If you have been reading this blog, you know that the ViziApps Studio makes it easy to develop a mobile business app quickly and inexpensively.

But what if you can’t get set aside even a few hours to build a custom app? We can do it for you.

ViziApps will build a mobile app to your specs – while you focus on your business. Contact us and tell us a little about your app, and we’ll get right back to you with a quote and schedule for the app you need to extend your business to your customers, partners or employees.

If you’ve been following this space, you already know all about – and hopefully have been impressed by – ViziApps’ native app capabilities. But never content to rest on its laurels, MobiFlex has just added web app capabilities to ViziApps 2.0, making it the first and only no coding solution for creating both web and native apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android phones.

Who doesn’t love a one-stop shop? Now users who choose ViziApps 2.0 can design and test both native and web mobile apps for free. Web apps created with ViziApps are available for immediate use on any of the more than 5,000 mobile devices that support full browser capabilities.

The addition is a logical expansion for MobiFlex, whose users had been clamoring for ViziApps web app capabilities. And who can blame them? ViziApps 2.0 allows small- to mid-sized businesses and enterprises to fully engage with employees and customers wherever they are through custom mobile apps that can be created and published in days – or even hours.

Think this is all really going to cost you? Hardly. Publishing fees for ViziApps web apps range from a mere $6.95 to $149 per month, depending on the number of web app pages and page views. And what’s more, to celebrate the launch of ViziApps 2.0, MobiFlex is introducing the ViziApps Free plan, which allows users to publish a ViziApps web app with unlimited static-content pages for up to 2 million page views per month. ViziApps 2.0 also enables users to publish a ViziApps native app for free for their own use on their iPhone or Android phone.

Sometimes even the best gets better.

Want to become highly proficient creating mobile business apps? A new online workshop, titled Create Mobile Apps Without Coding, will walk you through the development of a simple but fully functional native app without doing any coding. Using the ViziApps mobile app development tool, plus Google Docs as your database, you will learn valuable app design principles and see how easy it is to build a functional mobile app just using basic computing skills.

ViziApps-certified trainer Neil Perlin will conduct the 6-part webinar from July 9-17, focusing on different topics in each session, such as using an app template for layout, creating pages and page elements, and advanced data management for mobile apps, a key advantage offered by the ViziApps mobile app development tool.

Enterprise business units looking to develop their own apps (without relying on IT for technical expertise or development budgets) will find this webinar especially useful. Attendees will come away equipped to build apps for both internal users and external mobility campaigns.

So we’ve already told you that MobiFlex has added web app capabilities to ViziApps 2.0. But what exactly does that mean for you? And for that matter, what exactly is a web app, anyway, and what is its value to a small business?

One of the key benefits of a web app is how quickly and easily it can be created from existing content. With ViziApps, simply cut and paste and you’ve repurposed your web content for delivery to mobile device screens as an app.

Another valuable advantage for small businesses is that you can distribute web apps immediately, either from your own websites or through the use of QR Codes, which are automatically generated by ViziApps when you’re ready to publish your web app. Scan the QR Code with a smartphone and it takes the user directly to your web app. These codes can be printed on marketing materials, flyers, websites, and more to allow your target audience to immediately download your app.

Web apps also avoid the “waiting for approval” cycle in the app stores and markets, or dealing with the delay of taking your app to other outside services. In fact, web apps created with ViziApps are available for immediate use on any of the more than 5,000 mobile devices that support full browser capabilities.

Finally, creating and publishing a web app is generally quite inexpensive – an appealing factor for small businesses and small business units within larger organizations. As we announced recently, publishing fees for ViziApps web apps range from $6.95 to $149 per month, depending on the number of web app pages and page views. And to celebrate the launch of ViziApps 2.0, MobiFlex introduced the ViziApps Free plan, which allows users to publish a ViziApps web app with unlimited static-content pages for up to 2 million page views per month. And remember, designing and testing your web app with ViziApps is always free.

To create a free ViziApps App Studio account, click here or visit www.viziapps.com

In this blog, we’re helping you consider building mobile apps in a different way.

