Scrums.com is revolutionizing the way growth companies scale their engineering teams. Our platform offers access to top-notch remote software engineering teams at an affordable subscription price.
Get startedWorld-class app development that allows you to start, run and grow your business.
Building a custom app can boost your brand's trust and credibility, ultimately benefiting your business in the long run. We will discuss the following topics:
1. Reputation Management
2. Customer Support and Engagement
3. Data-Driven Decision Making
4. Demonstrating Social Responsibility
A well-made custom app can dramatically improve your brand's marketability and reputation. A trustworthy app will show that you are dedicated to providing top-notch goods and services. As a result of knowing they can rely on you, your clients and business partners will have more faith in you.
A custom app also strengthens your brand identification by demonstrating your professionalism and attention to detail.
A custom app enables you to offer personalized customer support and engagement, helping you address the unique needs and pain points of your African target market.
By incorporating in-app support features, such as chatbots, help centres, or direct communication channels, you can provide timely assistance to your users, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
This level of support also encourages users to share their positive experiences with others, further boosting your brand's credibility.
You may get useful user data through custom app creation, giving you insights into user behavior and preferences. You may improve your app and broader business strategy by studying this data and making wise decisions.
Delivering a more individualized experience for your users is made possible by a data-driven strategy. This helps to increase their faith in your brand and ultimately ensures that they will stay visiting.
Putting money into a customized app that caters to your target market's needs demonstrates your commitment to social responsibility.
You can showcase your brand's dedication to having a beneficial influence by developing an app that takes into account regional difficulties, environmental issues, or social issues that are pertinent to your audience.
This thoughtful approach to app creation not only strengthens the integrity of your brand, but it also appeals to customers who value companies with a clear sense of mission.
World-class app development that allows you to start, run and grow your business.
Imagine custom app development as an expert chef crafting a personalised menu for their restaurant. Just as a meticulously planned and executed meal can leave diners with a memorable culinary experience, a custom app is specifically designed to cater to your business's distinct needs and objectives, leaving a lasting impression on your users.
Investing in custom app development offers several advantages, including:
A custom app allows you to create an interface that is tailored to your target audience, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable experience. By focusing on the preferences and expectations of your users, you can craft an app that not only meets their needs but also delights them with personalized features and intuitive navigation.The best part? If you develop an app that your users love, you ensure that they keep coming back for more and turn them into lifelong customers.
Custom apps can be designed to streamline business processes and boost productivity. By automating repetitive tasks, integrating with existing systems, and providing real-time data access, custom apps empower your team to work more efficiently and make informed decisions quickly, just like a well-tailored suit that enables effortless movement and comfort.
A unique app helps you stand out from the competition and attract more customers. In a world where off-the-shelf solutions are abundant, a custom mobile app acts as a distinctive and exclusive suit that sets you apart in the crowd, showcasing your brand's personality and commitment to providing a superior experience.
A well-designed app can generate increased revenue and improve customer retention. By offering a memorable and engaging user experience, your custom app encourages users to continue using your services and make purchases. It's akin to wearing a sharp, tailored suit that not only grabs attention but also instils trust and confidence in your brand, ultimately resulting in increased profitability.
Custom app development enables seamless integration with your existing systems and third-party applications. This ensures a smooth flow of data between various platforms, enhancing communication and collaboration within your organization. The ability to integrate effortlessly is like having a versatile tool that easily connects and works in harmony with other components in your business ecosystem.
As your business evolves, a custom app can be easily modified or expanded to accommodate changing requirements and market trends. This adaptability is like having a dynamic strategy that can be adjusted and fine-tuned to suit your business's changing needs, ensuring continued relevance and success in an ever-changing environment.The benefits don’t just stop there though. If you want to build trust and credibility with your customers, a custom app is a great way to do so.
Investing in custom app development can be expensive, but being open to pivoting and iterating based on market feedback is crucial to ensure long-term success. By adapting your app to the ever-changing needs and preferences of your target market, you can stay ahead of the competition, increase user satisfaction, and maximize your return on investment.
