App developer for Miami

What that means for the build:

• Signing up, paying, sending a document and getting a receipt all happen in the app, with no step that says “finish this on a computer”.
• Receipts and documents are laid out for a phone screen. A PDF made for printing is hard to read there.
• The download stays small and the app uses little data. In the same survey, 13.1% of Miami-Dade households get their internet only through a cell phone data plan, against 11.5% nationally.
• The app is one more way to book or order, and the ways that need no internet, such as a phone call, stay open. The same survey counts 99,675 Miami-Dade households, 10.2%, with no internet subscription at all, against 8.9% nationally.

• Google Play. Google’s Play Console Help lists Spanish (United States) as a store listing language of its own, next to Spanish for Latin America and for Spain. A customer whose language preference matches a language you’ve added sees that version. If you haven’t added Spanish, Google says customers can choose an automatic translation of your page, shown with a notice near the top that says it was translated automatically. Screenshots are a separate upload, and without Spanish ones the English pictures show.
• The App Store. Apple’s list of App Store localizations has no Spanish (United States). For the US store, the languages Apple lists besides English include Spanish (Mexico), and Spanish (Spain) isn’t among them, so a Spanish page for US customers is added as Spanish (Mexico). Apple says the language each customer sees can depend on their device’s language settings and the store language for their location, so no developer can promise which version a given customer gets.
• The app itself. Its screens, messages and emails come in Spanish too, so a customer who chose the Spanish store page doesn’t open an English-only app. Before launch, a native speaker who knows your trade reads every word in the store and in the app, and afterward one person updates both languages when a price or an hour changes.

What that means for the build:

• You pick the screens that must work with no signal, such as your hours, a booking already made, a member card or an order in progress, and their information is kept on the phone. Before the app goes to the stores for review, each of those screens is checked with the phone offline.
• What a customer types while offline is held on the phone and sent when the signal returns, with a plain note that it’s waiting.
• A closure notice sent after the network goes down may not arrive. Send it before the storm, and put the same notice on your website for people who don’t have the app.

What that means for the design:

• The app asks for location only when a feature needs it.
• You get a written list of every outside service the app sends data to, such as ad, analytics or sign-in kits.
• If any of that could count as a sale, the consent screen and its wording are settled with your lawyer before the build.

• Customers need you once or twice a year. For the 12.1% of Miami-Dade households whose only computer is a phone, a website that works well on a phone reaches them with nothing to install.
• The main reason is storm updates. A message in the app reaches only the people who installed it. A notice on your website reaches anyone who looks you up.
• Nobody can answer in Spanish yet. A Spanish store page invites questions and reviews in Spanish. Wait until someone in your business can reply to them.
• The plan depends on selling location or other sensitive data. In Florida that needs each customer’s prior consent and the notice first, so look for another way for the app to pay for itself.

• Can I see apps you’ve built for Miami businesses? Not yet. We have no Miami app work to show, and we won’t pass off samples as client apps. You judge our work on the toile: a test version of your own app, on your own phone, before the full build.
• Where are you, and how do we work together? In North Miami Beach, in Miami-Dade County. We work by phone, text and email, in English or Spanish, and the fitting is a first call about your app. Wico’s founder, William Lopez, has been building websites and apps for 15 years.
• What will it cost to build and keep running? The price comes after the fitting, and work starts only once you’ve agreed to it. Published price ranges and the stores’ own fees are in our guide to what an app costs to build and run.