There’s the emotional reaction… it feels good to get something for free.

There’s the financial aspect… “free” is a great price point on your wallet.

There’s a visceral reaction… “free” breaks down most immediate barriers and suspicions – you have “nothing to lose” so you just go for it.

It sounds great. Why wouldn’t you want something that feels good, has no impact on your wallet and is an easy choice?

Because “free” simply isn’t sustainable when building quality products that require continuous innovation and development.

Let’s take the website business. Back in 1994, it was expensive to get a website. You could hire a developer for tens of thousands of dollars if you were lucky. Towards the late 90’s, companies like Geocities popped up and made it inexpensive to get on the web. Much later companies like MySpace and WordPress popped up, and eventually pushed the price down to “free” for a basic website.

So today, are the majority of websites made for “free?” Yes – by consumers. But the majority of professional websites are still paid for. Even people that get WordPress, which is free in its basic form, often spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on a developer, template, plug in, etc. to customize it to their needs. Magento, a great open source ecommerce platform, is free at its core, but to get it to look and feel like you want, it costs money.

Free only works at scale. Facebook is free for consumers. But Facebook had to raise nearly a billion dollars to scale to the point where advertising, virtual goods, and business partnerships made up the financial slack to get it to break even.

WordPress is free. But WordPress makes money with professional services and custom templates, and has a vibrant developer community surrounding it that charges for professional work. Same for Magento. In both cases, it’s the developer community that surrounds these “free” platforms that pushes it forward and continues to innovate.

MySpace is also free… but they’re losing a lot of money in its current form. Their scale no longer covers the base cost of innovating on a massive scale for their users.

As a long-term play, “free” is a crap shoot. The majority of “free” platforms are either brand new (and yet to be proven if they can remain free or survive) or have reached a massive scale to support their efforts through advertising and enterprise services.

Fast forwarding to our industry – mobile apps – it’s the wild wild west. App developers are:
1) developing custom apps
2) developing platforms (like Mobile Roadie) that lower the cost dramatically
3) giving apps away for free and monetizing “later” through revenue sharing on paid apps and/or in app advertising.

I founded and ran a digital agency for 11 years so I understand the custom game very well. And while there will always be a place for it, it’s not sustainable for the majority of customers. There’s a lack of ROI and flexibility investing tens of thousands of dollars in a custom app, which is the exact reason we started Mobile Roadie.

In the platform game, prices range from $99 to $10,000. Some charge monthly, some annually, some just once. Platforms offer a variety of functionality – from plugging in feeds on the low end with minimal or no customization options, to a fully customizable experience on multiple platforms. These platforms continue to innovate because they are paid services and have a vested interest to do so with their customers. And I would dare say that the ones that innovate the most aren’t the bottom of the barrel in price.

Then there’s free (or the equally unproven “rev share” models). With a “free” app you get what you pay for. There isn’t the same attention to detail when it comes to design, technology, customer support, and feature set.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from users of “free” apps, and brands looking to upgrade, is that users aren’t engaged. If you don’t have a great user experience and the tools to update it often, users don’t come back to the app. Suddenly, your app that didn’t cost anything isn’t being the effective marketing/sales tool you hoped it would be.

Businesses need motivation to continue to innovate and an important part of that motivation is financial. We all want to provide the best possible product for customers and best experience for end users but we need to be able to afford to do so.

Mobile Roadie is a technology company at its core. We release new features and functionality every single week. We do major updates every month. Our customers get the benefit of this innovation, and don’t have to chase what Apple, Google, or Blackberry are doing next. We’re on it, and our clients can focus on their brand and own customers.

You’ve heard the saying “you get what you pay for” a million times. Nothing is truer in the app space. Beware of a “free” or “cheap” app that is the “same” as Mobile Roadie or any other premium platform. Do a side-by-side comparison of features and see which is going to help your business and customer relationships in the long run.

If you’re serious about the app space – and you’ll only be successful if you are – you have to put a quality experience out there or risk your app going into the oblivion.

We’ve been noticing, however, examples lately that don’t meet minimum quality guidelines for content and audience, and I wanted to take a minute and explain our threshold.

Quality content

This is the biggest one… make sure you have good content. What defines good content? You know it when you see it. Videos, music, news, photos, etc. that your users will actually care about. Don’t put in blurry photos, videos that don’t play on mobile, or single sentence news releases. Your content is the main reason people will come to your app – so make sure it rocks.

Quantity of content

In addition to providing the good stuff (quality content), you need to put in enough content in each section you choose to use that the user feels like it’s a complete experience. Don’t just add one video to your video section and say you’re done. Either flush out an area of the app, or remove it and add it later (with our fully dynamic tab system, you can add/remove sections at any time without resubmitting to Apple).

Audience

So you’ve got great quality and quantity content. You also need to have a solid audience. By “solid” I mean a) an audience beyond just you and your family (for example), and b) an audience that warrants the app being available for public consumption. If you need a private app for your organization, Apple has special certificates you can use for private distribution. If you need an app for only a few people, we can give you an “ad hoc” distribution.

