening a web browser and navigating to your site. But on the other hand, it might represent an unnecessary burden to some of your customers, if it requires them to download a dedicated app for the performance of occasional or incidental tasks.

Before embarking upon an app development project, it’s important to examine how the ultimate rollout is most likely to be perceived. This is especially true when you consider the investment of both money and time that is involved in that development. Although it is certainly possible to find affordable app development in this day and age, any upfront cost still needs to be justified by the promise of long-term dividends. And if your new app turns out to be redundant with your existing website, then anything you invested in the former will be lost to marketing projects that might have been more effective.

There are countless examples of companies making good use of app development for the aforementioned purposes. But there are surely just as many examples of companies either spoiling consumer good with an app that harms user experience, or simply wasting money by rolling out an app that most customers see no need to download in the first place.

If you’re wondering which category you might fall into, it’s worth keeping in mind that consumer resistance to new single-use apps has increased and will inevitably continue to increase as their home screens become more and more cluttered. Under those circumstances, it is worth thinking long and hard about whether your interest in app development could be redirected toward simply improving your website or even researching whether there are existing apps that your business could take advantage of.

Recently, a popular YouTube channel called Watcher provided a cautionary tale by announcing its own streaming app, Watcher Plus. The move was widely criticized by their fanbase and by other content creators. And while the main source of that backlash was the attempt to solicit paid subscriptions in lieu of continuing to rely on ad revenue, their situation was not helped by the fact that they had invested in custom app development just so their fans would be forced to use a separate platform for a very small portion of what they used to watch on the YouTube app.

Meanwhile, other YouTube channels had made a similar shift away from ad support, but instead of becoming completely atomized, they banded together to collectively finance the app development and ongoing maintenance of a subscription based streaming service that includes content from all of them.

These dueling models may or may not have parallels in your industry, but the underlying point is relevant to virtually everyone. Consumers will usually prefer to do many things on one platform, instead of one thing each on many platforms. Still, there are situations in which custom app development is well justified, and if you find yourself in such a situation, there are sure to be competent developers just around the corner, ready to work with you.