Mobile apps are a trend in the age of the internet. Anyone can build one. But will all succeed? Statistics say that 99.5% of consumer apps fail due to no user retention, fewer than 1000 active users, and other reasons. Disappointing? It shouldn’t be. With careful consideration, you can get into that successful 0.5% that makes millions of dollars if not billions. Where to start? You start with research and this article can be one of the first texts to read.
These are the basic steps for mobile app development:
- Conduct market research
- Analyze the target audience
- Identify and investigate competitors
- Find a development vendor
- Choose features/
- Define your Minimum Viable Product
- Design UX and UI
- Choose a platform and technology stack
- Develop, test, and launch the app
- Mobile app development failures
Conduct market research
Launching the product without knowing the market is like jumping into a fire barefoot. Everybody says that you should conduct market research. But how to do that?
The first thing to do is to read. Once you collect some information, next thing is to talk to experts in the industry. The information collection can be in the form of interviews or a study of documentation. Yes, it’s a hard job but it’s necessary.
You can conduct surveys on social media. And remember – you don’t have to remember all the information. Everything needs to be documented. Reports, survey data, expert opinions, and everything else should be compiled in a document.
Analyze the target audience
Know your customers.
- What do they like?
- What don’t they like?
- What are their needs?
How do you do that? I will tell you something that has 100% value. Be a customer yourself! Buy similar products and see what works for you and what doesn’t. Asking friends’ opinions and doing social media surveys will also help.
Identify and investigate competitors
That’s a good source of information for you.
- Who are my competitors?
- Which competitors succeed and which don’t?
- Why?
- Are there market gaps? Once again you should document this information in the Specifications Document. Your Specification Document should be your guide, your Bible I would say!
Find a development vendor
Once you are clear about what you want to do, you need to find the right development vendor. Since the development team will play a crucial role in your project, it is important to understand how you will choose an experienced team.
You start with a simple search. What to search and how? If you are interested in a development team in a specific country or area, you search for top software companies in that area. LinkedIn is a good source of information. Other sources are review and rating companies like Clutch and GoodFirms. But do not restrain only with the opinions of these agencies. You can directly contact the clients of the companies you pre-selected.
Choose features
What features to select? By the time you collect information on market demands, customer needs, market gaps, and competitor strengths and weaknesses, you should be clear on what features you want to include in your product. If you can come up with something unique, you can aspire to success. Think of the success of TikTok which took the chance to fill customer needs and market gaps. A simple idea may pay back in millions of dollars.
Define your minimum viable product
Once you are clear on your basic features, you are ready to launch your minimum viable product (MVP). What is MVP and why do you need to have one? In simple words, MVP is the initial version of your product. Why do you need to build the initial version first? Simply because it is cheaper and consumes less time. In addition, you can review the feedback received from early adopters and rebuild your product according to the feedback received. I can’t overestimate the importance of this step. You can use tools for creating a simple mobile app prototype.
Here is the price tag for MVP for the world’s biggest companies:
Don’t be scared at this moment. Your app should not cost you as much. An MVP may cost you from $5000 to $15000 depending on your app's complexity and the developers' location.
Design UX and UI
Why do I want to talk about UX and UI design specifically? We live in a world where appearance sells. And UX and UI design are the passports of your brand. And not only that. Investing in UX design in advance can reduce costs at a later stage.
It takes a lot of research, analysis, and testing for a good UX design. Why is this important? Simply because you prevent possible usability issues and problems from the start. If you are good at the starting phase, it will be much cheaper than fixing issues later.
Choose a platform and technology stack
You can choose between native, cross-platform, and hybrid platforms. Native apps are known for high performance, speed, and exceptional UX. However, there are time-consuming and costly. Instant apps are a good example of native apps.
If you ask me as someone who is writing on app development for more than a year, I would say go for cross-platform to increase your customer base especially when there are super good cross-platform tools like Flutter, Kotlin, React Native, etc.
Talking about the tech stack, you need to do some more research as everything depends on the complexity of your app, its functionalities, and your business intent.
Develop, test, and launch the app
After you go through so many stages of research and testing, you will be able to launch your app. Once you do that, any modification will take you lots of money. Therefore, modifying the app in the initial stage is highly recommended. Launching the app does not mean you have no more spending. Just for bug fixing and other standard activities, you need to be ready to spend at least 15–20% of the initial cost of development per year. The cost of your app, on the other hand, will depend on factors like the location of your developers and the complexity of the app.
Wrapping up
What is the whole story of mobile app development? I would say it is 80% research and only 20% development work. You may think otherwise and have a firm belief that it is the development team that plays the key role in the app development process. That is not so. It is You, the idea generator, who will determine the success of your app. To me, the idea is more important than the development process. Ideas rule.
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