Need a customized app for your business? Maybe you can build it yourself! Progress keeps on accelerating, and what was time-consuming and specialized a few years ago can be done quite quickly and easily now – with a few caveats, of course. Just as you can now build a website using no-code or low-code platforms, no-code development and low-code development makes building your own apps possible. It could even become a small business idea of its own. But there are a few things you need to know before you get started.
Just as no-code and low-code website design hasn’t made website designers obsolete, so developers still have a role to play in app development. However, as long as your needs are fairly simple, DIY apps can fit the bill, resulting in a perfectly workable app – even if it isn’t a particularly complex one.
There are tons of things that you can do with the right tools at your disposal. You can build back-office apps that gather data from your software systems, analyze it, and present it in a digestible format. Or you can make a mobile app for your customers – after all, everybody’s doing it! And, as you’d expect, web applications made by and for your company are a distinct possibility too.
No-code app development uses the simplest code possible in order to reach an outcome. That makes it very easy to troubleshoot it and eliminate bugs. You might need help from IT professionals to do this, but they’ll find it easy to do those health checks, figure out what, if anything, is going wrong, and implement fixes. That makes for a very rapid route to implementation – and who likes waiting around for ages when they’ve got a great idea?
On the subject of bright ideas, you might want to test out a simplified version of yours – even when it might need a little further development by an expert. Your proof-of-concept app can be ready to roll before long, and if users like it, it will be quicker and easier for your developers to understand what you’re looking for and come up with the goods. If they don’t, well, that’s the end of the road – but at least you haven’t invested a lot of money into something that nobody really wants.
Just as no-code website builders allow you to choose options and drag-and-drop elements, so no-code app development is a fairly simple drag-and-drop process that’s based on frequently-used templates. There’ll still be something of a learning curve to navigate, but once you’ve mastered it, the whole app development process becomes very simple indeed – which is the aim of the exercise.
Sounds too good to be true? Several no-code and low-code apps are making waves already and they include job boards like Goodgigs, delivery apps, education apps, social media apps and more. If you were to use them, there’s no way you’d guess that they were built using no-code or low-code platforms. You really can achieve professional-looking results without knowing a thing about coding!
That leaves developers more time for the more challenging things they want doing – instead of burgeoning worklists packed with simple, routine work. In fact, there are even developers who are using no-code or low-code platforms to do simple things – simply because it’s a quick and easy way to go. After all, why do things the hard way if there’s an easier one?
If you’d like to try your hand at no-code app building, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go ahead. The results may surprise you.