Throughout the years, the popularity of smartphones has been increasing rapidly. The majority of people have their smartphones. According to Statista, in 2019, there were 6.5 billion smartphone users worldwide, and they are expected to reach up to 7.5 billion by the year 2026.
With the increasing popularity of smartphones, the mobile app development industry is also growing rapidly. The total app revenue is expected to reach up to 6.3 trillion by 2021. Mobile apps have made our lives convenient. We have a mobile app for all our everyday needs and can finish most of our tasks with a single click.
From grocery shopping to controlling our household gadgets, mobile apps make our lives much easier. Meanwhile, mobile apps have been essential for businesses around the world. Business apps have many benefits, such as brand building, increase awareness, improves customer relations, enhances customer engagements, increases revenue growth, and many more.
However, having an idea is not enough; a lack of knowledge can drown your time and financial investments. Mobile app development is a step-by-step process, and careful implementation can land you an amazing app that can help you generate a hefty revenue.
Mobile app development has six prime stages. By planning the process properly, you can develop your business hassle-free and take your business to the next level.
Let’s dive in.
Research and finalizing the idea
The foremost step in app development is to do thorough research. Once you have finalized your idea, you need to pay attention to market study and find the sustainability of your project. Market research will help you discover new ideas, but it will also help you find out the requirements you need to complete your project.
You need to focus on many objectives to ensure that your app will be successful and stay steady in the long run.
- App objective
App objective means the aim of your mobile app. It works as a digital map for your project. It helps you determine how your app will help make people’s lives convenient and solve the problems people face every day.
- Audience
The audience is the most important factor for mobile app developers. If your app does not have a prospective audience, your app has low chances of becoming successful.
- Required features
Nowadays, people are looking for all the new features and technologies that can make their lives easier; thus, do thorough research on what the market lacks and try to add those features to your mobile app.
- Platforms
Your app should also have a targeted platform. Determine which Operating System you want to launch your app on and if you want to develop a hybrid, cross-platform, or native app.
- Competitors
For the long run in the market, you need to do a proper analysis of your competitors. Read their reviews, study their customer feedback, and determine what their customers lack from them. And include them in your app.
- Monetizing strategy
Developing an app requires a heavy investment. Your team needs to finalize the monetizing strategy to avoid unnecessary expenses.
- Marketing
After developing the app, a proper marketing strategy is required. Study other businesses’ marketing strategies and plan yours accordingly.
- Maintenance
Do not think that your work is done after developing and launching the app. It would help if you worked hard to maintain your app and keep it up-to-date.
App Designing
The two most effective factors in app designing are user interface(UI) and experience design(UX). UI provides a visual medium; on the other hand, UX provides multiple characteristics of human interaction.
- Architecture and Workflow
Information architecture is a designed framework that includes the detailed version of data, interface, and app functionality. It is necessary to finalize the architecture and technical stack before designing the app. Workflow is necessary to portrait the app designing steps.
- Wireframes
Wireframes are known as the user interface design in the app development process. It provides the visual indications of the app and portraits key elements and salient details like the size and placements of the elements. Their prime focus is the app’s aesthetics, layout, and user experience.
- Style
Style is all focused on standards, usability, and consistency. Styling an app includes various factors, such as standardization of UI elements and frames, usability drives process flow, and uniqueness of the app. The style guide provides the details of app functions that make the development of a high-quality mobile app.
- Prototype
A prototype is a trial version of your mobile app. They are required if you’ve used new technologies, untested concepts, or there are some uncertainties about the app development. It helps you understand the concept of your app and its functionality. It may consume more time than usual, but in the end, it offers the testing of your app that can be very beneficial during the launch.
App Development
App development includes developing the code, preliminary testing, and creating an app that can be tested and installed. Mobile app development requires developing codes and configuring the environment in three parts, back-end technology, APIs, and front-end.
- Back-End technology
In back-end technology, the database and server-side become a primary focus for supporting your app function by connecting it to a network. If you are using back-end support, you’ll need configuration and changes for supporting your app functionality.
