I’m a digital product manager and have worked with lots of non-technical TV people on games/apps/websites. I totally get where you’re coming from. Having an idea and what you want it to do is one thing; knowing what to ask for and all the “extra” bits that you wouldn’t ever think of is a completely different thing.

All the below may sound scary. You have to do it on your own - you can work with the developers/agency (if they’re good) to specify it together. But that may well not be possible if you’ve hired a developer to just implement what you ask for.

Really good developers and many agencies can help with this stuff but far too many don’t. They do exactly what you’ve asked for, not much else, and make a lot of assumptions. That’s not a criticism of them - that’s also often not their skillset, in the same way thinking about server or build processes isn’t yours!

So, I’d suggest you think of your app as 2 linked apps, or two parts of the same software:
- one is what users see and use, the user-interface “front-end”
- the other is “back office” admin tool whoever is running the app (you)
- and completely separate to that is the tools, software and various admin things that developers use to turn code into an actual website or mobile app (including the back office bit) that people can see.

1. Have you asked for an admin app? If devs are just mentioning “admin panel” it that could mean anything from the iTunes/Google app submission site, to a database admin tool or a code-processing tool that turns the code they write into the actual app file. You don’t want to get into the second two of those if you’re not experienced.

2. If you have asked for an admin app what have you asked for? You need to be specific about how easy you want it to be, how you access it etc. In theory a admin app could be a text file that you edit and the software sucks that in and changes accordingly. This could well work as a cheap “hack” for a logo change for example.

3. What have you asked for the admin app to do? You (or somebody) needs to be really specific.

Example - the developers may assume the logo is never going to change so they may “hard code” the logo in. This means only a developer can update it and it may need a whole new release of the app. But if you specify that you need to be able to swap the logo yourself via a non-technical back-end option then they can build that in. The same with text. If you give developers some copy that goes in the app they could just paste that text into the code. Or they could make the app look that text up from a content management system meaning you can update it.

Another example - if you want to be able to log in and send push notifications that you type in, you need to (a) specify that the app can send push notifications, (b) specify that you want to be able to type them in manually, or maybe you want to manage it from a 3rd party CRM system etc). If you haven’t specified it you won’t get what you want (if you get it at all).

All these extra things take additional development and testing so cost more so it’s important to think about which ones you really need to be easily updated yourself vs getting a developer in to do.

I realise that was a lot and you may not understand it all. Happy to answer more questions and clarify etc.