Mobile App Design and Development in Madinah

Most visitors to Madinah stay only a few days, and many are elderly or not used to apps. That changes the design rules: there is no time to learn a complex interface, and no appetite for creating an account in many steps.

So we design visitor apps on simple principles: the device language is picked automatically, large buttons and short text, sign-in with a mobile number or booking code, and trip details, times and meeting points on the first screen. In many cases we recommend a web app opened from a WhatsApp link rather than a store app, because a visitor will not download an app for three days.

Transport companies in Madinah move visitors between the airport, hotels and historic sites, and run road trips and Haramain High-Speed Railway connections to Makkah and Jeddah. Coordination usually happens through scattered calls and messages with drivers and supervisors.

We build a three-part system: a driver app that shows trips and the passenger list and records boarding, an operations dashboard that assigns buses and tracks them on the map, and notifications to the visitor or group leader with the arrival time. The result is fewer delays and fewer calls at the height of the season.

Madinah is a centre of learning, home to the Islamic University, Taibah University and a large number of Quran memorisation circles and institutes. For memorisation circles in particular we build apps that bring the teacher, student and parent together:

We work remotely on Saudi hours: an online meeting, then an interactive prototype of the screens you try on your phone, then development in phases, each ending with a test build. We schedule launches well before the season so the app is tested on real use before the peak, not during it.

For hotels and serviced apartments, a guest app or web app eases pressure on reception at peak hours: online pre-check-in and ID upload, room number and arrival instructions, requests for housekeeping, maintenance and towels, meal times, and the shuttle schedule to the Haram if the hotel provides one.

Every request goes straight to the responsible department and is tracked to completion, so management knows each department’s average response time and deals with complaints before they turn into a bad review.

Charities in Madinah receive donations from inside and outside the Kingdom, and giving rises in Ramadan. A donation app shows projects with their goals and progress, and allows one-tap giving through mada and Apple Pay, monthly recurring donations and gifting in someone else’s name, with an instant receipt.

Behind it sits a dashboard for the charity that shows donations by project and channel, produces the reports supervising bodies require, and sends donors updates on the impact of their giving, which makes them more likely to give again.

For date stores in Madinah, an app opens a door a website alone does not: subscriptions. A customer who receives a monthly box, a company that orders gifts for its staff every Ramadan, or a family that repeats its usual order in one tap. We build these subscriptions with recurring payment and a reminder before each shipment.

We connect the app to shipping companies within the Kingdom and to stock by variety and grade, so nothing is sold that has run out in the warehouse.

Alongside the build cost, account for running costs: server hosting, verification messages and notifications, the payment gateway fee, the annual store account fees and updates for new iOS and Android releases. In Madinah in particular, server costs rise in season and then fall.

We estimate these costs in the quote based on the expected number of users in and out of season, so you know the real annual running cost before you start.