As technology enthusiasts, have you ever thought about what makes a mobile app engaging, effective, and successful? A unique idea, user-friendliness, technology stack, or great design?
The difference between a good and bad app is often coming down to its user experience quality. A well-designed mobile app with a seamless user experience is what separates successful apps from unsuccessful ones. As there are numerous apps available for particular things, that’s the reason mobile users expect a lot from an app. This includes quicker loading time, ease of use, and delight during the interaction. If you want your app to be successful, consider UX as an essential component of product strategy.
For further app development process, the app design, consisting of user experience and user interface, lays a good foundation. We believe you are interested in knowing the cost of app design and what methods and services brood the pricing framework.
Here we’ll cut to the chase and tell you how much it cost you to design a mobile app in 2020. In this article, we will figure out and look at all mobile app design stages to estimate the cost of creating an appealing design for your mobile application.
Deciding Between Native or Custom Design
When you want to estimate the mobile app design cost, you need to decide if you want to go with native design or custom design. Let’s see what custom and native UI design means.
What is a Native Design?
As we all know, every platform has its guidelines that illustrate how elements in an app should look, how they interact with and relate to other elements, and where the element should be located.
A native UI follows a strict set of guidelines. The guidelines of the platform allow designers to build interfaces that look like part of the operating system. Let’s look at the pros of this design approach.
Pros of Native Design
- Familiarity- Utilizing elements familiar to users can make you assure that there will be practically no learning curve.
- Faster development- Instead of designing everything from scratch, designers can use ready-made templates.
- Reduced design cost- Compared to custom, a native design takes less time. Therefore, it costs you less.
What is a Custom Design?
A custom User Interface is designed from scratch. Designers can build great interfaces by using unique styles and illustrations to attract attention.
Pros of Custom Design
- Improved (UX)user experience- With modern design approaches, designers can build unique experiences that only your app provides.
- Differentiation- With custom design, designers can create a unique and innovative interface for your brand, which makes your stand from the crowd.
Exploring the 5 Crucial Stages of Design Development
The “software development life cycle” is the same for every mobile application, regardless of the type of the model chosen for any application or target user: planning, designing, development, testing, and deployment.
1. Planning
Planning is the first and critical step to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the project. Without proper and adequate planning, the development of software is useless and meaningless. With the proper planning, you can start the project flawlessly and smoothly.
2. Design
Design: After the planning, the next step which takes over is designing. These steps include building the architecture of the project. Designing the mobile app UI/UX helps eliminate possible flaws by establishing a standard and endeavoring to stick to it.
3. Development
Once the planning and designing get completed, the development of the software starts, which is the actual task.
4. Implementation
The stage of implementation comes after developing the software. In this stage, the product goes through a pilot experiment to evaluate its feasibility and function properly.
5. Testing
The testing stage assesses the software to fix the errors and bugs.
The Importance of App Design
App Design is the first thing that attracts the eye of any audience. Every design element is devised to solve the issues of potential users. Most developers create a high-performance app but fail to focus on designing, leading to the app failure. The great mobile app design has countless benefits. Look at the pointers below.
- Attract users and ensure they spend as much time on the app as possible.
- Creates a good impression.
- Get featured in app stores.
- Saves cost and time in the long run.
- Get loyal customers.
Mobile App Best UI/UX Practices to consider
- Maintain Uniformity
- Employ the Best UI Design company
- Use conventional elements
- Make it as interactive as possible
- Don’t hamper the speed of the app
- Consider platform-specific designs
- Keep it simple and avoid complicating the things
Cost of Design Services
To calculate your app design’s final cost, you need to look at the vendor’s hourly rate. The app design rate depends on various factors- the region where the vendor is located, the level of experience of the app designer, and whether you’re working with a company or a freelancer.
To give you a clear view, we’ve compared the average hourly rates for mobile UI design services in the US, Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, and Canada. This data will help help you to find the best option according to the budget and convenience time.
The Hourly Rate of Mobile App Design based on Region
Asia – The average rate of a user interface designer in Asia varies between $6 to $25 per hour.
Canada– The average hourly rate for UI design services in the Canada region varies from $15 to $75.
Western Europe – The average rate for user interface design services in Western Europe ranges from $20 to $73 an hour.
Eastern Europe– The average hourly rate of user interface designers in Eastern Europe from $10 to $59 – as per Payscale.
US– Average UI designer rate in the US is $41.63 per hour.
App Design Cost by Project Complexity
To provide you a better understanding of app design costs, we divided the application into three categories:
- Basic app
- Standard app complexity
- Complex.
The complexity of the app includes – no. of features, level of design customization, the platform you choose, and scalability of the app.
- Basic Apps – It will take about 100 to 160 hours to design and will cost you $5,000 and up.
- Standard Apps – Take between 320 to 640 hours and will start at $16,000
- Complex Apps – It takes about 1000 hours, which means it will cost you around $50,000.
The Bottom Line
App design services with low cost can be appealing and attractive. But, we recommend you to not choose based on the price. We suggest you take into account a vendor’s experience, check their portfolio and user case, how reliable the company is, and don’t forget to read the company’s feedback and reviews from clients.
If you would like more information about app design or development, contact us or leave a message.
Sahil Gupta
With roll up the sleeves, dive in and get the job done approach, it was year in the year 2010 when Sahil started Parangat Technologies. Emphasizing on a healthy work culture and technology driven company, he has successfully created a workplace where people love to work and live. He is a software engineer and a passionate blockchain enthusiast.