Western smartphone makers, like Apple and Google, are increasingly looking east for growth, giving countries like India significant influence over the features they build into their phones.
India has the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, accounting for 27.5 million devices sold in the second quarter of 2016, up 17 percent from the previous quarter, according to IDC.
To ensure the visibility of your app in such a complex, competitive market, you need to be very particular about the approach being followed for mobile application development. To create a successful mobile application, you need to follow a systematic approach to app development. Here we have listed 10 steps for mobile application development:
Step 1: A Great Imagination Leads to a Great App
To create a successful mobile application, the first thing you need to keep in mind is:
- Identify a problem that your app can resolve
- Decide the features of your app
The app should provide a customer with tangible benefits, including reducing costs via productivity enhancements, new revenue, or improving the customer experience.
Step 2: Identify
To create a successful mobile application, you need to identify or be clear about:
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Application Target Users
An app should always be developed keeping in mind the target users of an application. Having a clear vision regarding the target group enhances the success ratio of an app.
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Mobile Platforms and Devices to be Supported
Mobile platforms and devices should be selected considering hardware performance, battery life, ruggedness, and required peripherals. Factors that must be considered while selecting mobile platforms and devices include coverage, support, performance, and other features.
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Revenue Model
The app market is booming like never before. To ensure this resource and generate revenue, the app developer needs to select the appropriate approach following the app. There are different models of generating revenue from mobile applications, which include paid applications, separate apps, in-app freemiums, advertisements, subscriptions,s, and pay-per-download.
These techniques can be employed to generate revenue. However, the developer’s approach has to be following the application. It is highly essential for the developer to attract the user and spend money on the various aspects of the application.
At this point, you should also think about your finances and how much money you wish to set aside for the development, marketing, and eventual release of your app. Here’s a quick guide to the approximate costs for developing an app.
Step 3: Design your app
Designing your app is yet another significant factor responsible for the success of an app on the market. An app developer should concentrate on the UI design and multitouch gestures for touch-enabled devices and consider platform design standards. Today, emphasis is on the UI design of an app as it plays a crucial role in the success of an app. Designing an app is becoming increasingly popular as it creates an instant impact on the mind of the user while ensuring the usability of an app.
Step 4: Identify an approach to develop the app – native, web, or hybrid
Selecting the right approach for developing an app is highly important. Ideally, the app development approach must be by the time and budget constraints of a client.
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Native:
Native apps enable delivering the best user experience but require significant time and skill to be developed. These apps are platform specific and require expertise along with knowledge. Native apps are costly as well as time taking to be developed and deliver the highest user experience among all the approaches.
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Web:
Web apps are quick and cheap and can run on multiple platforms. These are developed using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript code. These web apps are less powerful than native apps.
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Hybrid:
The hybrid approach is the latest approach to developing any app. This approach combines prebuilt native containers with on-the-fly web coding to achieve the best of both worlds. In this approach, the developer augments the web code with the native language to create unique features and access native APIs which are not yet available through JavaScript.
Step 5: Develop a Prototype
The next stage, after identifying the approach, is developing a prototype. It is taking your idea and turning it into an application with some basic functionality. A prototype makes it quite easier to sell your idea to potential buyers who can now actually view the tangible benefits instead of just visualizing or reading the product description. It is quite helpful in attracting investors and working with manufacturers, and finding licensees.
Step 6: Integrate an Appropriate Analytics Tool
There is also a need to incorporate appropriate analytics which give you a detailed picture of how many visitors use your web, how they arrived on your site, and how they can keep coming back.
Some of the Mobile Analytics Tool Which Help in this Process:
- Google Analytics
- Flurry
- Localytics
- Mixpanel
- Preemptive
With data sciences, including predictive analytics in mobile applications, it can make your apps highly marketable.
Step 7: Identify Beta-testers. Listen to their Feedback and Integrate Relevant Ones
Beta testing is the first opportunity to get feedback from your target customers. It is especially important as it enhances your visibility in the app store. It not only reduces product risk but gets you that initial push in the app store. Identifying beta testers is another important task to ensure the success of an app.
Preparing for beta launch:
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Define Target Customer
It is highly important to identify and clearly define your target audience. This will enable you to identify the right testers during your beta tester recruiting. Early market research helps in understanding market analysis which eases the process of beta testing.
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Eliminate Bugs
Before beta testing your app on different platforms, you need to take into account the majority of the devices which eliminate device-specific bugs. Alpha testing with a small number of users enables clearing out maximum bugs. At the same time, a device coverage plan is significant for the quality assurance of mobile applications.
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Identify Goals
Beta testing is the best opportunity to get real feedback from target customers. It provides a great opportunity to understand the target market and their requirements further. Identifying goals for beta testing helps in focusing the efforts. These goals reduce your product launch risk.
Step 8: Release / Deploy the App
Deploying an app requires a plan, scheduling, and control of the movement of releases to test and live environments. The major objective of Deployment Management is to ensure the integrity of the live environment is protected and that the correct components are released.
Step 9: Capture the Metrics
There has been a significant rise in mobile application users in the present decade. As a result, the need to collect accurate metrics is highly important. As the number of consumers using mobile applications steadily rises, collecting accurate metrics from them is increasingly important. Unfortunately, many methods used to measure apps are taken from web analytics.
Major Input Metrics Which should be Kept in Mind:
- Funnel analysis signifies why users are failing to complete desired user actions, including in-app purchases or ad clicks
- Measuring social sharing signifies what aspects of your app are capturing the attention of your users
- Correlating demographic data with user behavior
- Tracking time and location gives you insights into the contexts in which your app is used
- Finally, capturing the emergent behavior of your user base is critical
Step 10: Upgrade Your App with Improvements and New Features
After capturing the metrics, it becomes important to upgrade your app with improvements and innovative features. A mobile application without innovative features loses its usability in the long run. Upgrading your app with innovative features enhances its visibility along with downloads of an app. Also, ensure you keep updating your app to meet new guidelines offered by the various platforms, don’t let your apps stagnate.
These steps should be taken into account while developing an app. Using these steps, you can develop an app ensuring success in the long run. However, it is nearly impossible to pin down the exact steps which are responsible for the success of an app.
Marketing Step 11: Market your App Right
While this doesn’t fall under the steps to “make” an app, it is important to make it successful. If you do not market your app well once it is released, there is a high possibility of losing it in the many apps available at the various stores. So make sure you market your app as well.
Ref: https://www.newgenapps.com/blog/bid/219838/10-steps-to-create-a-successful-mobile-application
