Create Your Own Specialty - Service Differentiation in the No-Codesphere

While no-code is lowering the threshold of product creation in app development, design, AI and many other categories it is important to contextualize that we are still in many ways at the beginning of the no-code revolution.

Many of the services that will be instrumental in allowing no-code tools to equate and surpass traditional software development practices simply do not exist as differentiated services yet. 

With traditional software development there is an established team structure and well known best practices in terms of supportive services for things like UX testing, marketing, user onboarding, analytic tracking and many other services that are often essential to successful product success.

In no-code disruptive new capabilities allow small teams to punch far above their weight. No-code is rewriting in front of our eyes traditional software development organizational charts and what is needed in ecosystem supportive services.

For Adalo’s Experts, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. 

It is a challenge because often single person freelancer development teams are taking on their shoulders scopes of work that would normally be divided over many person teams. For a single Adalo Maker to be skilled at database architecture, design, user experience, third party integrations, product maintenance and QA is unrealistic, but often the expectation. 

Many Adalo Experts take that they must be a ‘jack of all trades’ as an assumption.

However, this is where the opportunity is.

There are many focused product offerings that Adalo Experts could offer to clients that would differentiate the freelancer ecosystem. 

This would be a win for clients, where they can use the Adalo Experts program like a a la carte menu of sectoral specialists who can work as professionals within their sphere of expertise.

This would be a win for Adalo Experts, who can specialize in a skill set that they can charge a premium for. Bonus points to any Adalo Experts who seek to establish thought leadership and to own different ecosystem elements.

An example of mindset would be how Craigslist used to be a jack of all trades, then became unbundled and unlocked new products like AirBnB, Tinder, Zillow, UpWork and Reddit.

As a point of inspiration the Adalo Experts team has collected together a non-inclusive list of potential product verticals that we would love to be seeing more of at the top of our Adalo Experts freelancer site. (wink wink, nudge nudge)

Design

Design is a skill that takes education, hard work and a good eye to excel at. Being a great designer is often a different skill set than being a great backend app builder. Think that design is a skill beyond you? Try Adalo’s App Academy course on ‘Object Oriented User Experience’ where anyone can follow a simple process to design outstanding and consistent apps.

Database architecture design

Database architecture is the skeleton of an app, a good database architecture increases speed, makes apps work smoothly, allows for easy product revision and can allow for better team collaboration as databases cleanly follow best practice.

App flow / user experience testing

Great app ideas often get buried behind high funnel loss. If an app is having 90% bounce rate on the registration screen then perhaps the screen needs revision. App design is riddled with small tweaks that can have big impacts. UX testing where apps are tested with persona types in a structured setting allows for apps to be built that engage and retain users.

Security

Offering consulting services to review no-code apps for security gaps or missing best practices is something that will be a its own branch of agency in the future. 

Legal

Apps need to have terms of services, freelancers need contracts, makers need advice on GDPR. Legal advice is often like a magic trick that can make the impossible possible. Every app maker would benefit with an hour call from a no-code legal specialist to make sure they are following best practices to set up for future success.

Integration expert / advisor

Many Adalo makers are great at Adalo, but haven’t begun to learn products like Airtable, Zapier, etc. Each integration can be an opportunity for an Adalo Expert to specialize. 

Education / coaching

While no-code takes out the need to master software languages, there is still a fiendishly difficult learning curve. From 1on1 coaching to creating educational services targeting corporate and schools, being able to train new Adalo makers offers its own constellation of emerging opportunities.

App repair / build on top of existing app

Many Adalo makers start a project… and get stuck! (we’ve all been there) Brand yourself as the master of respectfully helping clean up apps that were built with love but need the loving touch.

Geolocation

Whichever agency or freelancer offers the best geolocation services is going to live on the front page of the Adalo Experts. Geolocation enables entirely new classification of apps to be built with Adalo that prospective clients need to know are possible to build. New to geolocation: take the Adalo App Academy course ‘Add Location To Your App: Airbnb in 25 Minutes’.

Responsive

Responsive is coming! Adalo’s editor will offer a new category of app creation in addition to ‘mobile’ and ‘desktop’ where apps built in the responsive module will be ‘complete apps’ that contextualize the experience for all screen sizes. When responsive launches it will be a zero day skillset where any Adalo Maker will have an equal chance of becoming a thought leader and Expert on. Check out our Adalo town hall for more information on responsive.

