The way we do business is constantly changing due to the impact of smartphones. Mobile app allow us to do multiple tasks efficiently and conveniently, such as ordering food and paying bills.
There are currently 7.1 billion smartphone owners It is expected to grow in the future. The same applies to mobile apps.
Businesses around the world recognize the importance of a mobile app. It improves brand awareness, customer engagement, drives growth and revenue, and many other benefits. Most businesses don’t know how to develop a mobile app that is ready for the market.
We have therefore broken down the entire process of mobile app development into seven steps. This will help you to create a niche market and build an enterprise-grade app that your customers will love.
7 Steps to Build a Mobile App That Works!
To complete your mobile app development project within the time frames set, you must follow the correct steps. These steps are often overlooked by companies, which means that they have to face many challenges at each stage of the development process. Don’t worry! Here’s a clear description of the process that you can trust.
Step 1 – Ideation and Product Discovery
To determine the viability and viability of your entire project, it is important to conduct a market study on your idea or concept before you begin your mobile app development. This stage is crucial for identifying new solutions and ideas as well as determining the requirements necessary to fulfill the project scope. This stage is a continuous brainstorming exercise that allows you to adapt your idea to meet the needs of the end user.
Clear answers to these questions will make your product discovery a success.
- What is your app’s purpose? What will it do for your users? What are the specific problems that your app is trying to solve?
- Target Audience: Who is the target audience? What are the possible users? What problems are they facing?
- App USP: What features are the most important to the mobile app’s success? What features are essential to make your app stand out on the market? What is your app’s main appeal?
- Target Platforms Which Mobile OS platforms should you target when building the app? Do you choose Native, Cross-platform, or Hybrid?
- Market Analysis: What type of app do your competitors use? What are their unique features? What was their process of planning the development?
- App Development Costs: What is your app’s development cost structure? How will you distribute expense among development stages?
- App Timeline: When are you planning on launching your app to the market? What is your timeline for mobile app development? How do you know if your goal has been achieved?
- App Promotion: What’s your app marketing strategy. What advertising methods are most important for your mobile app?
- After-launch Support: How will you approach regular app updates? What action will your development team take to fix bugs and increase engagement?
Step 2 – Strategy and Product Planning
This is the most crucial stage of app development. It allows you to turn your idea into an actual project. To define and capture specific functional requirements and use cases, you need to develop a solid long-term strategy.
- Product roadmap: Start by visualizing the mobile app development strategy (also known as a product map). This document outlines key points like vision, mission and strategy, product features, timeline, team, technology, etc. for a better and more timely execution.
- Product Structure If time, budget or resources are an issue, you can also create your minimum viable product (MVP) to launch the initial launch.
- Product Team Identifying the skills needed for your project is a key part of mobile app strategy and planning. The tech stacks used by iOS and Android platforms are different. You should ensure that you have both iOS and Android developers on your mobile development team if you want to create an app that is compatible with both platforms.
Step 3: Mobile App Design – UI/UX Designing
Two important factors in any mobile app design are the user interface (UI), and user experience design. While a great UI is focused on the appearance of the app, UX design addresses multiple aspects of user interaction with the app (branding, usability and function). This stage covers multiple aspects as we will see below.
- User Journey Map It’s all about describing the user’s experience. This journey map should be prepared by your development team to show the user’s experience through your mobile app. This helps to create a simple UI. An mobile app development company can help grow business through their app development techniques.
- Wireframes –User interface design is required for every mobile app development project. This is a type of pictorial representation that shows key elements of the UI, such as buttons and fields. This visual representation of the app shows the layout and size of elements. Wireframes focus primarily on aesthetics, layout details and user experience.
- Style guide: A style guide describes the functions of different app functions. Without it, developing high-quality apps can be more difficult. Standardization of UI elements, UI frames and end-to-end experience, consistency in the use of intuitive UI elements, usability-driven process flow, and uniformity/uniqueness of the app are some of the factors that are achieved by style guides.
- Mockups This is the visual design of the app. The wireframes are combined with style guide design guidelines and establish the flow of the app. A mockup, also known as high-fidelity designing, shows how the app works. Adobe Photoshop and Sketch are popular tools to create high-fidelity mockups.