- APIs
Application programming interface (API) is a type of software that helps interconnecting apps and the back-end database. Additionally, you can interconnect your app with the operating system components and existing software in your business.
- Front-End
Usually, mobile apps contain interactive user experiences that connect with the back-end to manage the data through APIs. Your end-users interact with the front-end. Mobile app requires suitable APIs to download and store the data locally if you want your users to have an offline experience.
As we know, there are multiple programming languages available in the market; you need to choose the one that suits the functionality of your mobile app. All the programming languages used by back-end technology can be used to support the server language. For android app development, Java and Kotlin are used, and for iOS app development, Objective-C and Swift programming languages are used.
The mobile app development technology evolves throughout the years; the mobile app development companies are trying their hardest to stay one step ahead of the market. They put their best efforts into mobile app development and make the app more convenient and smooth for their customers.
App Testing
One of the most important stages of mobile app development is app testing. It shows you your app quality and highlights the area that needs more work. Doing app testing at each development step will make the work easy for you and won’t be a burden during the final launch.
Testing is done to resolve all the overlooked queries in app development. If they are unresolved, they may cause technical issues and give you a bad reputation. Testing helps to keep the cost low and build an effective app. The cost of fixing a bug gets higher after each stage of mobile development. Thus, it is inevitable to keep testing the app at each stage.
While developing a mobile app, two types of tests performed; functional tests and non-functional steps. A functional test is a term where an app is tested based on the client’s requirement of specific functionality. It provides suitable input and expects the correct output while testing the user interface.
Meanwhile, in non-functional testing, the test focuses on the app’s good quality, such as security, scalability, usability, performance, and response time. It covers up all the test that wasn’t conducted in functional testing.
Once all the bugs are removed, the testing manager gives a thumbs up to complete the testing phase.
App Launch
After all the procedures mentioned above, the final step of app development is app deployment. But it is not as easy as it seems. There are numerous factors you need to keep in mind before launching your app in the app store. Before launching your app, you need to finalize your app’s title, description, category, keywords, launch icons, and app screenshots.
Once you submit your app in the Apple store, it takes up to a week to review, depending on the quality of your app and how accurately it follows the store guidelines. If your app requires your users to log in, you also need to submit a user account along with the developer’s account.
However, Google play store does not have a review system. Your app becomes visible hours after your submission. You can soft launch your app with your team to get the beta version of early feedback.
However, launching an app doesn’t mean that your work is done. Your team must constantly monitor your app and its usage via mobile analytic platforms and measure its success. By constantly monitoring, you can check crash reports or any other issues your users are facing.
Marketing
Your work doesn’t stop after app deployment. You need to promote your app to reach potential users. Your mobile app’s success severely depends on your marketing strategies. Mobile app marketing includes finding the target audience, learning how to approach them, analyzing their behavior, communicating with them to understand their requirements, etc.
The primary aim of the marketing strategy is to gain user loyalty and make them regular users.
Here are a few steps you should follow before finalizing your marketing strategy.
- Fix a release date.
- Conduct market research for your targeted audience.
- Create user persona.
- Do a market analysis for competition.
- Create a landing page.
- Promote your app on social media.
You can also try paid marketing, App Store Optimization(ASO), and push notifications to increase user engagement.
Asking for user feedback is also a part of app marketing. It highlights the user requirements and any gaps you might have in your app. You can modify that in your next app update. Set goals and track your store ratings. You can use an analytical tool to track your churn rate, daily activate users, time in-app, cost per acquisition, etc. These numbers will help you determine what worked and what did not work. You can use those numeric and modify your app accordingly to enhance your business.
Conclusion
Mobile app development may seem like a tiring process, but you can develop your excellent app and make it thrive with thorough planning. This article features a step-by-step guide for mobile app development you can follow in building your app.
If you are looking for an impeccable mobile app development company, you are at the right place. Here at Sysbunny, we have an excellent team of Android and iOS application developers who can visualize your idea and create an amazing app for your business that will make you stand out in the market. Contact us to kick start your project right away.
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