Mobile apps are a major source of customer engagement and great service. The growth of the mobile ecosystem is now a major value driver for forward-thinking businesses. A development strategy that enables mobile teams to deliver these experiences quickly is becoming a core business strategy. React Native has become increasingly popular, enabling companies to meet these objectives while still delivering top-tier experiences.
Demand for a faster development cycle
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Mobile apps are a key part of how organisations operate, how teams work and how companies communicate with customers. Unfortunately, traditional native development brings complexity and often time-consuming processes into the mobile ecosystem. These challenges are more obvious when multiple codebases are required across platforms. Development can become duplicated, testing cycles lengthen, and overheads in managing native app development increase.
React Native emerged in response to these issues, as organisations sought to reduce the development overhead of creating and managing multiple applications. For many companies, it has helped reduce app development costs while providing a native user experience.
The single codebase is one of React Native’s core offerings. The ability to share functionality between platforms allows a single version of an app to be available on iOS and Android, instead of teams having to build and support two entirely separate products. Less duplication streamlines mobile app development. Code, test, and release to both platforms at the same time.
Another advantage of a shared codebase is that updates and fixes can be made more rapidly. When these apply to multiple platforms, they can be fixed once and pushed out to both. This faster approach to updates means improvements can be made consistently. Ultimately, this reduces the time it takes to implement change over the life of an app.
Building for faster iteration and collaboration
React Native app development services enable changes to be viewed almost instantly, reducing downtime for testing and bug fixes. Teams are better able to collaborate with development teams, designers and stakeholders.
Feedback from real users can be introduced into development early and frequently. This means the final product is less likely to require wholesale changes late in the cycle. Speed is improved, but the risk of failure when new features or applications are delivered is also reduced.
Leveraging existing skills and knowledge
React Native is often a much simpler and less risky approach to learning for development teams and organisations. Existing skills and knowledge can be used, rather than having to learn new languages and skills from scratch. Teams can also be staffed with more available and less specialist skills, and resources are much more easily shared across both web and mobile development projects. React Native can often help an organisation be more flexible and work more efficiently throughout the mobile development cycle.
Aligning speed and performance expectations
Performance issues are often a concern when discussing cross-platform solutions. React Native is unique because it connects JavaScript and React with native components and layers within the application. This means the native performance is generally very close to a fully native solution, with the trade-off in benefits being limited for most applications.
For typical business apps, that trade-off has become an acceptable one for most organisations. When extra performance is required, native components can also be integrated into a React Native app. That means the delivery speed is rarely slowed by the need to include those components for critical parts of the application.
Building for agility and iterative delivery
React Native and cross-platform development align well with agile product development and a ‘minimum viable product’ mindset. Applications can be launched quickly, then functionality can be expanded on based on how those applications are used and the feedback provided.
In that way, organisations can test new ideas, learn from real users and refine products and applications over time. React Native development becomes part of an iterative approach that values speed, feedback and learning. The longer-term result is a more agile approach to mobile app development, with decisions based on evidence and the best use of development resources.
Speed and quality go hand in hand
The need for, and ability to, drive improved time-to-market is one of the main benefits that React Native development has provided to businesses across the board. One major caveat to keep in mind is that reduced development time is not necessarily the same as ‘being fast’. React Native is one element of a more encompassing strategy of mobile development, which focuses on cutting down on unwieldy and duplicated processes, minimising risk and optimising the effectiveness of development teams.
As a result, mobile apps and features can be delivered to the marketplace more quickly. Companies can test, learn and react faster, without compromising quality or performance. In a highly competitive and dynamic digital environment, that can make a real difference.