Community App Development, Guide.

Are you considering community app development?

Truth be told, community app development is not the most popular business venture in the tech industry today, but it does have its own charm.

In fact, if you look at some of the largest organizations and companies, they have their own community app. And same goes for societies and large group of people (religious or otherwise).

Does this spark a curiosity in you?

Well, we will discuss all about that and everything related in this blog. By the end, you will know whether or not to develop a community app, its cost, and process to do so.

So, with this said, let’s get right into it, starting with basic question…

What Is A Community App?

What Is A Community App

Wrapping your head around idea of community app can be a bit confusing. Since it’s such a lose term. But you don’t need to worry about that, we got you covered.

A “Community App” refers to a mobile application that is built to host an interactive virtual community.

Now, the term “community” here may refer to any group of people, ranging from employee of an organization, developers who work on the same language, people who go to the same church or follow same sect, and so on.

Coming back to the app itself, it allows the users to engage in discussion with other members in a range of ways. This includes

• sharing media
• commenting on posts
• like
• sharing

and so on.

In many ways, it is quite similar to social media app development that we are all so familiar with.

The main goal of this app is to create a strong community by allowing a large group of people to interact, share stuff, and socialize.

Now, there are various reasons why an institute or organization will develop community app. This will make itself clear by end of this blog.

Moving on, let’s see how community app works in the section below.

How Does Community App Work?

How Does Community App Work

So, how does community app work? This is one of the most common queries in topic of “community app development”. And in this section of the blog, we shall be answering it.

So, getting right into it:

Using a community app is much like using a social media.

Rather, we will go as far as to say that, a community app in this regard is a form of social media app, which is limited to certain group of people.

Making it a “restricted social media app”.

Exact working of each platform highly depends on its nature and the target audience. Regardless, there are some features and functionalities that every community app shares.

Let’s have a look at these features in a bid to better understand working of this solution. These are:

• Discussion forums
• Profile creation
• Chat & messaging
• Livestreaming
• Live & pre-recorded courses (LMS)
• Event hosting
• Event scheduling
• Content sharing options
• Custom groups and Spaces

If you want to develop a community app, there are other custom functionalities that you can add to it.

Speaking of community app development, let’s go through some of the best community apps in market and get inspired.

Best Community Apps To Get Inspired

Let’s look at some of the best app for community groups. These are, as mentioned below:

1. Mighty Networks
2. Discord
3. Wild Apricot for Members
4. Slow AF Run Club
5. Slack
6. Telegram
7. Facebook
8. Quora
9. Kajabi

Looking at the list, you can recognize some of them as popular social media applications. While others unrecognizable.

This is the perfect example of open-community apps like social media (Facebook, Telegram, etc) and closed-community apps like wild apricot for members.

Difference between types of community app is important to understand, before you get into community app development. With this cleared, it’s time to look at the reason to build a community app.

Why Build A Community App?

Why Build A Community App?

Truth be Told: Mobile App Development can be EXPENSIVE! But that’s a small price to pay if you get results.

So, do you get results with community apps?

Well, you do – in fact – you get more than you bargained for. Confused, right? It will be quite clear by the end of this section.

Let’s get right into it, starting with:

·  Higher Engagement

Whatever nature of your business maybe, you can always use higher engagement. And this is especially beneficial if you are selling a product or services.

Even if you are running a corporate business and want to create a community app for employees, higher engagement would keep your employees happier and more involved with the company.

How amazing is that?

If that’s not the reason enough to hire an app developer and go for community app development, next one will seal the deal.

·  Catalyst To Funnel

A sales funnel is difficult to create and even more difficult to maintain and optimize.

Confused in all the ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu? you should develop a community app. It’s a proven method that acts as a catalyst to funnel, helping businesses get more leads.

And this brings us to our next point.

·  Better Sells

Are you running a product based or service based company?

Well, if you want to increase sells, community app development is just the thing you need.

Let us explain, with a community for your platform, you get a more accurate user base. And more importantly a loyal one.

So, if you want to sell:

• memberships
• courses
• new products and services

OR

Offer a:

• premium experience
• value a website can’t
• group coaching or a mastermind
• live events

Community app allows you to do all of this. And when the sales go up, you have chances for…

·  Higher Revenue Generation

There is not a single business in existence that doesn’t love money, which is the reason why, improving sales via community app is such a lucrative idea.

Think about it this way – better sales, higher engagement, & improved funnel gives you higher revenue generation.

And who doesn’t love that?

So, these are some of the top reasons to go for community app development.

At this point, you are either convinced to develop a community app or not, but still want to read the blog.

