Budgeting for Mobile App Design in 2024

“Every dollar spent on UX brings between $2 and $100 in return.”

So, this blog discusses what and how much we must spend on Mobile UX. In other words, how much will a mobile app design cost?

When developing a mobile application, the first goal is to make the app visible and accessible to the maximum number of people online.

Mobile app design is crucial to make your apps beautiful and visually appealing enough to attract people to your mobile apps. It involves detailing and a keen focus on the perfection of each pixel. Thus, it forms a significant part of the mobile app development cost. 

If you are a business owner and are bothered about the cost of your mobile applications, this blog will surely help you. 

The blog discusses the cost of mobile app design in detail, including the factors that affect the total cost and the total cost calculation.

Statistics

According to a report from Forrester Research, a well-devised and crafted UX design can surge customer conversion rates by up to 400%.

1. 85% of adults want a company’s mobile design should be better than the desktop website.
2. 90% of users uninstalled an app due to poor performance.
3. It is five times more likely that users will leave a task if the website is not optimized for mobile.
4. 25% of the apps downloaded by users from 2010-2019 were abandoned after a single use.

Percentage of mobile apps that have been used only once from 2010 to 2019

Why is the UI/UX of Mobile Apps so Important?

Poor UX design can cause billions in losses. Famous giants like Google, Apple, and Uber owe their success greatly to their incredible user experiences. The unique designs, easy navigation, and appealing interfaces make users stick with mobile apps for a long time. 

An exceptional User experience focuses on crafting designs using tools and technologies to incorporate human psychology and behavior into products and services. It includes attention to a mobile app’s structure, speed, performance, design, navigation, etc. 

Moreover, a top-tier design can help business owners achieve their business objectives by reaching a large audience. Let us look at why an app design is essential and how it can help grow a business.

1. Good Design Builds Trust

A cluttered design that lacks perfection immediately conveys a lack of professionalism and attention to detail. Thus, users are likely to abandon the app in a few seconds.

On the other hand, a well-designed and thoughtful design conveys attention to detail and sincerity. Thus, users immediately gain users’ trust and make them stick to the mobile app.

Gaining users’ trust is the company’s biggest asset, leading to rapid growth and helping create long-term relations with users. According to Stanford University, one of the most important criteria is deciding a website’s credibility.

2. Get Noticed

A great design helps you stand out and grab attention among the billions of mobile apps on the app stores. Business owners can quickly attract users and raise the number of mobile app downloads, thus reaching a wider audience and multiplying their profits.

3. Target Specific Audience

If you target a specific audience, you must choose the design and number of screens based on their needs and preferences. Too many screens will be confusing and overwhelming for users. At the same time, too few screens will make the design look cluttered, as the app will show all the features in one place. UI/UX designers must align the design and its functionality with user demands.

4. Higher Conversion & Retention Rates

42% of people uninstall an app because of the bad user interface (UI). Your mobile app design should be highly intuitive and responsive if you want higher conversions and retention rates. 

The design fonts, colors, icons, and layout should all align with your business branding.

Mobile App Design Process

An effective user interface design focuses on the experience it will create among users. The Mobile app design process involves the steps that ensure the design is around customer needs and preferences. Each phase focuses on delivering an excellent and memorable user experience. Let us look at the Mobile app design steps:

1. Analyze app idea

Estimated time: 20-40 hours with a maximum of 150 hours

Every app design starts with brainstorming ideas and finding user requirements. What audience do you want to target, their choices, business goals, branding, etc.? Researching and analyzing these demographics is crucial, and creating designs based on user behavior is vital. Once the vision and idea of the app design are clear, it will be convenient to explain it to designers. They can create wireframes for the design with detailed information on the target market and business objectives.

2. Create Wireframes & Prototypes

Estimated time: 16-56 hours with a maximum of 140 hours

Your app idea is now ready, and the following step is to mold it using documentation and wireframes. How much does it cost to create a prototype of an app?

Concentrate on the app’s usability, project complexity, and navigation to comprehend its features and future scope. This step includes Wireframing, User Experience (UX), and App Animation guidelines.

• Sketches
  Sketches are a terrific tool for displaying complex app operations when creating a great mobile app. Sketch, Build fire, Adobe XD, and other well-known sketching programs are available.

• Wireframing a UX
  Using top mobile UI design tools, designers construct dynamic layouts to structure the app displays and demonstrate app screen connectivity.

• Native UI elements in UX Wireframes
  Each mobile app has a unique UI design, which might be expensive. The UX wireframe consists of distinctive fonts, button and control styles, and other native UI elements to offer a notion of the basic app interface and a more specific design structure. Usability testing and concept validation complete the prototype phase. Specialized tools, such as MARVEL, Balsamiq, and Photoshop, are used.

3. Making a Visual Design (UI)

UI mockups are used in the visual design of mobile application development to aid consumers in comprehending the program’s fundamental concept. They comprehensively understand various stylistic approaches and uses for specific elements, forms, hues, color schemes, and others.

UI mockups are used in the visual design of mobile application development to aid consumers in comprehending the program’s fundamental concept. They comprehensively understand various stylistic approaches and uses for specific elements, forms, hues, color schemes, etc.

It’s critical to understand the connection between branding and visual design. An app’s logo, a mobile app icon, and screens are all examples of graphic design, which is about developing a unified product style.