- Demonstrations give a peek into the operation of your mobile app. These are required when the technology is not yet tested, or if there are uncertainties about app development. You can even use them to create a demo of your mobile app. To create a user-friendly app, prototypes can help you understand the visual interface, user experience and workflow.
Step 4: Mobile App Development
This step-by_step app development covers the actual implementation and coding. An app development project for mobile devices typically involves the creation of code and its configuration.
- Back End/Server Technology: You need the right back-end platform in order to support your application’s functionalities. Even if your platform is already in place, ensure it supports modifications and configurations. This step requires that the server-side objects created during this step be thoroughly tested with all components of your app.
- Application Programming Interface: This software intermediary helps to interconnect the app and back-end server/database, but also aligns with existing software tools/tools and OS components.
- Mobile App Front End: It is important to have a strong front end as it affects user engagement. To help users connect with their network offline, the front-end technology must have the most up-to-date APIs. Technology should also be able to efficiently manage data.
- Database and Programming Language: It is up to you to choose whether you want to develop a mobile app in a hybrid or native way. Both use different languages. e.g. Native mobile apps can be run on specific operating system such as Android or iOS. Both operating systems use different programming languages. You need to build Android apps using programming languages such as Java, C++, and Kotlin. For iOS app development, Objective-C and Swift languages are needed.
- Libraries, Frameworks, and SDKs: The right framework will allow you to exploit code and satisfy your unique project needs. Your developers will also need to decide on a code structure – MVC or MVP, Clean Swift, and so forth. Software development tools, In-built and third-party libraries, are also necessary for mobile app development.
- Integrated Development Environment, (IDE) and Code editor: You need to set your project up in an IDE/code editor that allows you to write clean and error-free code. You can use XCode for iOS Apps or Android Studio for Android Apps. Optimizing code can also be done using external software development tools and libraries.
5: Mobile App Testing and Quality Assurance
The developers must complete the above milestones and then pass the app on to the testing team for quality control and bug fixing. The testing stage is an important part of the mobile app development process. It can overlap with the development stage in several ways depending on how the development was planned and executed. In agile methodology, each iteration or sprint could include a testing phase.
Mobile app testing includes:
- Functionality testing: This is done to verify that the functional requirements listed in the discovery phase have been met.
- Performance Testing This test establishes performance capabilities like touch response and average connection time.
- Security TestingIt helps you to avoid security flaws, secures server side controls and outlines authentication for login credentials.
- Manual testing: This involves detailed use cases and information about prevailing errors that have been identified by QA professionals.
- Automated Testing: It automatically checks if any new features/functionalities are hampering the existing ones via analyzing static codes and UI integration.
Once you have successfully completed all of the above-mentioned testing and removed any in-app bugs, it is now possible to get the approval of your client/project manger and launch the app.
These are some great practices to improve your testing and QA environment.
- A separate team be responsible for QA
- Ensure that all stages of app development are bug-free
- The mobile app is available for testing on various mobile devices
- Be sure to follow strict testing guidelines.
- Only use the QA and testing tools that professionals recommend
Step 6 – Mobile App Deployment & Launch
It is important to analyze every detail of this stage in order to effectively market your mobile application. Before publishing your app to different app stores, make sure you have all the backend deployment in place. It’s a good idea to launch a minimum viable product (MVP), or a beta version within your team. Also, it is a good idea to get real feedback.
If you are looking to make your app a market-ready product and launch it on Google Play/ Apple Store, you will need to publish it. If your app is only intended for business users, it may be worth publishing it on an enterprise app store. Make sure that you follow the guidelines for the app store.
7: Mobile App Maintenance and Support
Regular app downloads and installation speeds for your app can increase. This could lead to inefficiencies or a desire to add new functionality/ features to meet user needs.
You can take a look at the market trends and statistics of your app to help you plant a great app maintenance team.
The success of your mobile application depends greatly on the marketing strategy that you use (offline or online). To maximize your app reach, and target a wider audience, you can contact a marketing professional or experienced advertising agency. Be clear about your goals and decide on the best marketing strategy to satisfy all stakeholders.
Wrapping up
Mobile app development can be very overwhelming and time-consuming. To be able to compete, every mobile app must have a clear and systematic approach. Following the correct process is a requirement, not an option. Our experts have years of experience developing mobile apps for startups and enterprises. We’ve created an article series that explains each step of the process.