We’re building a gift card app—but we’re not in the App Store. How come?
The short answer is we’re not really sure what we’re building (yet).
There are lots of different angles to pursue with this gift card stuff. Do users want:
- A digital wallet?
- Reminders?
- Balance checks?
- Generated barcodes?
- Automated thank you’s?
- Something else entirely?
Rather than guessing our way to the right answer, we decided to launch a simple prototype so we could start getting feedback.
Starting with a web app offers the most flexibility at this stage:
- It can be accessed on any device (desktop, iOS, Android)
- It can be updated instantly with no need for resubmissions and approvals
- With a single codebase, it’s easier to update and maintain
- It’s also cheaper, which helps when we’re bootstrapping
Right now, we’re validating ideas and changing direction frequently. It’s hard to justify the iOS / Android apps when we’re still in experimentation mode.
Hopefully you’ll find us in the App Store / Play Store one day. But not until we actually nail down what Gift Card Guard is!