Speed

Building for speed in Adalo is an undersung superpower. The ordering and location of actions in Adalo, for example, can entirely change the speed of an app and therefore change the whole app experience. It’s a fact that end users are highly responsive to app speed. Being able to offer apps that operate at their fastest is a compelling offer to clients.

Single feature offers

Often Adalo makers and other Adalo Experts are capable at building in Adalo but may be missing an essential skill, like Stripe integration or creating ecommerce check out. Looking at the Adalo Forum for trends and opportunities is a great starting point. 

Custom components

Creating components is a superpower! Often potential clients want to use Adalo, but because of a component gap they have to look otherwise. The ability to offer services like custom payment gateways can be the high impact (read high price) key to unlocking a client’s entire Adalo app. Want to learn more? Check out Adalo’s (awesome!) component documentation.

Enterprise specialty / business tools

Businesses big, small and micro are, with no-code, able to pay a fraction of what they used to pay for software development. However, businesses have high demands and expectations of professionalism. Becoming a trusted ‘enterprise’ partner is a great way to unlock ‘enterprise’ budgets.

Long term support

Apps change, integrations break and bugs emerge. While Adalo Experts are encouraged to build long term relationships for the maintenance of client apps, it’s not always an option or clients may want an Adalo Expert that specializes in long term relationships.

Quality assurance

The number of brilliant Adalo Expert applicants that sabotage their applications with apps that are suffering glaring quality assurance deficits is a wake up call for the need of experts to take QA more seriously, or to outsource. Third party QA signoff that an app is working as expected should be a best practice.

Analytics focus

For anyone who has worked with investors you will be aware of the heavy focus on analytic tracking in apps. Adalo Experts can integrate custom analytics trackers inside Adalo, utilize Xano / Retool or discover new ways to allow Adalo apps to become more rich in actionable data.

Scalability / Xano backend

A key concern for many prospective Adalo clients is the limits of scalability with Adalo. With Adalo’s tight relationship with no-code’s fastest backend Xano, Adalo apps become scalable. However, Xano is a low code tool that has its own learning curve. Being makers’ solution to scale is a compelling product offering.

Gamification expert

Any Expert that borrows gamification best practices from apps like Duolingo will realize that these super powerful product modifications are often frighteningly easy to implement and can single handedly transform user engagement metrics.

Product vertical specialists

Often Adalo Experts start their apps from scratch, leaving previous hard earned insights and product muscle memory siloed. Mastering product verticals can be a win / win. Adalo Expert Cybergogo shares how “Rather than being a jack of all trades we have focused on a small number of app builds, for example around fitness apps. This allows us to maximize our pre-existing assets and create a more refined experience for the client. It's win/win! Cybergogo saves time and the client gets an app that has benefitted from pre-existing work."

Customer acquisition and retention

While clients often say they want an app, what they are really saying is they want customers for their app. Help them out by offering best practices for customer onboarding, acquisition, retention, churn reduction and viral sharing. Want to dive in? Listen to New York Times bestselling author share rapid fire insights from his book ‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal’ on the Adalo App Academy. We promise it will transform the way you build apps.

Language

Multilingual is easy in Adalo: just change text to database indexed magic text and be able to add new languages by adding a new line of Google translated or human translated text to the database. Boom: now you can offer the expansion of Adalo Apps to many languages.

Digital marketing strategy

Marketing and app development are intertwined. Being able to follow the app behavior of clients from different marketing channels is a way of determining impact of ad dollars, while building inside apps things like incentivized referral engines often means that apps can self-promogulate themselves. 

Monetization

This time we saved the best for last. Most of the time clients are making apps as a part of a business endeavor. While makers might have a great idea, they may be unaware of options of business models or ways to setup their apps to optimize client conversion. Any new dollar you help a client make is a dollar the client will be happy to share with the Expert. Examples of some pricing strategy insights are here.

Motivated? If you already have some of the above skillsets try editing your Adalo Expert profile (email experts@adalo.com) to highlight these services in a way that a fast scrolling potential client will not be able to miss. Looking to develop some of these skillsets? Then get going! A great starting point can be the Adalo App Academy, which extends beyond making in Adalo to what it takes to make apps that deliver delight and thrive.

Move fast and you have the opportunity to be an early pioneer of emerging no-code product verticals.

Have any thoughts on additional diversification opportunities or insight on the above ideas? Share with the Adalo Experts team at experts@adalo.com.