Business from every corner of the world, offering various range of services and products are shifting to the mobile realm. If you are into a business that sells services or products to your customers, having a mobile app is essential to prepare yourself for the future. It helps in providing more value to our target audience, connect better with users, and build your brand and obviously, boost your profile. Let's have a detailed look into how to build your first mobile application.
Determine your goals
So, you have a got a creative idea for building a mobile app for your business. Now, don't try to jump into the detailing and complex aspects of the application. Instead, begin by clearly defining your goals and stating its aim. What is the mobile app going to do? Is the design appealing? Who are the target customers? Having a blueprint of your goals and plans will help you in moving to the next stage easily.
Create a design of your concept
Having an abstract idea in your mind will not help you to plan the next level. It is good to have a design of your concept at least as a rough sketch. You don't need to have a professional sketching, just a rough sketch with important points and details of your future interface will do. What you are doing is, transforming your ideas into a visual form with a proper layout and structure.
Market research
Before you step into the market, you want to make sure that currently there aren't any apps that do the same thing. Though you think that your idea unique, cross-checking by doing a little research will help in ensuring that yours is truly a revolutionary idea.
Prepare a detailed layout
Once you have a rough sketch, you need to add in the details by laying out the flow and features of the app. You can either opt for converting it to a document or if you want to take a step further, try converting it to a wireframe. Do not forget to add a flow of navigation and other important details. Having a detailed layout of your visions and goals will help the developer to understand your requirements in a better way.
Sort out non-core features
Removing non-core features from the detailed layout is one of the essential steps you should not forget. You need to offer only core things to your customers. When you make the initial layout, there will be certain features that don’t need to be placed in the app. In this stage, you can work in sorting out and remove those less important features. You can always add the non-core features in later stages as an update.
Analysis your competitors
You can do detailed competitor analyses type find out who your competitors are and what their strengths are. Doing competitor research will give you a clear idea of your competitor's strength and about the strategies they have been following. Never copy their highlights or interesting features. Instead, you can try copying their marketing strategies and their techniques they use to monetize their application. Once the competitor analysis is completed, you need to have a detailed idea of the things you should be doing and not doing.
Hire a developer
You can consider hiring a mobile app development company that has a solid development team. It is important to check on their previous works, portfolio so that you can know what you are signing up for. Develop a wireframe which is a visual protocol of your app, and it will help in communicating your idea without verbally saying it.
Besides wireframe, you can also develop a storyboard for your app which is a guideline for your application screen.
Define the backend
Once you have the wireframe which is the technical foundation of your app's backend structure, you can define the backend. Create a sketch of your server, data diagrams, and API'S. This will be useful for your developer as a self-explanatory diagram while working on developing the application. At this stage, you can modify your storyboard or wireframe accordingly if required.
Start designing
After completing all the steps mentioned above, you can ask your developer or designer to design skins or individual screens. Skins are a high-resolution format of the prototype you already created as a wireframe. You can also make changes according to the feedback you receive during prototype testing of the app.
Testing
Once the design is completed, you have to do the testing again. In this stage, you can figure out crashes, bugs or anything missing features, if any. If any issues arises, you can fix it at the time of next development phase. Finally, you need to go for a beta test before the app is out on the market. As the beta test is the final test and after that, it is directly out in the market, you have to fix every error.
The step by step guide is not the ultimate, but it is a basic guideline on how to build your first mobile app. However, the process doesn’t end in building an app, once the app is in the app store; you have to try various marketing strategies to reach it out to your customers. Mobile app development is not a one-time process as well, you have to improvise the features according to the feedback of your users, and it goes on.