Regardless, we shall guide you through community app development process in the section below.

Community App Development Process

Community App Development Process

Gear up; it’s time to create a community app.

Community app development follows a path similar to mobile app development. Still, we shall be taking you through each step, discussing them in detail.

Therefore, with this being said, let’s get started:

1. Market Research

It all starts with mobile app market research.

Before you go on to make a community app, you must first understand. Now, this can be a short process if you are making a closed-community app or a longer one if you are going to make an app like Quora or Facebook.

Main goal of this step is to understand target audience (and competitors). And information gathered here acts as fuel for entire development process.

So, once you are done with this, we will deal with…

2. Idea For Community App

With all the information at your hand, it’s time to come up with an idea for your community app. This is the spear head to direct community app development process.

Whether you want to develop a community app for your company staff, for church goers, i.e. “church app development” or you want to create a social media like platform for specific audience.

All in all, you need to draw a clear concept for the platform.

3. Planning (Platform, Tech Stack, Features, & More)

It’s time to draw a roadmap for the community app development process.

There are few things you need to choose, with the first one being platform. Do you want to develop an iOS application or android app?

Or do you want to go with hybrid app development?

After you have selected the platform, the next thing you need to do is choose mobile app development tech stack. You can go with the pre-set ones or you can come up with custom ones.

In any case, it’s also time to explore the feature set. This is something that will be highly affected by the platform and tech stack.

We already discussed a few example of community app feature in starting of the blog.

4. Community App Designing

With all said and done, we will start the process of “community app design and development”, first dealing with UI/UX Designing part.

Now, this is no rocket science, rather, it’s closer to music theory (which is actually more difficult), since it has to do with creativity.

Take your time; create design based on user base, their persona, and requirements. Make sure to keep it simple and direct, but don’t be afraid to woo your users.

Once you have a user-friendly interface, it’s time to go for back-end development.

5. Community App Development

Time to create a community app.

For this, mobile app developers will start writing the source. And you should expect this to take a lot of time.

Rather, this is the most time and resource confusing process of community app development. For that reason we highly recommend you keep a good community channel with the development team.

6.Testing

With development done, we go into testing!

Testing is the norm before deploying the app. Something that we absolutely have to do.

For layman’s out there, it is the process of finding out issues, fixing them, and improving the solution. Once this is done, it’s time to deploy the app in market.

7. Deployment

Finally, we have a community app ready to publish.

Depending on the platform, you will publish it on App Store or publish it on Google Play Store. Even both if you opted for hybrid app development.

Beware, apple is a lot strict with their publication guidelines so they might reject your app on slightest of the mistakes.

If everything goes as planned, it will take upwards of two weeks at most. But the work doesn’t end here.

Though we haven’t mentioned it in this blog, there are a lot of things to do after community app development. This includes ASO – App Store Optimization, post deployment app maintenance, and so on.

Speaking of which, going through the community app development process, you might be wondering, how much will all of this cost? Well, you aren’t the only one. In fact, it is quite a common question, in case of app development.

So, let’s answer it in the section below:

How Much Does Community App Cost To Develop?

How much does it cost to develop a community app?

Well, this is sure a hard question to answer. Reason being that, there are a range of factors involved in community app development.

For instance,

• Type of app
• Platform
• Tech stack
• Feature complexity
• Size of app
• Development approach
• Location of development team

And so on.

Due to this, app development cost estimation is next to impossible without learning about project specifications.

It’s advised to consult an app development company, who will help you with the same.

How Can You Make Money With Community App?

Last but not the least, how can you make money from community app development?

And yes you can! It’s not just a one-way investment. Rather, you get amazing ROI (return on investment) with community app.

Let’s look what these are below:

• Profit from increased sales
• Higher productivity in workspace
• Better collaboration, more streamlined working
• Big data monetization
• Better insight into workplace, market, and user base micro-trends, for optimization.

And many more.

These are some of the direct and in-direct ways how you benefit from community app development. And with this being said, we have come to the end of our blog.

Conclusion

Community app development is a underdog that seems like a worthless investment in age of modern technology. But reality is quite the opposite. As we discussed in the blog, done right, community application be the gateway to greater success for an array of businesses while also beneficial for their audience. Now, it’s time for you to develop a community app.

FAQ

Niketan Sharma

Niketan Sharma is the CTO of Nimble AppGenie, a prominent website and mobile app development company in the USA that is delivering excellence with a commitment to boosting business growth & maximizing customer satisfaction. He is a highly motivated individual who helps SMEs and startups grow in this dynamic market with the latest technology and innovation.