“Innovation and creativity should be at the core of app development”
From being expenditure for a company to now being the most efficient and innovative way to communicate with the target audience and sustain the business growth, digital transformation has grown exponentially during the coronavirus pandemic. Mobile apps, being a part of this sea change, have brought about entirely new audiences, services, products and industries. Amol Roy, Founder, The Shutter Cast, speaks more about the evolving trend of digital transformation, in a conversation with Ramesh Kumar Raja. Roy also talked about what one should keep in mind while getting an app or website developed to bring together every element of a business on a single platform. Excerpts:
What’s so unique about The Shutter Cast at a time when there are a number of companies/platforms offering services for app/website development? The Shutter Cast’s unique client centric and transparent approach to website development is what makes it stand out from the crowd. We recommend our clients to adapt newer technological innovation while developing their own websites and applications. We suggest them to do a thorough research and select sample work that they liked and then create an interesting concoction of their selection,
need and ideas.
Since most of the businesses are adopting quick solutions such as Wordpress and Joomla, how The Shutter Cast can help them? Talking about Joomla and Wordpress, we found them to be not only efficient and satisfactory but also cost effective in many ways. New technologies do not require extensive customization for multiple reasons – design and segment or offering wise – they are user friendly, easier and can be managed by the customers themselves.
Can you please tell us about the technicalities involved in building enterprise-grade apps for IOS, Android and Web? Technologies come with a lot of options and choice like Native, Flutter etc and it always depends on the requirement of the client, functionality, designing, cost and time.
How has been the response of your services so far? The response has been phenomenal for our services so far. We have some big influencers as our retainer clients and most of our clients have appreciated our working methodology, service and such clients bring us more and more business via mutual connection and positive word of mouth.
What a business should keep in mind before approaching any app developing entity? Many businesses and startups are not yet evolved enough but need applications and website in order to create credibility and add reach for their business to grow. The thing that they need foremost is to have a good market research and analysis to showcase on their website. Many brands tend to sign up with the first developers that they come across, and are more than often unsatisfied with the end result or at times they tend to hire the cheapest one
and results aren’t different. Remember to check and do a little market research before selecting a developer. Mobile app or web developer is as personal as your business id for you, so saving cost should not be the prime motive but a company should be careful on how they will be represented. App and Website development requires a lot of details to be provided by the respected clients, each piece of UI / UX, designs, strategy, utilization is critical because of scarcity of screen space factor and to make it intuitive and not overcrowded. If an app developer asks you a lot of questions about how you want your app to work, it’s a sign that they want to do the best for you.
Having clarity on your needs helps the creator understand the requirement better. For example, I was working with a client who was charged 80K by their agency to make an account on Amazon AWS, which is free. So, lots and lots of people are duped everyday because of lack of knowledge.
What are your pain points in dealing with the people/clients to make them understand the whole concept of app building, as many of the old-fashioned businessmen still hesitate in giving a digital makeover to their businesses? There are a few challenges that we face every day. People at times do not understand technology but we are fine with it. However, smaller things like server upgrades because the business has grown to bigger things like we want an app like “X company which is literally $100bn in market cap” there is still lots of learning required by the clients. Again by learning, I don’t mean the technology, I mean the working. I don’t know much about legal things yet I sit with CA to discuss about it and listen to him.
How the innovative website/app design and development has helped SMES grow? I believe that innovation and creativity should be at the core of anything. Along with that, usability, security and performance are other factors that should be considered important. We as a company have to understand that website and app is just a medium through which we can connect the product to the consumer. So, we curate and customize our services the way where customer’s product/service stay in the focus and the technology is just a tool which it was meant to be.
What are the changes and trends that you are seeing in the digital marketing amid
Covid-19 pandemic? During the pandemic, marketing has witnessed changes and evolved leaps and bounds. From being a huge expenditure for a company, to now being the most efficient and innovative way to communicate with the target audience and sustain the growth of their business, marketing and digital transformation is necessary. The whole market scenario is heavily relying on micro influencers as a way to connect to their customers. Also, while we talk about digital transformation, the positive side about this epidemic was that it really impactedthebehaviorchange. Mid to the senior leadership of most organisations, and consumers from 35 to 44 age bracket, increased their internet consumption by 11%, while millennials observed an average increase of 5-7%.
Where do you see the company in next five years? We are expanding our business, as we are hiring more people and trying to resolve smaller and big tech problems faced by startups and SMES. Along with that, we have started exploring some other domains as well; for instance, we have a blog and a Youtube channel by the name of ‘shutterandvoyages’ both are doing fairly well.
Business growth is the prime focus for me and we are soon venturing into the custom PC business. Five years down the line, I believe, we would expand the business by manifold. Technology and transformation is the future and we are on the right path.