Believe it or not, mobile app development has become a new trend. Every second person is planning to either set up his app startup or somehow incorporate the mobile app services into his business. If you count yourself into the former category and you are super nervous about how to build an app startup, consider this article as your handbook.
With years of experience in the mobile industry, I have articulated the following pointers that you should consider establishing your app startup like a PRO:-
1. Get an Idea
I know it sounds silly since millions of ideas hit our heads every day. However, not every idea is feasible to go forward with. For example, if you say that you will create an app that will text all of your phonebook contacts every 15 minutes, it ’ll fail (at least I think so). No one would appreciate the ideas and your app would be considered as a heap of rubbish things in the app store. And thus, all your investment in the mobile app development will go in vain.
So the very first thing to do when you, an entrepreneur, get an idea is to validate it. Share your app idea with your friends, colleagues, family, and reputed people and ask for their feedback. Do extensive market research and determine if there’s room for such ideas or not. Bear in mind only those ideas actually work which target the pain points of the customers one or the other way.
2. Obtain Pre-Development Insights
Don’t just sit back with a smile on your face that your idea can sustain in the market. Dive deeper into the market and gain insights into how to make it successful. Find out:-
- Who will be your target audience?
- What mobile app development platform do they prefer?
- What existing options do they have?
- What do they expect?
- How can your app improve the situation?
When you get acquainted with details related to these questions, you will be able to do the better pre-development planning and utilize your investment in a better manner. For the same reason, you can also consider Competitive Analysis.
3. Make a Blueprint
Now, when you have a plan in your head, put it on paper or something tangible. This will give you clarity about what should be in your app development checklist and what should not be. Besides, it will make it easier for you to understand the right balance between your proposed idea and the tech stack chosen. Besides, it will help you to explain your idea to investors and hired app partners in the future.
To leverage better benefits from this phase, consider MVP development. Being the smallest working model of your mobile application idea, it will help you to understand your idea inside out and determine if the app plan goes with the proposed idea behind. Furthermore, it will help you to test your idea in the market at the earliest, gather a better knowledge of the changing trends, get a better estimate of how much does it cost to make an app, and ensure that your hired team is on the same page.
4. Gather Funding for Your App Idea
Now, as you have developed an MVP or what we can say as a prototype of your app idea, you can quickly turn towards fund gathering process. You can calculate how much funds you can collect on your own, while how much funds to raise through Angel funding based on your mobile app prototype. And thus, go as per plan to receive an adequate amount of money.
5. Look into App Design
The next phase of mobile app development is App Design. You must be wondering what the need to focus on the app design is, it’s okay with a basic design as well. After all, innovation is in the functionality of the app.
I agree with that, but partly. The mobile app design plays a pivotal role in attracting users, engaging them, and making your app a successful attempt. It’s the app’s design that gives the very first impression of your application to the users. And so it has to be perfect enough to foster them staying hooked with your app.
6. Begin Coding
When the design (or say front end) of the mobile app is ready, jump into the coding (backend) part. If you know how to code, get started with the same. Or otherwise, hire the proficient mobile app developers and hand over your app development plan along with the insights gained to them. Along with, keep checking for ways to optimize the plan and cut down the mobile app development cost. For example, recommend opting code reusing, wherever possible.
7. Test Well
When the app is ready, don’t get excited to launch the app. Test your mobile application for bugs and errors. Look for loopholes and implement the measures required for making a secure app. Apart from this, invest in beta testing. This will help you to understand the users’ reaction and tackle those errors which might not emerge from a developer’s perspective.
8. Launch Your App
When your app is finally tested, begin preparing your app for the launching process. Pick the right time for app launch and invest your best efforts into ASO (App Store Optimization) marketing to submit your app with a higher scope of success.
9. Do Marketing Extensively
Many Entrepreneurs are living with the myth that a perfect app will attract the users itself. You need to launch your app, and you will get millions of app downloads in no time. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
With millions of mobile apps competing against each other to sustain the market, it is tough to make users familiar with your app without a certain push from your side. So, rather than waiting hopefully and getting stressed later, make a perfect app marketing plan and execute it.
Make a list of tactics and platforms you can consider for promoting your mobile app and see how to better employ your time, efforts and funds for higher outcomes. And begin with the app marketing strategy right from the moment you started with the mobile app development process. This will make the market prepared for your app and increased the chances of clicks on your app store page.
10. Analyze Market Response
The next phase of building a successful mobile app startup is to consider the market reaction and see how to improve it. For this, don’t just count the app downloads, but also invest in other KPIs like Acquisition cost, Retention rate, etc. This will help you to understand the pain points of your target audience and how to improve your app accordingly. Besides, it will help you to determine the changing market trends and customer behavior, implying preparing for a better future.
11. Prepare for App Maintenance and Update
Building a mobile app startup is not a one-time task. You need to keep on improving your idea and coming up with an exciting element to remain in the limelight. This implies you need to invest in app maintenance and update. So, here in this phase, you need to improve your app idea to eliminate the issues your target user base is facing, along with planning for the introduction of some new features that will bring better outcomes.
These are the steps you need to focus on while mobile app development to build a successful app startup and reap the benefits of the app industry. Do you find them useful? Have I missed anything vital? Do let me know via the comment section below.
Note: This is a guest post, and opinion in this article is of the guest writer. If you have any issues with any of the articles posted at www.marktechpost.com please contact at asif@marktechpost.com
Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Technology and 2 years of work experience in a mobile app development company, Bhupinder is focused on making technology digestible to all. Being someone who stays updated with the latest tech trends, she’s always armed to write and spread the knowledge. When not found writing, you will find her answering on Quora while sipping coffee.
