Everywhere you look, people are playing with their smartphone. I knew we needed to get our firm on their phones. But how?

Well, arguably, they already had us on their phones, but only in the Web browser. If they really want divorce information, we’ve got a mobile-friendly version of our North Carolina Divorce site. Everybody talks about apps, apps, apps. We needed an app.

I had no idea where to turn to get an app built. It seemed like something for big companies, gamers, and computer people—not small law firms.

What to do?

I found an ad for an app development firm on the Web. I called. The firm started asking questions that I couldn’t answer. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll call back when I’m ready.”

I realized that wanting an app wasn’t good enough. I had to have a concept in my head for what the app would do and how it would do it.

Back to the drawing board.

First off, I considered an app version of our family law site. That seemed workable but didn’t seem much better than having folks visit the site in their browsers. It would be redundant.

We needed an app that would actually prove useful to our prospective clients. We needed something they’d download and keep because it was helpful.

We settled on a North Carolina child support calculator app as our first effort.

Then it was time to figure out how to turn an idea into an actual app.

I started asking around and found out that one of my friends had an old college roommate who had gone into the iPhone app development business. I got an introduction.

“Sure, I can do it,” he said. We spent a few hours talking through the idea, and he went to work.

We went back and forth for a month or so. First, he got clear on what we wanted the app to do. Then he started laying out screens and sending them to us. We tweaked his designs so that the app actually got the right user input at the right stage of the process. Back and forth we went.

Once the screens looked right, he built the code that made the screens do what they were supposed to do. He did his programming thing for a few weeks. Then he had something for us to test.

He walked us through the process of installing the app on our iPhones even before the app was released and available in the App Store. There’s a process for developers to send apps to one another and run them without making the available to the public. During that stage of the development, we got signed up with Apple so that we’d be able to release the app when it was ready.

After a great deal of testing, it was time to release the app on the App Store. That was easy, and we got gobs of attention for making the app available for free.

Total cost of the building the app? $4,000.

We learned a great deal about the process from our experience. Working with an excellent developer gave us a sense of what needed to be done.

We took the lessons we’d learned with the iPhone app development and moved forward to Android. We hoped to keep our costs down since we now had a much better sense of what was required.

We went to a site like worker.com and posted a project seeking developers. We got a bunch of responses with bids. The lowest bidder (undercutting the others by half) explained that he wanted to be able to use our project as part of his portfolio: he needed the credential of having completed the project. We decided to give him a shot.

This time we were very clear about our specifications and requirements. We were able to tell the developer exactly what we wanted, how we wanted it, and when we expected delivery.

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The project moved along and was delivered (about 3 weeks later than hoped). Total cost? $50. That’s right: $50.

We’ve subsequently come up with some additional ideas for apps and had them developed as well. We haven’t done anything that cost as little as $50, but we’ve had some success in promoting our firm with the applications we’ve built.

There’s a learning curve involved in building applications, and you need a good idea, but it’s a manageable undertaking. The key is carefully defining the project: before you start, you need to know exactly what you want and how you want it to work and look. From there, it’s simply a matter of going back and forth with a designer and a programmer.

If you’ve got a good idea for helping consumers, then give it a shot. Figure out a way to provide them with something they need, and make it available on their phones.