Encourage users to provide feedback and reviews, which will help you identify pain points and areas for improvement. By addressing these concerns, you demonstrate your commitment to serving the unique needs of your users, enhancing your app's credibility and increasing user satisfaction. Tools like in-app surveys, app store reviews, or social media can be used to gather feedback and gauge user sentiment.
Analyze user behaviour and engagement data to understand how your app is being used and identify potential bottlenecks or areas of friction. By making data-driven decisions, you can prioritize improvements and new features that will resonate with your audience, maximizing the impact of your development budget and efforts.
As you adapt your app based on market feedback, be prepared to allocate resources for ongoing updates and improvements. While this may increase your app's overall cost, the benefits include increased user satisfaction, reduced churn, and ultimately, higher long-term profitability. Regular updates also demonstrate your commitment to delivering a high-quality app experience tailored to your users' needs.
Adopt a flexible, agile development methodology that enables prompt iteration and change in response to market feedback.
Your app will stay relevant and helpful to your target market if you are receptive to user needs and can swiftly pivot and make adjustments.
By prioritizing products and enhancements that have the greatest impact, an agile methodology can also assist you in managing development expenses more successfully.
While it's essential to iterate and adapt your app based on user feedback, it's also crucial to balance this with innovation and forward-thinking. Continuously explore new technologies, trends, and market opportunities to ensure your app stays ahead of the curve and caters to the evolving needs of your user base. By striking the right balance between adaptation and innovation, you can maintain a competitive edge and secure long-term success for your app.
Creating an outstanding user experience and design is crucial for a successful app. A well-designed app should be visually appealing, intuitive, and user-friendly.
Higher app adoption rates and greater client retention result from spending money on excellent design and user experience. A well-designed app has a higher likelihood of being passed along by users and being used again, which leads to better ratings, word-of-mouth advertising, and long-term success.
In today's interconnected digital world, app security is paramount. We take a look at some vital security considerations.
The Privacy Act of 1974 is the primary privacy regulation in America that regulates the sharing of data. The Privacy Act governs how federal agencies may gather, utilize, and disclose personal information. Individuals are given specific rights under it, including the ability to access and update their personal information, and federal agencies are required to protect such data from illegal disclosure.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for health information, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) for financial information, and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for children's online data are just a few federal laws that deal with privacy and data sharing in addition to the Privacy Act. Additionally, each state has its own privacy laws that could offer additional protections.
Keep up with the latest security threats and best practices, such as incorporating multi-factor authentication, securing APIs, and using secure coding practices. Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments can help identify potential weaknesses and protect your app from emerging threats.
Select a reputable development partner with a proven track record in security best practices, like Scrums. A reliable vendor will prioritize security throughout the development process and help you build a secure app that meets industry standards and best practices.
Scrums.com provides high quality engineering teams to scaling enterprises at lower costs. Scrums.com designs, builds, deploys and maintains custom software that gives scale-ups the opportunity to grow world-class businesses.
Scrums.com provides high quality engineering teams to scaling enterprises at lower costs. Scrums.com designs, builds, deploys and maintains custom software that gives scale-ups the opportunity to grow world-class businesses.
Quality user stories into production rate
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Successful projects delivered
Years of software specialisation
With Africa rapidly embracing the digital revolution, creating custom apps like EasyEquities offers a massive opportunity for businesses looking to tap into the continent's growing mobile-first economy. However, the question of “how much does it cost to build an app,” especially for African markets, is not straightforward. Costs are highly influenced by technological limitations, infrastructure challenges, and uniquely African market demands.
One of the most striking aspects of the African digital landscape is that mobile phones are the primary gateway to the internet for the majority of users. According to GSMA, over 495 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa subscribed to mobile services by the end of 2020, with the majority accessing the internet via smartphones. However, mobile data is still expensive, and access to high-speed internet is sparse in both rural and urban areas across many African countries. Therefore, app developers looking to build apps like EasyEquities need to focus on mobile-first, data-light designs that cater to both urban and rural users.
