Mobile MVP in Five Weeks

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Jellyfish.tech
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Creating a cross-platform mobile MVP in 4-5 weeks is possible when using the right technologies. Let me show you how we do it.

According to the Jellyfish.tech CEO survey on top challenges in 2020, the #1 challenge is the fear of launching a new product.

Do customers need my product? Will they pay for it? The questions every founder asks when developing a product vision.

These fears are perfectly normal, as failing to fulfill customer needs will cost a considerable amount of money, time, and resources to a company.

Although the super motivational quote says that “failure is the first step to success”, there are still some ways to reduce the cost of a mistake, cut costs, & maximize the ROI when launching the product.

1. Product Discovery

This is an essential stage of a product design aimed at reaching a deep understanding of end-user needs. The process of product discovery helps make sure your future product is vital to your users. Without thorough customer research, your product is risking bringing little or no value to the users, which will obviously have a great business impact. This stage is crucial for shaping, polishing, or even pivoting the initial idea according to end-users behavior.

2. Minimum Viable Product

MVP is the first version of a product that contains only the basic functions. MVP launch helps ensure the product is a good market fit not only in theory. MVP approves or disapproves the assumptions we make at the product discovery stage and helps us understand whether further product investments are worth it.

3. Cross-platform Mobile App

The number of mobile smartphone users is constantly growing per year and is expected to reach 3.8 billion in 2021 according to Statista. In most cases, both Android and iOS operating systems are of value for businesses who’re about to launch a new mobile product. Here we have two options to go: creating a native app for each platform or choosing a cross-platform solution compatible with different os. The second option allows cutting development costs and hiring only one team for both Android and iOS app creation. This is exactly the reason why the Jellyfish.tech team is mainly working with cross-platform apps creation.

Let me show how we build competitive apps for you using robust technologies & keeping in mind the above-mentioned concepts.

Frontend

React Native

React Native is a great framework that bridges the gap between web and mobile. At Discord, it has brought us incredible efficiency. It allows us to write reusable code, learn from each other, and move fast with a two-person team. — Funghao (Robin) Chen, Mobile Lead at Discord

React Native is customized for creating cross-platform apps with JavaScript, which function exactly like native mobile applications.

Pros:

  • out-of-the-box UI blocks for creating a native UX;
  • possibility to see the changes as soon as they’re saved: hot reloading (unlike the need to recompile the project in native development), which is a great time-saver;
  • reusable code for faster development;
  • excellent maintainability;
  • native-like app performance;
  • no App Store/ Google Play approval is needed when pushing an update (it usually takes up to 2 days to get reviewed).

Cons:

  • Facebook dependency;
  • a limited number of third-party components.

Ionic

The more I look at Ionic, the more I love what they are doing. Truly. I wish I had a mobile app to build right now. — John Papa, Microsoft Dev Rel

Ionic is a tool for building cross-platform apps using Angular, React, Vue.

Pros:

  • good maintainability;
  • reusable code for faster development;
  • built-in debugging & testing tools for better QA;
  • big community;
  • multiple plugins & integrations available.

Cons:

  • a mobile app is wrapped in a “native container” that decreases the usability;
  • lack of performance compared to React Native and native apps;

Comparison

Both frameworks are intended to launch the basic code on different platforms (Web, Android, IOS). But they offer different ways of implementing the code via native devices (check the full React vs Ionic comparison table if you want to get more details).

React Native compiles the code supported by this systems-better performance, more opportunities.

Ionic consists of a mobile browser and a layer to interact with the native functions (touch id, camera)-worse performance but easier to write code.

Although the app logic runs on JS, React Native offers 100% native functionality compared with Ionic.

Generally, should we compare these two technologies? Just like we shouldn’t compare React and Angular, as they are used in different situations for different purposes often based on the dev’s personal preferences, both React Native and Ionic have different use cases.

However, if we need to focus on the native-like functionality, we’ll choose React Native.

Backend

We mainly use stack Python/Django + DRF + PostgreSQL/MySQL for the backend.

Such a combination and unique use of the open-source technologies based on PostgreSQL and a deep understanding of their work principles allowed us to find a customized solution for quick mobile app creation without compromising the quality.

A “secret sauce” discovered by our CTO allows us to speed up the process of backend creation, using the in-built templates for standard functions and APIs.

We still have to verify each unit of functionality manually, but this way has allowed us to build the backend quicker and more efficiently, concentrating on parts of code that need a human touch.

Conclusion

A set of technologies we’ve discovered recently working on the mobile app for our customers enables us to offer MVP solutions, which require less time to implement, staying competitive in the market.

Our cross-platform mobile development expertise is here to support the founders & owners who are about to launch a new product, reducing the number of resources spent.