The number of smartphone owners, as well as the time spent on handheld devices, has constantly been growing for some time now, meaning that the mobile is taking over the desktop.
This caused the mobile app market to start expanding also, as mobile apps are now more important than ever for providing engaging and seamless experience. When a business gets it right, it gains a serious competitive advantage.
A well-designed and engaging mobile app can exponentially help your business and increase your revenue by introducing a new revenue stream or improving sales and employee communication, building up community and engagement, and increasing your brand awareness.
Must Read – Creating Mobile App Ideas that are Fun and Profitable
We are here to make things easier by giving you a few crucial tips for creating a successful mobile application.
Tips for Creating an Effective Mobile Application
#1. Turn Your Imagination On
There are two things you have to keep in mind in order to create a successful application.
The first is to identify a problem that your app can resolve, and second, decide your app’s features. It should provide customers with tangible benefits, such as reducing costs with productivity enhancements or improving the customer experience.
Research your competitors’ apps to see what they’re already doing to lead their customers to similar goals.
#2. Identify Some Key Things
When creating a mobile app, you need to be clear about:
- Mobile devices and platforms to be supported: When selecting devices and platforms, take things such as required peripherals, battery life, and hardware performance into consideration. Also, think about device support, coverage, performance, and other features.
- App target users: Your target audience are the people who’ll find your mobile app useful. By having a clear vision of your target audience, you’ll increase the chances of success.
- Revenue model: There are several models of generating revenue from mobile apps, such as ads, pay per download, separate app and in-app freemiums, paid applications, and subscription. Your app developer should help you select the appropriate approach in accordance with the app.
#3. App Design
Another important factor that determines an app’s success in the market is the design. An app developer should focus on platform design standards, multi-touch gestures (for touch-enabled devices), and UI design. UI plays a significant role in the success of an app, so the emphasis should be on its design.
Also Read – Revealed: How To Make Money From A Mobile App!
#4. Native, Web or Hybrid?
It’s very important to select the right approach for developing an app, which must be in accordance with your budget and time constraints.
- Native: Native apps are platform specific and require more expertise, knowledge and time to be developed. They are costly as well, but deliver the best user experience.
- Web: Web apps are less powerful than native apps, but are cheap and quick to develop (using JavaScript code, CSS and HTML5). They can also run on different platforms.
- Hybrid: This is the latest app-development approach which combines on-the-fly web coding with prebuild native containers to achieve the best of both worlds.
#5. Prototype Development
Mobile app prototyping is actually the process of turning your idea into an app with some basic functionality. This makes it easier to sell an app idea to potential buyers or attract investors, find licenses, and work with manufacturers.
Be sure to take security measures to protect your app from unauthorized usage and data access.
#6. Integrate an Analytics Tool
An appropriate analytics tool will give you a detailed picture of how many people use your website, how they got there, and why they keep coming back. Some of the tools you should consider implementing are:
- Google Analytics
- Localytics
- Preemptive, and
- Flurry
This data science can make your app highly marketable.
#7. Test, Test, Test
The next step includes finding app testers. Beta testing your app is the first opportunity to get feedback from your target audience. It reduces product risk and gets you the initial push in the mobile app store.
To prepare your app for beta testing, first you need to define your target audience, which will enable you to identify the right testers. Next, the apps are tested on various platforms so the developers would know to eliminate all the device specific bugs.
At last, beta testing will get you real feedback from target customers, which will help you understand them better.
You May Like – How Is Mobile Technology Becoming A New Opportunity For Merchants?
#8. Release the App and Capture the Metrics
In order to deploy an app, you need a plan, schedule, and control of the releases to live and test environments.
Collecting accurate metrics is important as the number of mobile app users steadily rises. The major input metrics you should keep in mind are: funnel analysis, correlating demographic data with user behavior, social sharing measures, tracking location and time, and capturing the emergent behavior of your user base.
Wrapping it up
Use mobile apps to increase your customers’ mobile experience, and grow and improve your business. This shouldn’t be intimidating, time-consuming, or expensive, but should provide value that everyone can enjoy.
No one can nail down the right steps toward a successful app, but these should definitely be taken into account in order to ensure success in the long run.
Author Bio: Emma Miller is a Sydney based writer with a degree in marketing. Interested in digital marketing, social media, start-ups and latest trends. She’s a contributor at Bizzmark blog and a mother of two.