Do you have a great idea to develop a world class mobile app? Great, but how are you going to build it? What important factors you will consider while creating an app? These are the obvious questions you must ask yourself before making a decision to develop a smartphone app. Also, you should have a look at some statistics which will help you to understand how fast mobile world is growing.
- There are 4.43 billion mobile users around the world as of 2015 and the number is likely to reach to 5.07 billion by 2019.
- There are almost 1.6 million Android apps are available in Google Playstore.
- There are almost 1.5 million iOS apps are available in The Apple app store.
Above statistics show that the demand for mobile phones and mobile applications are consistently rising. But, the quality of mobile apps should not be compromised due to the increasing numbers; in fact, the developers need to ensure that the mobile applications they are developing are useful, easy to use and above all desired by the users.
I have highlighted the key areas on which the developers need to focus on before developing the mobile applications. Let’s check them out:
1. Deep Market Research
Before hitting the market and start developing an application you should conduct a proper market research. Analyzing the market thoroughly will give you insights about your competitors, their strategy, their strengths and weakness too. This information will prove to be useful as you can avoid repeating the mistakes your competitors made. Researchers often overlook customer reviews. These reviews can give you a glance of likes and dislikes of users about a particular type of app. Thus, you must ensure that you take a note of the pain areas and try to resolve it in your mobile app. This strategy can give you a chance to win over your competitor’s customers.
2. Efficiency
I always follow this simple mantra, “If you are doing something, do it with 100% efficiency and accuracy, else don’t just do it.” This is something users expect out of every available mobile application. When I say efficiency, I mean data efficiency too. Smartphone apps which excessively use 3G or 4G data are most likely to be downloaded and forgotten, if you don’t want your phone app to fall in that category, make sure that your app uses data efficiently and does not consume more data.
3. Serve something different
Have you ever thought why that recently opened restaurant in the town has created a buzz? Why people tend to visit new places and new restaurants because they are always looking for something different and fresh. Human beings have a tendency to get bored of one thing very easily.
Same is the case with mobile applications since there are millions of smartphone applications available, mobile users want to be served with something new. Hence, you should create something interesting that keep the users engaged with your mobile app.
4. Don’t keep the users waiting
Losing that string with the users while your phone app is loading may prove to be fatal, as the users might think that the app is malfunctioning. Also, it adds to create a negative impression in the user’s mind, hence giving them a bad user experience.
To avoid feeding your user’s mind with this, you can try using the loading indicators and animations to give them an assurance that the mobile app is still working, but it’s just waiting for the phone network. A progressive indicator is always better.
5. Price your mobile app correctly
Pricing is one of the most challenging yet crucial tasks which should not be ignored. Pricing your mobile app rightly is very important. Determining the price of an article which involves any products is easy, but choosing a price for a mobile application is difficult. There are a number of factors which a developer needs to consider before determining the correct price of the application.
6. Know your target audience
Defining your target audience is very important as the audience plays a huge impact on the development of your mobile application. All these questions such as who will be using this app, and how is it going to help them, be answered well beforehand. If you meet your user’s expectations, your smartphone app is likely to get more popularity.
7. Become a master of one platform
One of the most important questions which you should answer before developing your mobile app is that on how many platforms do you wish to launch your application? If you go with my suggestion, I would recommend you to become a master of one platform first and then get onto launch your mobile app on multiple platforms.
8. Focus on your marketing strategy
Creating that buzz before the launch is really important to get an overwhelming response at the time of launch. You need to ensure that you begin marketing your mobile app at the appropriate time. Most of the mobile app developers or businesses fail to execute the marketing plan effectively. Logically, the developers should start app marketing at least before 2-3 weeks of the launch to let the users know. Dima Midon, CEO at TrafficBox, a Digital Marketing Agency considers that creating that buzz before the launch is really important to get an overwhelming response at the time of launch.
9. Test your app before it hits the market
It is important to test your mobile application before you launch it in the market. You should have an experience in prior of how the users will see your app. Your app should be creative, easy to understand and deliver high performance. Testing it before the launch will allow you to iron out any nooks and crannies before it reaches the mass market.
After a successful alpha testing, you can recruit beta testers to initiate the second phase of testing. Learn as much as you can with the beta testers and try to improvise everything you can as per the observations. There are many app testing tools available in the market that you can use to organize the beta testing.
10. Emphasize on Description
For someone who is checking your mobile app for the first time in Google Play or iTunes App Store, description plays an important role. Someone who is not aware of what this app is all about will make the choice of downloading this app only by reading through the description.
Google Play Store/ Apple App store usually displays only 2-3 lines of the description. Users need to tap on Read more to read the full description, hence it is important to make the first 2-3 lines catchy enough to convert your app users into potential customers.
11. Know your Budget in advance
All the steps included in the development of a mobile app involve money. Knowing your budget and allocating it properly among each stage of app development is essential. I would recommend you to appoint someone who can keep a strict eye on the cost to ensure that your budget remains the same till the end as it was in the beginning.
There is no sure shot success pill of anything you do in this entire world, but these tips can definitely help you if you are planning to develop your mobile application and want it to last long.