And I am sure you are too fascinated by the power of apps in your little phone and would be planning to make one for your startup.
But before you rush in excitement to hire someone to make an app for you, Do you know the basics and the process of app development?
If you are already aware of all the steps involved in developing an app and the financial risks, then you’re good to go, and I wish you Good Luck!
But if you have no idea of what I am talking about, you must stick to reading this.
In this blog, you will know what an app is, how it is made, the different steps involved in making an app, how much it costs at every stage, and whether you should get an app for your business.
Table of Contents
Steps in Mobile App Development Process
Idea
A great innovation always comes from an idea. The desire to solve a problem you are facing to such an extent that you want to translate it then and there, but you don’t have the means for it.
Keep on asking: Why are you doing something the way you are now, and can you make it a little easier for yourself and others? Talk to others about it, do they feel the same about that problem, and how they would like it to be solved.
Strategy
It includes initial conversation, goal definition, competitive audit, user feedback, goal review, report.
Competition
Look for apps already in business with similar ideas. Keep a close look at your competitors’ app reviews and user complaints, and try to solve those issues in your app, fill all the gaps left by your competitors to quickly jump in the market and stand as an equal or even surpass them. Make it your USP.
Monetization
Having a strategy in place for monetizing your app will help you earn money in various ways, including in-app purchases, ad income, premium features, subscription payments, user data sales, and traditional paid apps. You must analyze the competitors to determine which one will work best for you.
Marketing
Marketing is a powerful tool that we all can use, and we should use it to promote our app. You may ask Why? There are millions of apps available in the market, and your app will vanish in the blink of an eye, but thanks to marketing, your app has a chance of getting centre stage. Use marketing to bring awareness to your app and your business. But here, you must come to a truce with your marketing budget and the approach you will take.
Road Map (MVP)
In simple words, a Roadmap is the outcomes you want for your app and the steps you need to take to achieve those outcomes. Devise clear goals for your app like attaining users and the USP of your app, marketing, and achieving it step by step.
User Experience Design
It includes wireframes, user flows, everyday user actions, validate assumptions, iterations, a tappable UX Prototype.
Information Architecture
You have to decide and prioritize the features you want to display in your app and then pick a suitable position to place them. Generally, you need your team members to suggest ideas to do it.
Wireframes
It’s the early phase of designing screens for your app where you are just giving your plans a skeleton to visualize and assign functions and data. Designing wireframes may take time but before you move on to writing code for your app, consider every element properly.
Workflows
Workflows are the tracks that guide the users to do what you planned for in your app. But your users are not ‘bots’, and they will not use your app if your workflow is not relevant. Avoid unnecessary clicks to do a simple task that can be achieved otherwise.
Click-through models
It’s the combination of the clickable workflow in a wireframe; it allows you to experience the workflow by clicking on every tab and page and the app’s navigation. If something is missing, you could get it fixed.
User-Interface Design
It includes Brand integration, design framework, consistent language, input/feedback, iterations, tappable UI Prototype.
Style guides
Keep a uniform design. By doing this, your users will know what to expect as they are familiar with it, and literally, users like familiar designs. The style of your app will solely depend on the group of users you are targeting. You wouldn’t want your business app, which is supposed to be full of direct information, to look like a fitness app. I guess you got my point. Right!
Rendered designs
It’s when you replace those grey elements of your wireframes and envelope them with your style guide to have your app look a little closer to a finished design. Make adjustments if something doesn’t look right but change it for that element for every screen to maintain consistent design.
Rendered Click-through models
It’s the same as the previously discussed click-through model, but here we have rendered screens with the style guide to test. The workflow we could experience with the rendered screens gives us a better idea of how an app would look when it is finished and running.
High-level Technical Design (Tech Stack)
Front-end (the mobile app)
You could choose between Platform-specific Native apps, Cross-platform apps, and Hybrid apps for the front-end based on your budget and requirements.
- Native apps: These apps are specifically made for specific Operating Systems (iOS or Android).
- Cross-platform apps: These apps have shared code, but they run natively, making them usable on different OS.
- Hybrid apps: elements of both native apps and web applications are combined and wrapped in a native shell.
Back-end (Web API & Server)
Back-end refers to the server-side of the app, which decides your app’s performance and scalability.
