The Small Business Guide to Apps. David Howell

      The M&S mobile site has reportedly attracted over 1.2 million customers Copyright © Marks & Spencer

      Even though the big brands can give away their apps for free as simply an additional retail channel, this doesn’t mean that paid-for apps can’t be successful. The pricing of a paid-for app is developing into a science in its own right. The $0.99 (£0.69) app has reined supreme on Apple’s App Store for some time, but this doesn’t mean that your business has to make the price point of its app low.

      As with all pricing decisions, your business’s understanding of its market and the consumers that inhabit that space will lead you to the ideal price point for your app. Premium prices can be charged if the market is present and is willing to pay. For instance, the app that allows the control of video surveillance cameras from Lextech (lextech.com) costs an amazing $899.99! (Read more about how to correctly price your business’s app in chapter 8.)

      Web apps making waves

      The newest kid on the app block is the web app. It is important to understand how web apps differ from their smartphone cousins. Instead of being items you download from a central app store, they are accessed from your phone or tablet’s web browser at a url – e.g. the Kindle cloud reader app at read.amazon.com – from where they can be bookmarked, or ‘pinned’ to your device’s home screen like any other app.

      A web app is clearly a popular choice for any business that wants to distribute its software directly to customers. However, it is important to understand that the web app has a very specific environment in which it must operate – namely an internet browser. On the one hand this is a strength: every consumer with a computer will have an internet browser. But not all browsers are compatible, nor will all 3G-equipped consumers be willing or able to use their data packages to access your app on the go. An ability to store information for offline browsing is therefore crucial in the development of any web app.

      Web apps have been recently adopted by, amongst others, the Financial Times. In the first ten days of its release, over 100,000 readers used the FT web app on their iPad or iPhone to access the FT’s publications. Available by typing in apps.ft.com/ftwebapp to the Safari internet browser on iPhone and iPad, it looks and behaves just like the native app once available from Apple’s App Store. The difference is that with their web app, the FT don’t have to pay Apple 30% of any sales they make when someone buys content through it. They also get to access and retain subscriber information, crucial for future marketing efforts.

      The idea is to ‘untether’ the FT from the App Store, and give the company more independence with the sale of its content. And going forward, the FT can ensure that customers can access content on any platform, no matter which devices they may switch to and from. Avoiding Apple’s App Store altogether will obviously dent the FT’s profile and discoverability in that environment, but the company is confident that its web app will prove successful.

      “The FT Web app offers our customers flexibility and freedom of choice with access to our global journalism anytime, anywhere, with a single login or subscription,” explained John Ridding, CEO of the Financial Times. “In a world of increasingly digital complexity we want to keep our service simple, easy to use and efficient to offer our customers the best possible experience of FT journalism.”