The mobile app is the masterpiece of the bunch of digital technology offerings, which is alluring various industry verticals for transforming the processes and transmogrifying the users. The enterprises are looking at their future in the future of mobile apps. However, mobile app development is not an easy endeavor. The clear focus and careful planning from conceptualizing and designing to coding and launch are critical for making the app ready for success.
But, even after giving attention to the trivial things, the app that’s expected to create a huge buzz in the market upon its final launch, it fails to perform well, gain optimum downloads, meet revenue goals, and alas, burst like a balloon. That’s upsetting!
The reason can be app stores are jam-packed with billions of apps that are confusing the users. It’s all not due to the crowded app store which is offering the myriad of the choices to the users. Instead, the newly created app lacks something or a slight mistake is made during app development that makes it either mediocre or bad app.
Certainly, you don’t want to put all the bets off. Right? For this, it’s important to ensure that the mobile app to be developed or in the development stage give the best shot, which is possible by following the best development practices and avoiding the common slip-ups during development.
Here are the 6 mobile app development tips that can potentially save your app from the disaster:
Playing a copycat game
In the oversaturated app market, the established apps have a strong value proposition and cloning such apps is a quick way to piggyback off their success and share the financial spoils of a viral hit. Some developers consider the cloning as a smart way to rule over the success of others, but it’s actually termed as plagiarism.
When the app is built on the top of the app idea that’s stolen from the existing app idea, and most of the part is replicated including presentation style, controls, monetization model, and so on, without creative improvements, then it not just mislead the public while crossing the line of infringement.
When the user encounters such things, they don’t give even a second glance to the app. Also, you are risking the app to be deleted by the app store anytime because app store hates app cloning.
Over-thinking about development
The basic app idea and initial features are the beginning of an app which helps the app onboard success journey. It’s good to keep it simple without getting overly complex during app development that’s not only proves to be costly but increases the chances of bugs sneaking through. It hurts the app performance, impacts user experience and wrecks the ROI.
The best practice involves stick to the idea and doesn’t overdo with the addition of ornamental functionalities so that the users can access and get the information as quickly and easily as they can, else they will get lost in the navigation structure. Also, the target users are on-the-go users who are not willing to spend their time in learning how the app works. It frustrates them.
Craft the app that meets the unique needs of the users in a unique and simple way. By delivering more with fewer features, the users can achieve the most, which in turn, help you win the users forever because the apps topping the charts are highly results-focused. Follow the same way, else be left in the dust.
Also Read: 5 Steps To Craft A Business Plan For Your App Idea
User experience becomes an afterthought
The blunder mistake that developers make during app development is ignoring the user experience that the app will deliver. With the mobile app, the developers have small real estate to play around where the small screens, limited processing power, battery life, and inaccurate touch input are the UX challenges that can pop-up performance issues and the users start looking for the alternative.
At the basest level, the developers must ensure that app UI is beautifully designed that catch the eyeballs at first glance. The onboarding journey must be simple without too many fields to collect the user’s information. The clean interface and easy navigation are necessary to make the app usable. The touch controls’ size must be set according to screen size so the users can easily perform the intended action. With bandwidth management, the app must work in varying internet connections, else it drives away the users. Battery consumption must be kept low by avoiding unnecessary background activities.
Don’t let you app lapse or lose its charm in the dynamic marketplace just because it fails to offer brilliant user experience.
Also Read: Top 7 Mobile App Design Slip-Ups That You Should Avoid
Undefined post-launch engagement strategy
Gaining the millions of downloads after a week of the app launch isn’t end of the success journey, it’s just a beginning. To maintain downloads and keep continuous usage of the app for the long term, it’s necessary to directly communicate with the users and engaging them with real-time alerts or relevant notifications for bringing them back to the app. If the developers think that initial success let the app sit on the user’s phone, it’s a mistake as it will quickly be overtaken by the competition.
The mobile app users are actually mobile in nature, which creates the need of reminding the users about the app they have downloaded on the handset and retains their interest to re-engage with the mobile app which is not used after they tried it for once or twice.
It can be accomplished by getting in connection with them through push notifications, SMS, or email, even when the app is closed. Also, the new functionalities, UI tweaks, or deletion of unnecessary features based on the user’s feedback gives a reason to the users to retain, revisit, and reuse the app, and never let them run away. The social integration is a good option that allows users to share the app experiences on social channels and invite their friends to install the app, which further improves engagement.
No plans for scalability
The app declared as flawless in the lab after testing doesn’t guarantee that the app is ready for the future. At the starting, you won’t expect more than thousands of the users use the app concurrently, but how about the situation when the app goes viral and the user base grow exponentially. The app will certainly crash and you fail to monetize the unexpected success came to your app.
It can be avoided when you have thought a ton about the global audience, and the speed and reliability they expect. The scalability can be kept by opting for the cloud servers so that abrupt increase in the user base and their concurrent request can be handled seamlessly.
Leveraging global coverage and global redundancy, the users located in any part of the earth will get the same experience as the multiple points of presence connecting the users with the closest data center that in turn eliminate the low internet connectivity problem, and in the event, any point of presence get weak, the user will immediately connect to the next closest.
There is one more thing to keep in mind. According to the target market, the app must be built for the platforms that help in reaching out the maximum users. Initially, it’s good to build the app for either one or two platforms- Android and iOS that together covers 96% of the market share, if the research suggests you to spread the app on more platforms, then you can start building. Plan for building the app for other platforms when it suits to your budget and revenue equation.
Also, the tech giants update the mobile platforms after a while, it becomes necessary to check that app developed using the framework is compatible with latest devices and support new versions, else the app will always be behind and become outdated before it’s released.
Thinking early about the global audience, the internet connectivity conditions, and the operating system updates aids in making the app future-proof.
Ignoring the security aspect
When the thought of security comes later to the development team, it mirrors how much they care about the users. The term security is not reserved for the apps where the user’s sensitive data such as financial data or credentials are stored. It’s a sign, it doesn’t matter what the genre of the app is, be it gaming, messaging, or banking, the user’s data in transit, or on the app must be protected from the malware attacks.
History has witnessed that the apps that have made app security an afterthought, they were hacked and the cases of the data breach had occurred, which ruined the reputation that took years to the companies to repair.
In the world of internet, it’s easy to put a dent in the app security, but by adding several layers of security, the fraudulent activities can be disabled. The SSL, TLS, or AES encryption can be included which makes the end-to-end messaging completely safe and cannot be eavesdropped by anyone. From the sender’s machine, the messages are encrypted and get packed, and at the receiver’s machine, the messages are decrypted and unpacked to read.
The fine-grained control access is an additional layer of security where the individual users are granted or revoked the permission to read and write the data, which prevent unauthorized access cases. The secured payment gateways should be used to make financial transactions secure and store the data safely. Moreover, using biometric authentication like- fingerprint scanning, voice analysis, face recognition, or retina scanning, the app login can be made cent percent secure.
Epilogue
The mobile app offer bouquet of benefits, but only when the app is ready in a true sense. The developers can do it when they actually put themselves in the end user’s shoes, they will have an easier time. It’s because the users are not expecting anything superficial, they just want the app to meet their unique needs in a simple way alongside breathtaking experience and robust security. That’s all.
The game-changing solutions have scored groundbreaking success due to the changes brought in the way the app is developed at every level and then, the game of app is changed. The app development companies should follow the app UI guidelines, stick to the development principle, and avoid common pitfalls to set up the app for success and make it a next big hit. All the best!
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