Our process

Before sending your app to Apple, we quality check it internally. This includes checking both the quality and quantity of content, in addition to the functionality. We reject apps that don’t meet our minimum standards, because Apple is likely to do the same. If you get rejected, don’t worry – we’ll give you suggestions on what you need to change in order pass QA and be submitted to Apple.

The bottom line

We have one big goal at Mobile Roadie – to empower you with the tools to create beautiful, highly functional, high quality apps yourself. And we’re going to be releasing even more customization options in the near future. Get serious about your app, use our customization tools, and create something that will blow people away. Go for it!

We’ve long prided ourselves on creating highly customizable apps (but not custom apps) for a wide range of industries with our powerful content management system. Mobile Roadie’s CMS is the magic behind the scenes, and allows our customers to customize their app down to the color, section name, and of course, content. There are other solutions out there that offer apps that pull in “feeds”  – such as your Twitter feed, RSS feed, and YouTube Channel. Before you pull the trigger on the “same thing” as Mobile Roadie for less money, consider the following.

1. Customization. Feed-only apps lack the ability to customize the app experience and rely solely on other content sources. Yes, this may sound like a good thing since it’s easier for you to update the things you’re already updating. But the problem is you don’t get customization options such as color themes, section names, and native app features. Our CMS allows you to pull in feeds as well – but does much more than just that.

2. Exclusive Content. Exclusive content is what makes an app. Give a reason to people to download your app and they will. But if the app is sucking in feeds available elsewhere on the Internet, you lack the ability to offer app-only exclusive content.

3. Approval Process. Apple likes apps that have a reason to be apps. If your app is only sucking in your Twitter feed and RSS feed, it really doesn’t need to be an app, and you may have issues with approval.

Quality pays in the mobile world –  and engagement and retention is key. It’s hard to keep your audience engaged with feeds they can get elsewhere. It’s hard to keep the user experience high quality when you have little to no customization options. Don’t get an app to say you have an app.

I don’t believe that people should make an app just to have an app. Here are a few things I believe make a great app.

1. Quality design. The user experience is important. Everyone has “ADD.” The way things animate, slide in and out, are readable (or not), and function in a “natural” way has a direct correlation to your user’s enjoyment of the app. Attention to design detail matters.

2. Great content. This may be a given but it’s vital and worth repeating. Don’t put last year’s videos, or audio, or photos, or events in the app. Upload your best stuff. Add exclusive app-only content. Engage your users inside your app on a regular basis and they’ll come back often.

3. Use location. Knowing where your users are is a huge advantage over the web. Use this to your user’s benefit. Send them relevant geo targeted push notifications. Offer them location-specific content. The future is all about personalization and location is a huge part of it.

4. Add some personal flair. This could be a custom design theme. Or your own personal top 10 video list (Ashton Kutcher’s doing a great job of this with his A+ list of top videos updated weekly). Or a weekly show (Taryn Southern’s weekly show on Ustream is streamed into her App). Whatever your personal flair is, Mobile Roadie gives you the tools to express it.

Mobile Roadie is the most powerful, viral, and customizable app platform out there. Take advantage of our tools. Be beautiful, interesting, location-specific, and express your personality in your app. That will keep your users coming back.

Morgan Stanley predicts that within five years, more people will connect to the internet via a mobile device than via desktop PCs. This is game changing for everyone.

Lack of mobile friendly shopping experiences
It’s unbelievable that big companies still don’t prioritize making a mobile version of their ecommerce site. Just do it, stop wondering if it’s worth it. I know several Fortune 500 companies that do tens of millions of dollars a year in ecommerce business that don’t even have it in their long term plan.

Carrier billing is a con
Carriers need to get over themselves. No one is going to give them 50% just to have the privilege of having the charge billed to the consumer’s cell phone bill. Apple and Google take 30% for purchases through their store. That’s a lot, but they’re also providing a lot of value. Carriers are providing less value and charging nearly double. If carriers got smart, they would reduce carrier billing to 5% and start taking business from credit card companies.

Your mobile strategy needs resources
Don’t get an app to just have an app. You’d never get a website and then not maintain it, right? Mobile is just as important if not more. Give your mobile customers exclusive content. Update the app and your mobile website often. Engage with customers where they are (huge advantage of mobile vs. desktop).

Flattening world
In many countries around the world, there are more people connecting to the web through mobile devices than desktops. This is mostly due to economic reasons – but is extremely powerful in reaching demographics you might never be able to reach if you just have a website.

Bottom line
Apps and mobile are here to stay, and the opportunity is real. Don’t slack. Grab the bull by its horns and go for it. You won’t regret it and frankly don’t have a choice (your competitors are making a move). It’s time to take mobile seriously.

First question you should be asking yourself is – do you need an app? Don’t build an app just to build one. Build an app if you have a need to communication with your users/customers/fans on their mobile device. Build an app if you have great content you want to distribute to mobile devices. Most importantly, build an app if you plan on maintaining it – or it’ll get stale quickly.

