Many have great app ideas, but only some possess the onus and know-how to execute them. With 99% of consumer apps failing, the app market can never be considered utopian.
But by executing the methodologies in this article, you may boost your chance of creating a successful mobile app startup.
You Must Have An Idea By Now!
By now, you must have had a viable app startup idea. But with many app solutions in the market today, it’s easy to feel that your app idea could be better.
No, you don’t have to think up the most sophisticated idea. It can be less than 100% original. The best applications are a crafty intertwining of various existing ideas and technologies. For instance, Airbnb leveraged the internet to help lodging in private homes!
Your app could be an innovation, software as a service, or an alternative to an existing app that targets a different audience. Overall it’s important to ensure that the app solves a crucial problem.
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Set A Clear Goal
Setting a clear goal lets you realize the essence of creating the app. What is your app trying to achieve? What solution will it provide to the audience? How much will such a solution improve their processes? Your app goals should be much more than “making money.”
Of course, profit is the ultimate result of every successful app. However, your app must solve crucial problems. Only when the consumers find it indispensable will they use it or pay for it. When setting goals, knowing your Key Performance Indicators could be helpful. These metrics help you track whether your app is actualizing its goals.
Setting goals also guides you through the mobile app development and deployment process. It helps you focus on developing critical app features and forgo unneeded parts. Plus, it enables you to deploy the app to the right target audience.
Conduct a Thorough Market Research
Your app idea could be a great solution, but who are its target audiences? Can they pay for your solution? Has there been an existing alternative? Market research gets you answers to valuable questions about your market and product. You can do the following.
- You can run a survey or conduct interviews to determine your target audience.
- Do a thorough competitor analysis to assess your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
- Conduct research on which similar products have failed in the past and why
- Identify your unique selling point (USP) that gives you a competitive advantage
Prototyping Your Application
Wireframing is a great way to prototype your application. It is a rough sketch of the app’s UI/UX and features that can serve as a low-fidelity guide. Wireframes don’t have to involve the finest graphical and quality details. Instead, it should be featured enough to guide developers when building apps.
Deploying your wireframes could be a great way to gather valuable feedback. You won’t want to redesign your app because of needing critical features or design changes. Thus, letting your target audience test wireframes gives you the necessary feedback you can implement during development. Therefore, you have a better chance of making apps tailored to your audience’s needs.
Fair enough, the days of using whiteboards or papers for wireframing are gone. With tools like InVision, MarvelApp or Proto.io, you can easily create digital sketches and deploy and gather feedback. This “collaborative canvas” makes your design and development process more straightforward.
Development
Agile development methodology has proven to be a surefire way to fast-track mobile app development. With a well-researched plan and wireframes modified on feedback, agile development makes your chances of app success easier.
Over time, agile development has proved to be much more effective than alternatives like a waterfall methodology. This is mainly because of its innovative development strategies, including
- It facilitates early and frequent product delivery to the market.
- It works on a flexible model that can incorporate new changes late in mobile app development.
- It breaks the project into milestones and among developers who work throughout to deliver the project.
- It facilitates a well-functional communication system
- It maintains a sustainable working pace
Read more here.
Agile development has proven to work best with mobile app development outsourcing. You get quality smartphone app development agencies to work on your app. These companies provide the required skillsets, including developers, designers, project managers, engineers, QA testers, etc. They also offer mobile app development tools to make coding easier.
Hiring an in-house team of experts or freelancers is an excellent alternative. However, software agencies have proved to be stress-free, faster app-to-market, and deliver faster results.
Thorough Testing
No, you don’t have to wait for testing till after development. It becomes more effective and less stressful when run during development. While shortening your app to market time, constant testing also saves you enormous development overhead.
For example, mobile app development companies like Emphasoft provide comprehensive testing for your app, including unit, integration, system, and acceptance testing. It ensures system bugs are detected and cleared early during mobile app development, thus, avoiding the accumulation of bugs.
Deployment And Maintenance
Once your app gets thoroughly tested, it’s ready for release. You’d have to submit your app to platforms like Google Play Store or App Store for approval. Follow due procedures – sign up as a developer, submit your app, and it’s ready to go live!
But contrary to popular belief, this stage is where mobile app development starts. To nurture a successful app, you’d have to do more research. Then, draw new prototypes, get valuable user feedback, and add new features based on your findings. Plus, you have to detect and erase bugs reported by users.
This ever-continuous process facilitates releasing new versions of the app. Over time, you create a perfectly tailored product to your audience’s demands, which translates to better user satisfaction, user retention, and higher revenue.
Demands may also warrant exploring new audiences in new markets. Having established audiences in giants like Android and iOS, you can try new OS markets. Lucrative but less ventured OS markets include KaiOS, Windows OS, Linux, Unix, etc.
Key Takeaways
Even for experienced appreneurs, building new solutions isn’t a walk in the park. When hiring an in-house team or freelancers, it’s essential to know how to go through development. Otherwise, you risk losing time and money or creating a defective product.
To prevent these, hiring a mobile app development company like Emphasoft is always the best bet. With a wealth of experience in the field, they are better placed to draft a working solution for your idea.
Emphasoft consultancy offers valuable insights into how your app idea works. Once you book your app, they provide experts in different fields to collaborate on getting you quality Applications.