Major African markets like Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa are quickly emerging as tech hubs, with their digital ecosystems producing a growing number of startups and app services aimed at solving local problems. These countries offer fertile ground for digital finance platforms like EasyEquities, but the complexity of developing these regions cannot be understated. Development costs are increased by the need to optimize for mobile-driven environments, integrate local payment systems, and create apps that function smoothly in areas with limited bandwidth or connectivity. Additionally, since many African nations still face challenges related to infrastructure, including frequent power outages and unreliable network services, creating robust and adaptable systems, including offline functionality, adds another layer of technical complexity—and consequently, increases development costs.
Africa’s smartphone landscape is driven predominantly by Android, thanks to the affordability of low-cost devices. Platforms like EasyEquities, which allow users to invest in stocks, must perform well across these low-cost smartphones.
Building a device-agnostic app is crucial when considering custom app development to ensure it reaches the broadest possible user base. Here’s why:
Target Optimization
Mobile-first, low memory consumption, and offline functionality in custom app development for Africa are non-negotiable considerations, especially in data-limited environments. Given the popularity of cheaper Android devices in regions like Nigeria or Ghana, optimizing infrastructure to meet these constraints is crucial in providing smoother user experiences. This consideration directly influences how much it costs to build an app for Africa compared to regions with more robust network infrastructure and high-end device saturation.
In Africa, basic app features need to prioritize offline capability and efficient data usage:
For middle-tier functionality, developers should incorporate:
Advanced features in an African context expand into the integration of local infrastructure:
The app must also strike a careful balance between offering the feature richness expected by advanced users and catering to the region’s device and data constraints, representing a unique challenge in app development.
Simplicity and Function-Driven Design
The design of mobile apps in Africa can make or break user adoption. African app users appreciate simple, uncluttered interfaces and highly functional experiences. Considering the low literacy rates in some rural areas, financial platforms like EasyEquities must design their UI to be accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
Critical elements of UX/UI for the African market include:
Localization Beyond Language
Localization doesn’t stop at language translation—it involves creating a cultural fit for the app’s interface, workflows, and overall user experience. For instance, stock investing culture may not be as ubiquitous in some African nations, and so the app must feature content that focuses on investment education and explainers to gradually onboard new users.
UX testing with real African users will introduce another layer of cost, but it ensures the app has a greater chance of success across diverse regions and user profiles. Localized UX testing is another crucial investment to ensure the long-term adoption of an app like EasyEquities.
Local payment integrations are a vital consideration when calculating how much it costs to build an app. Africa has revolutionized mobile payments, with solutions like M-Pesa having become synonymous with everyday transactions. Other platforms like Airtel Money and Opay are also widespread across different parts of the continent.
Most African users favor mobile wallets, which require entirely different payment integration than traditional Western solutions like PayPal or credit cards. Catering to a wide range of mobile-only banking systems will add to custom app development costs because each payment system requires the following:
The success of an app like EasyEquities hinges on the strategic selection of infrastructure models for backend operations. In developing an app for the African market, the backend system must be cost-effective and built for intermittent connectivity, unstable power grids, and regional differences.
To mitigate these challenges, companies must:
The cost of these backend solutions varies widely, depending on how complex and geographically broad your app’s infrastructure needs to be. African conditions necessitate reliable cloud infrastructure, but establishing and maintaining this infrastructure in areas with fluctuating electricity adds costs.
Creating and launching an app is only part of the journey—long-term maintenance and updates are inevitable. Maintenance considerations are particularly unique when building for the African market due to regional challenges such as varied device usage, connectivity, power outages, and security concerns.
Urban-Rural Discrepancies
With significant shifts in technology usage between urban and rural zones in Africa, updating apps that work equally well across different regions presents a challenge. Developers must focus on tracking updates for devices and areas with differing levels of mobile network expansion or contractions.
Continuous Development for Evolving Connectivity
Developers must keep track of emerging 4G and even 5G developments in urban areas while not alienating rural users who are still on 3G or EDGE networks. This fragmented connectivity creates multiple demands for app maintenance—urban users will expect real-time updates and better functionalities as infrastructure improves. In contrast, rural users expect steady and reliable minimal functionalities that can work at a lower bandwidth.