Once you’ve made the decision to make an app, then the question becomes – build or buy?

I don’t think ANYONE should go out and hire a developer/designer to build their own App unless they are extremely experienced and/or need to do something very custom. App builders today are simply too good and inexpensive to make building a good solution for most applications.

So, now you’ve decided that you need an app and are going to buy it.

Quality

I put quality first because too many people focus on the price first and forget that you need a quality/sticky product to get people to come back to your app over and over (isn’t that the point?). Look for things like:

User Experience: Download one of their apps and play with it – do you like the way it looks/feels? If you don’t, your users aren’t going to, either.
Speed: Are things “snappy” or are you waiting forever? Does it work over EDGE, 3G, and WiFi?

CMS: Do you have access to a content management system to update the content? If not – you’re going to spend a lot of time contacting them and waiting for updates.

Viral features: Does the app allow users to share via email, Facebook, and Twitter? Does it have features that make users want to participate and spread the word? You can’t do all of the promotion yourself – so this is key.

Web views: Be cautious of companies that will build you a native “app” that then pulls in web views for the sections – most of the time this results in a poor user experience. Also beware of overly simple apps that just pull in an RSS feed and a Twitter account – users won’t respond well.

Ease of use: There’s no point in buying an app if you need to hire a developer to implement it. Look for quality self service tools that allow you to make important decisions (such as the look/feel of the app, location and names of tabs, and content uploading) yourself without needing a PhD in PHP.

Reputation

You don’t want to build an app with a company that goes down a lot (taking your app’s content with it) or may not be here in a few months. Apps are so new that there are a lot of startups – but look for companies that have done a few high profile apps, have plenty of examples in the store, are responsive on emails/inquiries, and that have had good write ups in the press.

Price

Price is important – but it’s not everything. You don’t need to spend a lot to get a fantastic app. In general, I think the sweet spot is between $500 and $1500 for the year for a typical app, usually billed monthly or quarterly. If you want to do something custom – a game, for example – then be prepared to spend $5,000+. Just because the basic app is inexpensive doesn’t mean customizations are going to be; it really means that you’re getting a great deal on what used to be a $40,000 app.

Multiplatform & Multilanguage

Do you have customers or fans outside the US? Look for apps that have built in multi language support. Also – while the iPhone is the clear leader today in the mobile app space – try to find a company that allows you to create a native iPhone app in addition to other platforms.

Overall

Just like anything in life, you get what you pay for. Try and strike a good balance between price and quality. Be sure viral features are built in to the app and that you can easily update the app’s content yourself. Lastly, make sure the product and content both kick ass. That’s what is going to keep users coming back, and what is going to get you the most bang for your buck.

A frequently asked question we get is why get a native app when web “apps” are becoming so good? Why invest in Apple’s approval process and store (and soon Google’s and others) when you can hire a web developer to build you an HTML5 mobile friendly experience?

As good as web apps may be, they are still a far cry from their native app cousins. Here are a few specific examples that matter to you:

Push Notifications.

One of the great things Mobile Roadie customers do with their apps is reach their users – at times geo targeting them up to just one mile around any location – with a “push notification.” This message looks like a text message and appears regardless of whether the app is open or not. It’s an incredibly powerful way to reach users. Web apps simply can’t do this.

U/I.

As good as web apps have become, the overall user interface is still dependent on Safari. Things like scrolling, animation, transitions, forms, “cover flow,” and other native app-specific nuances aren’t possible or aren’t as pretty and seamless for users. Loading time is also greater in web apps than native apps. What this really means, quite simply, is that your users will have a better and faster visual experience with a native app – and be more likely to come back and frequent it.

Home screen icon.

Yes, you can create a “bookmark” which creates an icon on the iPhone’s home screen to a web “app.” But not everyone knows this. An App comes with a built in presence on the iPhone’s screen – making it easy to find and placing a constant reminder about you/your company/your brand/your group. Additionally, native apps show up in iTunes under Applications; web apps don’t.

Enhanced access.

Web apps can’t access your address book, iPod, or camera; native apps can. Native apps can tap into your iPod (to suggest to users what tracks they’re missing from your collection) and address book (to enable easy access to share with friends). Native apps can also access the camera that – in Mobile Roadie’s case – allows users to post photos from a particular event/show.

Your own world.

Native apps are all about you – your content, your users, your brand. But with a web app, while users may start off in your world, with one errant click Safari can take them to a completely unrelated website with no clear way back. This can’t happen in a native app.

While we applaud the efforts of developers around the world to improve HTML, Javascript, Flash (not on the iPhone), and other languages to make the web a more mobile-friendly place, there is still a very relevant place for native apps – and it is only going to grow as Apple (and others) add on features to the hardware that only native apps can take advantage of. While it’s a good strategy to have both a mobile-friendly website and a native app – if you wanted to go for the one with the best chances of making a big impact on your customer/fan base – native apps simply blow web apps away.