App stores like Google Play and App Store now consist of millions of applications of various genres. Subsequently, the audience these applications attract is immense. In this concentrated market, you need to think out-of-the-box and bring innovation in your application that deserves and does attract a crowd.
With modern trends and technologies, app development becomes faster, easier, and more accessible for businesses. Still, the mobile app development company process can be very complex and intimidating.
Before starting the mobile app development process, you need to draw out an execution strategy because this will be a very time, energy, and budget-consuming activity. The steps you need to consider and follow are:
- Market research
- Project estimation
- Wireframing
- App design
- App development
- QA & testing
- Release
- Post-production support
Market Research
It’s the most critical checkpoint of your mobile app development process. In this first step of your journey to develop an application, you need to sit down and brainstorm ideas on which you want to create your application. You need to establish the fact that what is the problem your app will solve, what graphics it will use, its demographics, psychographics, and geographics.
Among such answers, what you need to do is market research. Market research may consist of an in-depth search of the most downloaded applications, which areas are the most downloaded apps found in, and what platform those apps have been built on. This research will help you prioritize your work and objectives.
Once you have a good idea of what you’re going to build, you need to check out what your competitors are doing. An analysis is vital, especially if your app is a strategy game or a workout app. In this analysis, you will be considering many activities of the competitors, which include:
- Number of downloads of your competitors
- The rating they have on their respective app store
- Main features of your competitors
- Any notable and innovative functionality.
Project estimation
The next step will be budgeting your future project. This is the allocation of available resources you aim to spend. These resources will be required to hire extra help, including the professional hands that will be essential.
In addition to this, you will need to run your marketing campaigns, which require a decent amount of investment. Even once the app has launched, its maintenance requires bills to be paid and help to be hired. You need to make a clear path for your cashflows for these reasons.
Wireframing
A wireframe is a layout of a web page that is a critical part of the interaction design process. It aims to provide a visual understanding of a page early in a project. Wireframing is like constructing a grey structure of a building before it’s fully furnished and ready to use.
The layout you create and the charges you incur will be going on to form the original application when the developers add the detailing. This wireframe will base what your final app will look like and will provide a base for the developers to construct a good-performing app.
App Design
Your interface is the first thing that comes into contact with your audience. It tells what interactions your application has and how creative they will be. Understanding what your application does and then forming your UI accordingly is critical. To understand what makes an experience a good one, Peter Moreville developed a great honeycomb model we can use.
App Development
At this stage, we move on to the actual execution of your app design. There are several approaches to app development: hybrid application, native application, and web application.
Native development means creating an app specifically for Android or iOS. This approach results in excellent app performance and quality; the downside is costly development and longer time-to-market. With hybrid apps, much of the code is reused for Android and iOS; therefore, you get a shorter development cycle. Web applications are the simplest in development; however, they can be accessed with browsers and have limitations in UI/UX.
QA & Testing
Once you’ve created your application, it is essential to test it. Testing allows the development team to make sure the mobile app functions as expected, meets initial requirements, and executes the set goals.
App Release
After filling the loopholes and successfully testing your application, it is time to launch your mobile app. At this stage, your developers transfer the app source code to you. Next, you publish your application in Google Play or App Store.
Post-Production Support
Your mobile app development process doesn’t actually end. After the launch, continuous R&D and maintenance are required to continuously improve the application, fix bugs, add new features, and enhance app security.
Conclusion
You need to accept that it is impossible to predict and control every step at every stage of your mobile app development process. You need to follow an organized workflow, respond to queries fast, and do some detailed planning to limit unexpected issues during the app development process.
Creating a mobile app sounds complicated. However, if every development team member knows their job and all the sprints are processed within the set goals, you can be sure that your mobile app will be a successful product.