The costs involved in maintaining an app reflect the complexity of infrastructure and the need to update based on evolving connectivity landscapes.
When breaking down how much it costs to build an app, the expertise and location of your development team matter. Africa is home to a burgeoning tech industry, specifically in countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, where young developers are crafting low-cost, mobile-first applications that suit African infrastructure.
Local Expertise, Global Execution
For a financial app like EasyEquities, choosing a development team trained in developing local networks, mobile payment systems, and the nuances of rural connectivity can save time and money. Local development teams better understand the market's needs and constraints, from low-bandwidth environments to culturally relevant UX choices, leading to more cost-effective custom app development.
For instance:
However, outsourcing to international developers with no local insight can lead to delays and extra costs accrued from not fully addressing the needs of African users early on.
Data and Connectivity Limitations: As addressed above, factoring in data costs and connectivity limitations can be one of the more significant hidden costs in African app development. For example, ensuring consistent app performance in rural areas with low network speeds will require extra investment in backend systems and design optimization. Additionally, app performance must be customized for users who only connect intermittently or have limited access to constant power sources.
Mobile Payment Integration Costs: Another hidden cost involves the time and resources needed to test and work through local payment gateways. Each M-Pesa, Airtel Money, or Opay payment system requires custom development integrations. Each also operates under different regulatory rules specific to individual nations, raising administrative costs.
Legal and Compliance Costs: Laws like South Africa's POPIA (Protection of Personal Information Act) govern how businesses handle personal data, while a patchwork of different regulations exists across the continent. Staying in compliance with these regulations to protect user data demands that developers spend time and resources ensuring their app adheres to local legal environments.
These hidden compliance costs compound the need for real-time user privacy protection, especially when dealing with a financial app like EasyEquities.
Building an app category like FinTech or stock trading platforms like EasyEquities in Africa presents a unique set of challenges expected in Western markets.
Local Adaptations for Stock Market Investing
Africa’s level of stock market penetration is relatively low compared to Western markets, but that is changing. For example, Nigeria's capital market has begun to flourish, and platforms like EasyEquities can provide users with easier access to local and international stocks. However, African stock market education is still developing, and an app like EasyEquities must not assume users are fully versed in stock trading. Instead, the platform must incorporate educational materials, explainer videos, and interactive guides. Providing this type of financial literacy requires significant content and UX investment since the content may vary from country to country. This may increase associated app development costs as educational content expands and local stock offerings diversify.
Low-Bandwidth Operation Models
Most investment or stock trading apps rely heavily on real-time data and push notifications, which require substantial bandwidth. In Africa’s lower-bandwidth environments, it’s essential to have low-data modes that allow users to function with reduced internet connectivity without losing access to critical financial data streams. This typically adds additional development costs, as the design must cater to a broad audience with varying degrees of high-speed connectivity.
Trusted Local Payment Gateways
Trust is a significant hurdle in building a FinTech app for previously underbanked populations like those in sub-Saharan Africa. Users may feel hesitant about sharing financial information online. Secure and well-integrated mobile wallets like M-Pesa can help bridge the gap in trust. Still, these integrations need to be localized for each market and undergo multiple rounds of testing to ensure smooth operation.
Scalability
While many African apps begin targeting urban, middle-income users in capital cities like Lagos, Accra, or Nairobi, an enormous growth opportunity lies in expanding into rural communities. An app like EasyEquities, while starting with middle-income urban investors, must later be scalable to rural users. This scalability from cities to rural areas demands an entirely different pricing strategy, where features may initially be kept basic but later scaled up, bridging the urban-rural divide.
Ensuring that an app is scalable across multiple African geographies—each with its own regulatory environment, network coverage, and cultural preferences—adds considerably to development complexity and costs.
At Scrums.com, we specialize in custom app development for Africa, accounting for payment integrations, low-bandwidth configurations, and tailored user experiences. Whether you’re looking to build a financial app like EasyEquities or any other app designed with African infrastructure in mind, we can help you develop a solution that fits local contexts. Let's discuss a custom estimate for your app optimized for the growing, dynamic African market.