- Language: Languages such as Java, Go lang, Python and many more have frameworks that can be utilized to build APIs. Choose one depending on your proficiency with the language and its performance as a server back-end.
- Database: Well organized and reliable data is a must for your app’s success, and a database helps you store data with unique keys, which makes it fast. SQL and PostgreSQL are common examples.
- Hosting Environment (Infrastructure): You need to choose a hosting service provider for your APIs and database, which decides the hosting costs and your app’s reliability and scalability—for Example, AWS.
Development & Iteration
It includes Milestone, screen and features, product build, quality assurance, iterations, working app.
Planning
In the planning phase, you split your development into smaller milestones (called ‘Sprint’)and then achieve it one by one. Discuss each task and requirement with the developers to enable them to come up with their schedules to do each task. Have them plan for the hurdles that could come in between and devise an approach to tackle those hurdles.
Development
The goals of your app should be clear to your developers for the successful implementation of the desired features in your app and its smooth functioning. As developers approach the final development stage, styles and functions are implemented, assign it to your QA team for testing.
Testing
Testing should be done during each sprint so that developers can repair any defects in parallel to save time. Testing guarantees that the app is of high quality and that all of the features are working correctly. Apps must be thoroughly tested before being turned over to developers for correction.
Functional testing, performance testing, usability testing, regression testing, fit and finish testing, device-specific user testing, and acceptance testing are all testing examples.
You must aim for qualifying all these mentioned tests for your app before deploying it. You must also ask potential users to give their reviews about your app, providing you with feedback to make adjustments if required.
Go for beta testing whenever you can, where you will launch your app for a small group of early beta testers who will use your app before the market and share their feedback of what’s good and what’s missing.
Deployment
Web API (Server)
Web servers are responsible for transferring data to and from the app, and so you need to deploy your servers to a scalable and dependable cloud environment such as AWS. Your app could gain a new user base and scale anytime soon, and you must be ready for it. Cloud servers will keep your app working smoothly.
App Stores
Popular app stores such as Google Playstore and Apple Appstore have guidelines that you need to follow to publish your app in their app stores. Read their terms and conditions carefully and make adjustments to your app to comply with what’s required. Once every requirement is fulfilled, your app will be reviewed and published accordingly. Then you can run ads and promote.
Monitoring
Regular monitoring of your app’s performance is necessary to know what is working and what is not. A successful app keeps itself updated and running. There should be regular updates published for your app, including fixes, performance improvements, changes, and new features. Monitoring must include error monitoring, performance monitoring, metrics, tracking, packaged information, and report.
Crashes
Crashes are a massive no-no for a user, and you need to optimize your app to prevent it from crashing. Use libraries to track app crashes and know what exactly is causing these to happen. Configure your app to send you the bug and crash reports via text or email. Then your development team can fix it and provide an update for the app.
Analytics
Analytics are necessary for you to know what kind of users are using your app, including their location, age, language, gender details which will help you better target your users. Analytics also tells you which features are being used very often and which are not being used at all, so you could stress your future efforts into making your app more user friendly. Use Google Analytics as it’s the most popular and reliable.
Performance
Keep track of the performance of your app. Apps usually get across several issues which slow the loading time. Users will not use an app that is not performing what it has been designed for. Keep alerts in your app to notify you of any permanence issue like any feature taking longer than expected, learn about it and fix it.
App Store Management
Once you publish your app, users will use it and write reviews; you must engage and reply to those reviews. Try to address the complaints individually and satisfy your users, and don’t forget to thank someone for their positive reviews. Reviews and ratings of an app are critical in any app store. Monitor it closely.
Conclusion
You need to be passionate and inspired, and at the same time, be able to make difficult decisions. Mobile app development is tempting but exhausting as well. It takes time and frequent amendments of strategies to adapt to the user’s demands. Improving and updating your app must be performed regularly as the users’ behaviour changes rapidly, and you don’t want them to stop using your app and services because you lagged to change with their pace.
If you are planning to build your app and want someone who is a professional to help you with your project, you could always hire a dedicated development team from a reputed agency, and you don’t have to worry about anything. They have project managers, skilled and experienced developers and designers and every professional you will need to complete your app development process.
If everything goes well, it could prove to be an extremely lucrative and profitable business.
