Even if you hadn’t personally tried it by now, the coronavirus outbreak must have surely compelled you to order groceries for home delivery, scan and deposit cheques from your smartphone. Most people have a smartphone nowadays, and the majority of them use it as more than just a phone. A smartphone is now treated as a mini-computer with heaps of features and applications. There are more than 2 million applications that are offered on iOS and Android devices currently, and more than a thousand apps are hitting Apple’s App Store alone daily. It will be interesting to experience what kind of more advanced apps the latest technology begets. However, with so many applications in the market, at times some pretty decent apps do not make it to the mainstream.
Take a second to think about all the successful apps that you have encountered, apps like Google Maps, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, etc. You must have thought of hundreds of names of mobile applications that are successful. Just think about the applications on your smartphone that you use regularly. There are so many successful applications, it has to be easy. What is the recipe? An amazingly great idea which is original, a dash of JavaScript or Swift, depending on the platform you choose to launch your app, a few users for it to gain some momentum, and there, you have your very own successful app now. Easy, isn’t it?
Now take another second and think about all the unsuccessful apps that you have encountered. Odds are you cannot think of any. But we guarantee you there are thousands of applications that fail every year. You must think about how is that possible when the process is easy as pie. The devil lies in the details.
Details are what separates the haves from the have nots in the mobile app development world. The app developers who develop successful apps pay extra attention to the tiniest part of the development process instead of skipping them if they are not as enjoyable.
Here we are going to share some secrets of mobile app development with you so that you can go ahead and get yourself a successful app as well.
Important Things to Know About Mobile App Development
1. Research and lots of it
Research is the first and without a doubt the most important part of developing a mobile app. Think about it like this, what would be the point of developing every detail of an app development only to find out someone else is also doing the same thing in the same way? Start your research with this question, “What can make my application different from others?” It can be anything, a thing of values, a unique logo, a unique algorithm, really anything that makes your app stand out among other apps. Some people have witnessed success with their marketing abilities alone. Conduct simple research on some of the major keywords your application might be listed on Google with, or within the app stores. Look at the competition, if you have any, to check who you are up against. The more time you spend on your research, the more you will know about your purpose, goal, and the direction you need to go for developing your app.
Also Read: Reasons Why Mobile Application is Important for Your Business
2. Marketing- Planning and Target Audience
After you are done with your research to see where you stand and understand what will make your application stand out, the next step would be to set up a plan. This is the step where all the little questions will raise like the pricing of your application, the initial price you will charge to download your app from the app store, or if you will let users download it for free if you will charge a monthly fee from the users, etc. The major questions would be, who is your target audience? What is the price range that will help you get to your target audience? Will you add more features from time to time to attract more users? Will you provide in-app purchases? And so many more questions like these would crop up. Planning and marketing is a critical step in your app development process. Coming up with the entire strategy of how your app will work, and the marketing that needs to be done to reach your target audience will be the foundation of your mobile app development. It would be in your best interest if you start locally with a good starting target market. An obvious factor would be the cost and time invested in the development of your mobile application. You should put together an estimated budget before you start with the development of your app. You can do this by contacting the best mobile app developing company.
3. Application Workflow
Workflow is nothing but how your app would be moving from place to place. At the time of developing your mobile app, this may look like an unnecessary thing to spend time on but every successful app you will come across has a specific design it flows in. This has to be planned down to the tiniest detail. The user interface of your platform is quite important. If your application is too hard to use, most users will drop it at the very beginning without giving it a second thought. For your users to spend valuable time on your app, you need to integrate enough features and diversity.
While the workflow of an app is how you move from place to place, intuitive navigation is the clear-cut details of how you would get to the pages on each page. Paying special attention to details is what would allow you to develop seamless intuitive navigation. Where will be the placement of individual buttons, if it is better to have a pop-out menu? Things like these are more important than you might think. So it is essential to spend a good amount of time on the structure of your app as you need to make sure the users get to enjoy using it and reach their destination point quickly and without any trouble.
Read More: Mobile Application or Mobile Website: Which Is Best for Your Business?
5. Color Scheme
The color scheme is one of those little things that developers might overlook. You should go and Google right away and read about color psychology. You will find tens of hundreds of articles on this subject talking about the combination of different colors that bring out different emotions in people. Why are we giving out this information, you would think? Well, the colors you use in your app have the most dramatic effect on your users. It builds the first impression, and do they not say the first impression is the last impression! The idea behind it is what do you want your mobile application to convey in a subtle manner while users are navigating through it? Decide your color scheme according to what you want a user to take away from your app.
6. Device Orientation
We can say without a doubt that a person alive in 2020 has interacted using various apps. Have you ever noticed the fact that depending on the type of app you use, the orientation of it shifts? Some shift straight away to a landscape view, while some stay in the portrait view. Why does it matter you ask? Again, the device orientation of your app can entirely change the interaction a user has with it. This might greatly impact the popularity of your mobile app if it is not developed with a design that is responsive and makes it easier for your users to use.
Also Know: 12 Best Mobile App Development Frameworks
7. Mobile-First Design
If you do not belong to the app developing world or are new to the programming world, it only makes sense that you are not familiar with this term. Let us help, Mobile-first design is developing a design that is responsive starting out from the size of a standard mobile screen and going upwards. Offhand, it might not sound like something you need to pay attention to if you are developing an application for iOS or Android, but with the popularity of tablets, this needs to be considered. How do the individual parts of your app impact the user interaction with your app on a tablet? A consideration like this can have a great effect on the increasing number of downloads of your app.
Final Words
There are a lot of things to consider while you are developing your mobile app besides the money you would be investing in it. This can have a major effect on how successful your app will be. The best way we can put this in is, “better safe than sorry.” If you consider everything written in this article, you have the best odds at getting your mobile app successful. So now is the chance to put your app idea into action and test it.