Mobile apps play an era-defining role in all walks of business and life. There are mobile apps representing every niche, purpose, and user situation. But there is stiff competition among the millions of apps; hence, developing a new mobile app requires meticulous considerations.

Here we are going to provide some practical tips for developing successful apps.

Start researching your app audience.

The elementary principle is to have a deep understanding of the users who are going to use the mobile app. Just by knowing your audience, one can have a clear understanding of how to make the app popular among the target audience.

To know the target audience for the app, always research competitor apps, take a look into industry stats and insights, and review current trends and communication of the users on different forums. You can also carry out demographic surveys and opinion polls on social media.

Ensure delivering a value

Any app comes as a solution to single or multiple problems. This happens irrespective of the app niche. So, you need to know who is going to find your app useful and the value propositions you can offer them.

When your app’s value proposition looks similar to the value propositions of other apps, you need to work on it to bring more useful features or a better user experience. This is how apparently similar apps also can deliver better value for users.

Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

When the app features and the user experience attributes are decided for the project, you need to make a step-by-step plan to release the app and its subsequent updates in phases. The so-called “great to have” features can still wait for the next update; it is important to focus on the core features for the initial release.

This is what Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as a development approach offers you. This phased-out development approach will help release the app quicker. Based on the market feedback, you can add more features or improve the user experience through future updates.

Choose the right development platform.

Now you need to decide on the right operating system platform for the proposed app project and the relevant tech stack. The app project can also be a cloud or hybrid app to run on all platforms. Your choice can also be developing native apps for Android and iOS.

Some app projects also prefer to go cross-platform that, despite sharing code across all platforms, deliver a truly native user experience. There are widely popular cross-platform frameworks such as Flutter and React Native that can be used to develop apps with a native look and feel running on both iOS, Android, web, and desktop.

Find the development team.

With all the above, you have created a detailed project requirement plan. Before development, you need to figure out the skilled team responsible for building the app.

In case your business is from the non-technical niche, hiring a reputed development company for the project will be wise.

Let’s provide here some tips for finding the right development team.

• Make sure you make the company sign NDA before discussing the app idea and any details of the project requirements.
• Secondly, ensure that the app development company offers the right set of skills and expertise as per your tech stack requirements.
• Read the portfolio deeply and get direct feedback from the previous clients of the respective company.
• Choose a development company with sufficient exposure and experience with your industry niche.
• Conduct a detailed technical assessment involving both interview and peer programming tests to lay bare all the capabilities and shortcomings.
• Ensure building a collaborative team that can easily accommodate iterations.
• Always insist on post-development support and continuous value additions for the app project.
• Lastly, figure out the development time and advantage in regard to competitive cost.

Developing the App

As soon as the app mock-up design is ready and you are developing a dynamic prototype, you need to start putting the development process in order. Since it is the core process, let’s provide some effective tips to get the best out of your ambitious project.

• Since you have opted for lean and MVP development approaches, just keep the most elementary ones to stay away from complexities.
• Try to use push notifications more context-driven to benefit users more.
• Make sure the entire app is future-proof by allowing new features and user experience attributes.
• Always insist on using a lightning-quick database technology prioritized for best features, structure, security, flexibility, ease of use, scalability, and performance.
• When getting onboard a development company, always take a look at their earlier project experience and exposure to similar app projects, app portfolio, process, required skills, project management, etc.

Don’t undermine app testing.

As the final step, testing the app is of critical importance not just for keeping the app absolutely free from coding errors, bugs, and different issues. Irrespective of the niche, in most agile development projects, app testing is simultaneously carried out alongside the development. Every app screen is tested, and overall app performance goes through rigorous evaluation. Both the app frontend and backend are also tested independently.

For every app developed, user testing comes as a must-do thing. For many app projects, it is an internal as well as an external step. This is particularly important to evaluate the app by unknown users so that unbiased opinions about the app can be fetched.

Several great automation tests are also used for testing the apps UserTesting, Ubertrsters, TestFairy, Ubertesters, etc. These tools, to a great extent, reduce the development time by fast-pacing all the steps.

Concluding Remarks

All the practical advice we provided above concerning mobile app projects has been tried and tested through hundreds and thousands of successful app projects. By embracing these tips and advice, one can shape the app to perfection more easily; hence, following them is important.

Author Bio

Will Ben Sims is CEO of Cerdonis Technologies LLC – A software development company that provides a wide range of app development services. Will ben and his team have developed a number of mobile application solutions for various business. Apart from his professional life, Will ben is very good at playing rugby.

(This is a Guest Post by Cerdonis Technologies LLC, please contact us to become a contributor or to submit your guest post at miantahirrauf@gmail.com)