Branding involves the production of logos, fonts, and brand graphics and thus is another crucial part of the design process for mobile app interfaces.

4. App Design Test

Mobile app design can only be completed with manual and automated testing. Each design element is tested for functionality, navigation, and screen compatibility. The testing stage requires an average of five to twenty hours and costs $60 to $200.

What are the Factors that Affect the Mobile Design Cost?

1. Type of Application

The mobile app design and the cost depend on the type of mobile application we develop. Mobile applications can be classified in two ways:

• Apps by Functionality 
• Apps by Platform

Applications based on Functionality – Social media, utility, lifestyle, healthcare, etc.

A simple utility app like a calculator or stopwatch requires a simple design with a single screen. Thus, it requires less cost and time.

A complex gaming or social media app includes different screens and detailed designs. Thus, it requires precise effort and attention from designers. Since the applications include keen detailing and many screens, it will cost more.

Applications based on Platform – Native, Hybrid, and web apps.

Native apps are designed specifically for the specific platform- iOS or Android. UI/UX designers use platform-specific or standard designs to create a faster, more secure, native user experience.

Web apps are simple and quick to create and do not involve much design effort. However, their design is also based on the browser. 

Hybrid applications combine the features of native and web apps. They do not require platform-standard design, so designers can quickly prepare designs with less effort and cost.

2. Cost of hiring a designer for mobile app design

Your financial situation determines the cost of hiring a designer. Regarding platform, experience, knowledge of technology, and price scale, a variety of professionals are available. A qualified senior designer can cost up to $150 per hour or even more to employ. At the same time, the less skilled designer can only charge $45 per hour.

Function and aesthetics are the two main facets of app development. If you want your customers to find your app highly functional, your main attention should be on its capabilities, followed by its aesthetic. Just move with the flow, adhere to industry norms, watch your rivals, and invest additional money to improve the app.

Designer Rates by Location

If you want to outsource your application design, the services you receive may differ depending on where you are. We have given the typical cost to design a good-looking app using US dollars’ most popular hourly rates for design, even though the cost varies by country.

3. Wireframes

The schematic framework design, which is the first step in the entire process, shows a mobile app’s general functions and aesthetics without going into too much depth. The framework becomes more specific until it reaches an interactive prototype as the developer and customer debate the development.

While creating a prototype might seem expensive, doing so really helps you stay below budget because the development team will have all the information they need to work effectively. Since everything necessary was covered during the prototyping stage, you need to make only minimal changes.

4. Platforms

Platforms like iOS and Android vary in navigation, behavior, and other aspects. Sometimes, it may be necessary to develop products simultaneously for the two primary operating systems.

There are numerous different formats and resolutions that Android must be compatible with. Apple standardizes everything. Because of this, fewer screen sizes need adaption in the latter scenario.

5. Multiple Display

Due to each screen’s essential functionality and complexity, a user profile may have a unique screen design that differs from its app settings screen. Designing each screen’s appearance takes effort. As a result, the designer will put in more work hours the more screens an app has.

6. UX Planning

Developers are now concentrating on how users interact with apps. It is required to describe their navigation, states, and dialogues in more detail. In this phase, an interactive prototype is made to evaluate the user experience.

7. Animation & Other Effects

Animated components and effects can improve usability, draw users’ attention, or amuse them. For instance, they can enhance the realism of user engagement. You should read the post on the primary types of animation used in mobile applications.

You may also need to design other graphic components, like a set of icons. Creating animation and additional visual elements takes time and costs money.

8. Post-Release Cost

Even after the app is out, some design work may still be done. After a product has been tested in real-world scenarios and you start collecting input from actual customers, many design elements can be revised or updated.

The task will be less expensive if you already have pre-made frameworks or specific design components because you won’t need to start the entire process from the beginning.

How to Calculate Final App Design Cost?

The total cost of designing a mobile app depends on the hours required to design various application elements and the hourly developer rates.

How to Optimize the App Design Cost?

As a leading UI/UX design company, we have years of experience designing websites, software, and mobile applications for global clients./ We can provide proven strategies to reduce or optimize your mobile app design cost. 

Plan the Design Well

A tested method of cost reduction is a technique that is carefully thought out and executed. If you plan, you will be happy investing your massive money. Further, the design of the mobile application plays an important role in its success or failure. So, it is better to plan well to get a clear idea of the design and what the app will look like.

Outsource UI/UX Designers

Look for skilled UI/UX designers in countries with lower hourly rates, for instance, Ukraine. You can find more reasonably priced experts and various additional benefits by working with Ukrainian UI/UX designers. You will spend much less on a project with the same quality than if you hired designers from the US or Western Europe.

Concentrate on the fundamentals.

The designer will need to create and draw more screens the more functionalities you intend to add. As a result, we suggest delaying secondary functions until later.

Conclusion

Making a budget for designing a mobile app in 2024 means planning how much money you’ll need for different project parts. You have to think about how complex the app is, what kind of design it needs, which platforms it will work on, and any future updates. 

You can make a good budget by understanding what your app needs, setting clear goals, and using your money wisely. This will help you create a high-quality app that users will enjoy. Spending money on a good design will make your app more successful in the long run.

Do you need help designing your next mobile app? Valuetree, the top UI/UX design company, can help you create amazing, eye-catching mobile apps. We can design a custom mobile app that fits your budget. Our experts can also help you figure out how much it will cost.