The conventional approach to building mobile business apps is expensive, complex and time-consuming. Teams of developers can spend months planning, designing, building, and testing – all to meet the business and technical requirements of just a single mobile app.

ViziApps tackles mobile apps from a different perspective, taking a visual, building block approach. As a result, organizations that lack the time, budget or technical skills to take on a complex custom engineering project can build custom mobile apps themselves.

ViziApps requires no coding. None at all. By providing a far less demanding way to build a mobile app, it enables non-programmers to use the tool online, applying rudimentary computing skills to create mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

A catalog of icons and app templates makes creating mobile apps as easy as putting together a PowerPoint presentation. Uses can choose among images provided in ViziApps or incorporate their own images, such as logos and photos, to brand a high quality mobile app for customers, employees or partners.

Engineers have already done the necessary coding and built it into the ViziApps development tool. That allows people in small businesses as well as larger companies to tailor a mobile app for their particular requirements and create it themselves. With ViziApps, enterprise IT teams, marketing agencies and IT consultants can leverage their skills to create many of the apps their clients are requesting – faster and for far less than a custom app would typically cost.

The visual approach ViziApps takes truly is a new way of thinking about how to develop mobile apps. Now, businesses that have been hampered by the lack of time, budget or programmers can get beyond those barriers and take a drag-and-drop approach to building their own mobile applications.

The idea of building your own mobile applications is fairly new, and while we have been living it day in and day out for years, we realize that to the uninitiated, it sounds like a daunting undertaking. But the fact of the matter is, given the right plan and tools, anyone can build their own app.

Here are few hints to get you started. If you can follow some of these simple guidelines, you will be well on your way to creating great mobile apps!

Have a Plan

A major key to building your own mobile application is to have a basic plan. Adjustments can always be made during the development process, but you should have an idea of the basic goals of the application. The key elements to the plan are the who, what, where, why, and how of the application.

• Who: Will this be an application for your own business? Maybe for your own private use? Will other groups find it useful and would you want to share it with them? Do you plan on charging others for use?
• What: What functionality will the application have? Will you have to enter data? If so, what data? Will it pull data from across the web? If so, from where? Will the app be temporary, for a specific purpose or event, or will it have on-going everyday use?
• Where: Will you publish it publicly on an application store, or will you just make it available to a select few? Which operating system will you use? Will it be a native application (operating directly with the end device camera or GPS) or a web-based application?
• Why: Perhaps most importantly, what value will the app have for improving your business? Will it help you better engage your best customers for more sales? Will it build your brand? Will it help your travelling employees be more productive?
• How: How will the application get the information it needs to complete the tasks? Will you need geo-location information? Will you need to access a centralized database? Will you need specific date from an Internet source? Will you need to use the device camera?

Once you have a basic profile of your new app, what next?

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Your success in building your new mobile application depends heavily on the tools with which you work. We truly believe in the MobiFlex platform and feel we have developed the essential tool for self-service mobile application building. However, in the interest of objectivity, let’s look at the qualities we thought were crucial to application building as we built the MobiFlex platform.

• Visual, graphics-based interface: Software coding is hard and wrought with possible pitfalls for non-engineers. A graphical, drag and drop interface is a much easier way to initiate, organize and activate functionality. As computer users, most of us are familiar with dragging and dropping icons, while few of us know how to build those icons (or the related functionality) using code.
• Flexibility: If you plan on developing one specific application in one specific environment, you may be able to get away with a platform that only lets you work one way. But take it from us, this stuff can be addictive. Once you make one application, we are pretty sure you will want to do another, with more functionality, of course. With that in mind, look for a development platform that will allow for flexibility in functions, flexibility in operating environments and flexibility in distribution options. The more possibilities, the more your apps will be able to do.
• Testing: an often overlooked function but you should be able to test your new apps for free. Let’s face it, the first version is rarely perfect, and it shouldn’t cost money to go back and add features your users identify or to fix bugs.

We will be discussing many of these topics in greater detail in the weeks and months ahead, as well as including feedback and lessons learned from folks who have built their own apps. So stay tuned, and keep rethinking your mobile apps.