Today, mobile app is becoming more and more present in our lives. Everything we do from work, to entertainment, and shopping etc. mobile apps play an important role in facilitating the process and make things easier and better for us. Thus, businesses must adapt to what consumers need and deliver services at their convenience through mobile devices.
One of the most effective ways for businesses to serve their customers is through mobile application. Understanding this, mobile app development should be of a high priority for businesses to compete in the digital age. However, not all mobile development project us going to be successful.
In this article, we’re going to examine a number of important points which business should keep in mind when developing their mobile app.
Top Points to Follow While Developing a Mobile App
Mobile application development costs money, and the investment would depend on the size and scope, as well as complexity of the development project. Research shows that it might cost minimum of $5000 - $10,000 for an app development project, and upward of $100,000 to build an app at a medium or large scale. However, there’s no guarantee that such app would become a guarantee success. According to a 2019 survey by Localytics, it’s found that 25% users abandon the app after just one use, and this is quite a staggering number.
There are many reasons leading to the failure of an app such as poor technical implementation and also lack of research to understanding customer’s need. Therefore, it’s important to consider all the necessary aspects before starting your app development project, as follow:
1. Identify target audience’s needs
Identify customers’ need is first necessary thing to do before kick-off your app development project. If customers cannot see any benefits or added value motivate them to use your apps, it’s very likely that they will abandon it after downloading. Those first questions app owners should ask themselves include: if there’s a problem facing by customer and whether your applications can deliver a solution for solving such problems. Users will only pay attention and become a loyal users of your app if they can find a motivation as well as an emotional connection to it.
Accordingly, carefully identify and fully understand customers’ needs will help you determine the incentive factors driving users to adopt your app. Moreover, it’s also important to incorporate the features which make your app become user friendly as well as easy to navigate, thus making it useful for target audiences to spend more time using it. Additionally, integrating advanced technologies such as machine learning for mobile app development can enhance and elevate the app experience to the next level, providing a highly personalized app experience for the audiences. With machine learning technology, app owners can have a better understanding of users’ behaviors and recommending the product or services that users could be potentially highly interested in, as well as focusing on improving the areas of weak performance deterring users from leaving the app. A custom-tailored and pleasant app experience will lead users to become more engaged and stay loyal with your app.
In addition, building an MVP (minimum viable product) or a proof of concept mobile app should also be considered an essential factor for testing the market and validating your business app idea.
2. Choosing native app development vs. cross-platform apps
For the time being, Android and iOS are the two leading mobile platforms that dominate the app markets and this won’t be changed anytime soon. Taking this into considerations, app owners need to choose which platform their mobile apps will be developed upon, and whether it’s best to build their app on both Android and iOS in order to serve a larger audience base. The decision on choose which platform should be based on the customers demographic, and other factors including, budget, time, and resources.
Generally speaking, developing native mobile apps for both two platforms (iOS and Android) would make the development cost higher. Thanks to cross-platform app development technologies such as Flutter or React Native, cross-platform apps nowadays can be developed to be run just as seamlessly as native apps but at a lower costs compared to native development. Thus, businesses should also consider the option of cross-platform app development to speed up time to market and launching the product faster, at an effective development costs while still not compromising quality.
3. Security Considerations
Today, mobile application can be used for various activities which involves handling online banking or digital payments and facilitating digital transactions – overall collecting and storing sensitive informations of their users. Hence, it’s critical that app owners apply adequate security measures to comply with the necessary cyber security laws and standards.
Due to these requirements, app owners will need to incorporate security protections for their app from the beginning stage of the development process and throughout the app lifecycle. Examples of security measures include: app authentication enablement and identifications technologies (e.g. fingerprint scanner, facial recognition, etc.), securing network connections, etc.
Conclusion:
After taking all the above factors into considerations and decide that it’s necessary to develop an app for your business, the next step is to choose how you’re going to build your app.
Businesses can outsource the development to a mobile app development services agency or do it in-house they already have a team of mobile developers in place. In case your company is not in the IT industry or not having a development team ready, then outsourcing would be the best option helping you to save time and money.
