Things You Need To Know Before Building An App
Technostacks
With the increasing use of smartphones and the internet, the demand for mobile applications has skyrocketed in recent years.
As per the Statista reported, it has been forecasted that the total revenue in our industry will demonstrate a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.91% between 2022 and 2027. This growth trajectory is expected to result in a substantial increase in the market volume, with projections reaching US$641.10bn by the year 2027.
In today’s digital world, having an app for your business has become a necessity rather than a luxury. However, developing an app is a process. Creating a successful and one of its kind applications requires a lot of planning, effort, resources, time, energy, and investment.
There are a number of questions you should ask before developing an app. This blog post will discuss the key highlights of the things you must know before building an app.
Things you need to know before building an application
If you are a business that needs to create an app but have no idea how to go about it? Do not worry! Here are steps you should know before developing an application:
1. Selecting the right platform
The first of many things to consider before building an app is choosing the right platform. This decision can be a complicated and confusing task. So, while making this decision, consider the range of accessibility and expansibility. Whether you decide to go with Android or iOS, choose accordingly.
This selection will motivate the app developers and positively impact the scope and scalability of the application. It will also determine the utility and flexibility of your application. You can then proceed with the required coding for building your mobile application.
2. Defining and understanding the target audience’s requirements
One more critical factor to consider before developing an app is determining and understanding your target audience and their requirements. This is an integral space of assessment as your application’s success depends on this fundamental understanding. Your application must provide the audience’s desired solution to get the expected response.
App developers can create and conduct surveys and take customer feedback and opinions beforehand to ensure their applications’ credibility and performance. Aligning your application’s goals with the users’ requirements will also ensure that developers are following the right path.
3. Picking a trustworthy application development company
App developers are only responsible for the planning of their applications. But the execution depends on the choosing the right mobile app development company. So, another essential factor to consider before going ahead with your app development is selecting a trustworthy partner. The right app development company or partner will ensure the final product is user-friendly, interactive, and caters appropriately to the target audience.
Some critical points that app developers need to keep in mind before selecting a reliable application development company are to analyze the company’s tools and technologies, go through their previous work profile, and get an idea about the results obtained.
Also, one mistake to avoid while choosing an app development company is compromising on quality in the name of cost cutting. If you choose a rather affordable partner who does not focus on high quality, it can cost you more loss than savings. Thus, choose your app development partner carefully.
Read More:- How to Hire The Best App Developers?
4. Conducting in-depth market research
One of the significant steps to review before creating an app is to do detailed market research. In-depth research will help you obtain all the crucial data and information about the prevailing market situation and your competition’s position.
It will help you in comprehending diverse planning methods and techniques. In addition, make sure to include the customers’ reviews in your research. And the analysis of the users’ actual demand and taking the necessary steps to fulfil them.
5. Researching your competitors
Apart from conducting market research, another important factor to consider before developing an app is researching about your competitors. It is a critical step. This is done to confirm whether the concept of your app or the final product does not resemble any pre-existing application. Furthermore, this will keep you from unintentionally copying other people’s work.
Apart from this, it will also allow you to know about the intention and moves of your competitors. You will have the opportunity to focus on the aspects of your app that your competitors missed and learn from the errors they committed.
Here, you can introduce a differentiating factor, and a unique selling proposition, develop a better strategy, and work on increasing the likelihood of your app’s success.
6. Focusing on your purpose of developing an application
One of the important steps to review before making an app is to answer why are you developing it. No recommended or perfect chronology exists to answer these questions before developing your app.
But questions before developing your app you need to respond to yourself for making intuitive and conscious decisions include why you are developing an application? Do you have a precise problem or challenge to resolve?
What makes you application different from other apps out there? Will your app be worthy of the resources invested in it? Is your app profitable? And a hundred more questions like these.
You may need to answer this at every stage as you must provide insights about your app to your application development partner, developers, team, and, eventually, your target audience.
If you are unable to answer these questions then there is still time for you to get started with application development. It is crucial to have an elaborate vision for building an app. The image must be aligned with the objectives of the business to ensure success.
7. Evaluate the cost of developing an app
Cost evaluation is one of the primary things to consider before developing an app. The average cost of app development depends on the overall market, goals, and budget. The rates also differ from company to company.
Make a list of all the relative costs, such as initial, marketing, post-launch, troubleshooting, team remuneration, and so on. Also, it is recommended to focus on the fundamental features for your first launch. This is because it is not wise to put in all your resources at one go. It will create a situation of exhaustion and you will not be able to deal with troubleshooting later.
Apart from answering “why” as discussed above, there are some other elements which require you to take certain strategically-aligned decisions. These include integration of app with social media platforms as well as websites. App developers also need to decide if users are required to sign up with the help of other social media apps or their google IDs or not.
If you are planning to integrate with the website, you will require an API or Application Programming interface which comes with its own costs. Determining the design standards for your applications is another important factor. These factors must be precisely evaluated before allocating the budget for app development.
8. Form a solid team
Your team is one of the most critical pillars in the development and achievement of your application. A solid group consisting of technology experts, app developers, UI/UX professionals, content professionals, and marketing professionals.
The skilled UI/UX designers are responsible for building the visual content to be coded into the application. A content or a copywriter will be responsible for all the information that goes into your app’s navigation.
A marketing professional will be responsible for creating marketing strategies for maximizing the reach. Social media marketing is also a sub-category in today’s world for ensuring your online presence is up to the mark. A project manager.
Will be responsible for undertaking all the tasks related to the intercommunication between the customers and the app developers. A business developer will cooperate with the project manager to ensure seamless app processing by directing the procedure. So, hire the right people to form a perfect team.
