No matter if you work independently on your own app project or work for a company, there are some crucial aspects which you should be aware of when it comes to building your app. We have gathered here 8 tips which will help you to become better at Mobile App Development:
- Develop On a broad range of Mobile Devices
Developers might love to use the newest iPhone or the most high-end Android smartphone ---- and, yes, everyone does. Except it's best to keep it for personal use only and try not to use them for your mobile app development projects.
First of all, a high-end device will conceal a lot of errors and flaws when used during the app developing process. Secondly, many smartphone users still use a normal low-end device on a daily basis. And you need your apps to be reached by many users as possible. One app which consumes a significant amount of resources would perform very differently on two old and new devices. Therefore, an average aged device, installed with a bunch of apps on it (as a normal user usually does) would make it ideal for development purpose.
- Test your app carefully and then test again
It needs to be stressed here that testing is one of the most important part of your app development project. This should be something of high priority of developers' to-do list. Try to test your app carefully and spend as much time for testing as possible. Use as many different scenarios, automated test cases as you can to save time, as well as to test it thoroughly. Fix all the bugs, errors before releasing. And remember to test your app in the end-users point of view, not developers' point of view which can be very different compared to end-users.
And do not wait until after launching your app and start fixing it because errors and bugs were found out and reported with bad reviews from users. Do not ever do that. You will save yourself a lot of time and avoid many headache later by testing now.
- Optimization
Your app is good but it can be better or even great by optimization! Try to write code that will run as fast, while consume less memory and use less device storage. An under-optimized app will work well under normal conditions. However, when it's put to perform under some different stressful situations, your app might reveal all the flaws behind it. So, if you can, spend time and optimize your app to make it better than just good.
- Have a Marketing Plan
Your app will be just as well-performed as the number of end-users that it reaches. A good product may fail just because it lacks proper marketing, while the others – which are not exactly as good – become massively successful due to great marketing. It’s a hard to swallow fact of marketing—no matter the quality of your works, it’s the delivery that makes or breaks it. To guarantee your mobile app lives up to its full potential, it’s very important to have a well thought-out marketing plan. Get your marketing plan executed right and properly, your apps will have chance to reach thousands or even millions of downloads.
And it’s worth mentioning that before starting your marketing campaigns, you should make sure to get your app ready and able to run smoothly with all the necessary features. Nobody wants to spend money and effort marketing an in-complete product.
- Maintain Proper Coding Standards
Yes, coding standards exist. If you have been a full time developer working on a number of App development projects, then you should be familiar with the concept of coding standards. As you would be spending time collaborating with other developers reading their code, they will also spend a lot of time reading yours too. And you definitely don’t want to make it difficult for other developers to understand your works.
Thus, it’s the right thing to write short, clear, and clean code (and comments) so that you and people who read your code will be able to understand it easily.
- Learn another programming language
Developers who use only one programming language (such as Java to develop Android App) can limit their career opportunities as well as income potential significantly, especially when technology continues to evolve at a lightning speed these days. It will be extremely beneficial to keep yourself up to date with what is happening in the industry rather than restricting yourself with only Android or only iOS.
Learning another programming language will open up yourself to new opportunities and will help you improve your mobile app development skills considerably. Try to thoroughly study at least one new programming language every year and set yourself to be really good at it. The opportunities will be endless.
- Adopt best practices
Adopting mobile app development best practice will definitely give you an edge over other developers. The best practices will always vary from app to app but there are some of the general Do’s and Don’ts (for example: App security, testing, design methodology etc.) which you should always take into consideration while building your apps. Applying such best practices will make your apps look good and work well, especially when you develop your apps catering to a large number of end-users.
- Consider using Kotlin for your Android Mobile App development project
In case you haven't heard, Kotlin is now one of the most popular programming languages when it comes to Android development. It is also the officially supported language for developing Android apps. Check out our blog post for all the information you need to start using Kotlin for your next app development project.
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