Over the past couple years, mobile has taken over desktop in popularity and usage both. This has led to businesses shifting their focus to developing mobile apps. For your mobile app idea to be successful in the highly competitive and saturated environment today, it has become essential to keep your users engaged.
The entire mobile app development and design process is an extremely complex one.
Whether you decide to go with in-house app development or outsource it to a professional mobile app development company, it is vital that you choose a team who has experience of building robust, secure, and high-quality apps.
Well, but this is easier said than done.
Choosing an app development company is an important decision, one that must take into account several factors such as your project timeline, budget, preferred frameworks, tools, etc.
Here’s a step-by-step approach to building your app from scratch:
Step 1: Define your app objectives
The first step is where you will define the goals and objectives that you’re trying to achieve with your app. Do you intend to enhance your customer experience? Do you want to improve your customer engagement? Or do you simply want to generate more leads and sales? After defining your objectives, you can then proceed with the finer details and features needed in your app to achieve those objectives.
Step 2: Define the scope of your app
This is the step where you need to decide on the features and functionalities that your app must include. The best way to achieve this is by asking yourself the right questions, such as whether your app needs to have e-commerce integration, what kind of chat and support features you would want your users to have, what are the ways in which you’d like to inform your users about your new products and services, how can the app help your users be more productive and efficient, etc.
Step 3: Analyze competitors’ app to see what you can do to build an app that is better than theirs
No matter what your app goals and objectives are, for your app to be successful, it has to be better than your competitors’. To ensure this, you need to analyze your competitors’ apps to see what can be improved or what additional features you can offer in your app to stand out.
Step 4: Create wireframes to develop your app
This is the stage to get started with creating a wireframe that lays down the visual guide to the flow between various functionalities and features of your mobile app. A professional mobile app development company can help you get started with this by defining each goal and understanding your target user’s thought processes.
Step 5: Test the wireframes you created at stage 4
Before your actual app development process begins, it’s crucial to test the wireframes that you created to ensure a logical flow and superior user experience. Reputed app development companies employ sophisticated software to test the ease of use as well as the intuitiveness and navigational flow of your app.
Step 6: Revise and retest the wireframes to ensure error-free app development
Based on the feedback from the initial testing the wireframes should be updated to eliminate redundancies. Additional testing is recommended to ensure that the flow is smooth and error-free. The process of revision and testing might require a few iterations until the app is ready for development.
Step 7: Map out the path for your app development
To map out the path for developing your app, you need to take care of two major decisions, first being the language to use for coding your app and the second, the mobile app platform to use for building your app. And lastly, the development cost will also influence the decision regarding your app development path.
A reputed mobile app development company like Jellyfish Technologies can help outline the pros and cons of each development path to make it easier for you to make the right decision.
Step 8: Finally, build your app
This stage involves the actual building of the app. This stage will involve a high level of collaboration between your developer and designer teams. This is the stage where you need to choose the template for your app, plugins, and decide on the home screen and navigational design.
Step 9: Test your app in a real-world scenario
Once the app development phase is complete, it’s time to test your app to see how it performs in a real-world situation. No matter how many restests you might have done during the wireframing, this step is crucial to ensure that your app is free from bugs. A reliable mobile app development company will insist on at least ten rounds of testing to help pinpoint user experience issues that might go undetected.
Step 10: Launch the app on the app store and promote it
Now that the testing phase is complete, your mobile app is ready to be launched to your preferred app stores. But before you launch your app, make sure that all the necessary compliances, regulations, and security protocols are in place. After launching your app, don’t forget to promote it heavily across different platforms, including social media channels.
Conclusion
Mobile app development involves the investment of both time and money. To prevent unnecessary delays for redevelopment, it’s important you get the design right the first time.
Make sure you choose an app development company with years of experience, like Jellyfish Technologies, that knows what it takes to make robust, bug-free, scalable, and successful apps seamlessly.