9. Build an app marketing strategy to intrigue your audience
Start working on your marketing strategies before your application development. This will help you give sufficient time to warm up the audience and create anticipation and excitement among them. This is a full-proof way of reaching, intriguing and making your audience wait for your product. When the buzz has already been created, you can focus on communicating the pros of your application after its release.
During the pre-launch marketing phase, it is essential to establish your branding, identify the channels where your target audience spends time, create content that appeals to your audience, and reach out to industry influencers to assist promote your application. These things can boost enthusiasm and keenness for your application prior to it is officially released, upsurging its likelihoods of accomplishments in the future.
10. Executing the marketing strategy for your application
This is another important factor to consider before building app. It is essential to correctly market your application to your focused and target audience. Once you have a blueprint for executing marketing strategies, go for it.
You will observe a pattern of responses during the pre-launch marketing phase, pick all the positives from there and start working on the drawbacks. It is always advised to perform trials and errors in marketing. Effective execution of your marketing strategy can help drive more downloads and increase user engagement.
This will set your place right in the app store and swiftly take place in the audience’s feeds and minds by letting them know something important and exciting is in store for them. Some usual techniques marketers use for application marketing include SEO rankings, app store rankings, and cross-platform marketing.
However, it is always advised to be as creative and innovative as possible while marketing your business. At a time when the attention span does not exceed three seconds, it is good to work smart rather than working hard. Thus, it is essential to learn the art of mobile marketing hacks to capture the attention of your audience right away.
11. Prepare for app store optimization
After you have launched your app to an app store like Google Play or the App Store, it is time to prepare for app store optimization. This helps in increasing your app’s visibility, thereby maximizing downloads.
Some of the essential things to consider while preparing for app store optimization are how easy it is to read, spell, and remember your app name and how relevant your app description is to the purpose your audience might search for.
Do not forget to showcase the features and benefits of your application in the description. Using relevant and commonly searched keywords also need to be included in the description of your application.
Another important thing for optimizing your application is a visually appealing logo, set of graphics, videos, and images. Showcasing customer ratings and reviews also positively impacts customer decision making. On point app store optimization helps your app to rank higher, be readily visible and get more downloads.
12. Determine ways to monetize your application
Out of the many factors to consider before developing your application, you must determine various mobile app monetization strategies. Channels like private advertisement, pay per click, pay per view help you in earning through your application in its early stages.
Another step to take care of before app development is to decide whether you would like to charge your customers for downloading the application. If yes, you can incorporate in app-purchase.
Read More:- In-App Purchases vs. External Payment Gateways
Free banner advertisement services are developed in advance with templates that starts once the app gains 1000+ installations. Then, you can incorporate an advertisement code into the app and earn through affiliate advertising.
13. Developing a minimum viable application
It is crucial to test your application before it is released in the market. Creating a minimum viable application is important because it paves a way to answer questions before developing your app like – what is the main purpose of your application, what problem does it solve? How is your application different from those targeting the same problem? What procedure will your customers have access to solve the issues? What is the unique attribute of your application? Which are the attributes you must have in your application? Which features should you prioritize in your application.
Read More:- How To Develop An IoT-Based Minimum Viable Product?
In conclusion MVP or Minimum Viable Product is an in-depth observation of your application. It helps you in studying and understanding the nature of the application properly.
14. Ensuring data security and privacy measures
Security and privacy are the biggest concerns today in the digital world. Thus, before developing an app, app developers must decide what security measures are required if your app asks for sensitive data from the users. One way to ensure proper security measures is consulting with an ISO 27001 consultant.
An ISO 27001 consultant has specialized knowledge in designing, implementing, and maintaining information security management systems, which can help fortify app security. People often get skeptical and sensitive while sharing their actual data. Thus, it is the app developer’s responsibility to keep that data safe and prevent any infringement of privacy, ideally with the guidance of such a consultant.
This responsibility comprises the information to be gathered and the approach to which it is leveraged. Also, ensure you have a proper process to collect, handle, store, and use user data. Another thing to ensure while app development is to be completely transparent about the data your app requires to collect and always ask for permission from your users.
15. Keeping room for improvement
Once you have a prototype ready, launch it on the app store. Encourage at least hundred customers to download the application. Study these first hundred customers’ response, the problems they are facing while operating and navigating through the app. Focus on getting real insights and do not leave any room for mistakes going forward.
Also, study the positive sides of your application. Knowing the pros will help you in further marketing of your application. You can pitch confidently when you are familiar with what users are liking about your application.
Also, always remember, you will constantly need to be up-to-date with the market and consumer behaviour and update your application accordingly. Keeping an open mind for improvement and learning throughout the process will help you elevate the quality of your application.
Key Takeaways
The mobile app industry is expected to continue growing in the coming years. Research report says that the mobile app market will surpass $567.19 billion in revenue by 2023. With such promising prospects, it is evident that businesses and individuals should pay attention to the potential of building their mobile applications. A well-designed app can provide many benefits, such as increased revenue, improved customer engagement, and enhanced brand visibility.
Here we have discussed the factors to consider before developing an app. However, it is crucial to remember that developing a successful app requires hard work, dedication, and expertise. By following the tips and guidelines mentioned in this blog, you can create an app which is successful, meets the needs of your target audience, solves a problem you started with, and eventually serves its purpose.
We at Technostacks, a top mobile app development company, can help bring your vision to life. With years of experience and a team of skilled app developers, we are equipped to handle all aspects of app development, from ideation, creation to launch. Contact us for your app development requirements.
