Building a mobile application takes resources. If you want to make a great app, here is a step-by-step guide for the mobile app development process explaining various stages of the mobile app development lifecycle.
“Ideas are easy. It’s the execution of ideas that separates the sheep from the goats.”― Sue Grafton
And so one day, in a random coffee shop while brainstorming with your friends, a business idea strikes your mind. You guys wrap up, and the idea is left behind.
In the middle of the sleepless night, you thought of it again, and with a little modification and some research, you decided to take this mobile app idea further.
But wait, with so much to be done, how about taking help from a simple mobile app development step-by-step process guide that can ease down everything for you?
- Step By Step Guide for Mobile App Development Process
- Step 1: Not Just an Idea, a Business Plan
- Step 2: Understand Your Market
- Step 3: Build a Wireframe
- Step 4: Choose a Platform Wisely
- Step 5: Develop Your Application
- Step 6: Test the Application for Its Functions
- Step 7: Launch a Beta Version of Your Application
- Step 8: Launch Your Application
- Step 9: Post-Launch Activity
- Wrapping It Up!
Step By Step Guide for Mobile App Development Process
The chit-chats in the coffee shop are just the inspiration. Turning it into reality is quite a challenge, requiring a well-defined process. So basically, the mobile app development process talks about
- Ideation
- Market Research
- Wireframe
- Technology
- Development
- Test Functions and Features
- Test UI/UX
- Launch Beta Version
- Launch App
- Market App
Step 1: Not Just an Idea, a Business Plan
Working on something where you may lose interest easily is not the right choice. To ensure that the project you are working on will reflect exactly as you want, be a little intriguing and curious. Play with the mind map and see if you can connect all the dots.
To affirm that you are investing your time and energy in the right place, ensure you are confident about the basic elements that make things easier.
Some of the must-consider points are:
Who Is Your Target Audience?
First things in the app development process: Before working on the app idea, you must be sure of the target audience. You cannot offer services to people without knowing who you want to serve. Once you are aware of the target audience, the research size becomes smaller, and you can easily decide how to proceed with the mobile app development process.
What Would Be the Unique Selling Point of Your App?
When discussing a mobile application, including a strong selling point is crucial. This would make your application stand out from the rest of your competition. There has to be an element or a design that would make you stand out from the crowd a little better.
What Would be the Basic Objective of Building the Application?
As you decide to build a mobile application, think of the problem as addressing a global issue, or is it just a personal call. Analyze if your business needs a mobile application or if you are better off without one. If you decide to build a strong mobile app to support your business idea, just be sure of the functions and features you would like to add.
Read Also: How to Hire Mobile App Developers: The Complete Guide
How Much Investment Would Your App Ask?
Mobile app development isn’t an overnight process where you wake up and “tadaaannn” here’s an application. Mobile app development is a time-consuming job, and you have to be sure of the investment that goes in. You can start with a basic application, and once that starts generating revenue, you can work on an advanced version with each update.
Who Are Your Competition and What Is Their Strategy?
When you enter the market with a new challenge, the competition is the most important thing to consider. You need not be the first to do something; you can be better at it with some innovation. A simple example is PayTM, which taught the world to use scan codes and followed GPay, ApplePay, and other applications that made the process much simpler and convenient for the audience.
Just know the pain points and provide a better solution!
Would You Want a Marketing Team to Promote Your App?
You need to have an action plan in advance when talking about app marketing strategy. Be sure if you want to hire a mobile app development company that can build your identity in the market or can help you be in a win-win situation around the time.
Make sure you market your app in a way that brings an interesting and engaging solution to the market.
Step 2: Understand Your Market
If you plan to build an app for the existing business, the market research process becomes simpler as you are already aware of consumer behavior. But if you are entering the market with a brand new application that needs to be catered to from scratch, there are a few things that you need to consider.
Build a Customer Persona
A customer persona is the basic understanding of the problem and the solution your customer is seeking. Here you need to consider the minute details like demographics, age factor, region, etc. of your customers and then plan the functioning and operations of the application.
Have a Survey
What better than a quick survey to understand your customers?
Well, to understand your customers, you need to understand them better and be in the zone where you can connect with them. If your customers can’t relate to your application, it would fall straight on its face.
Take Out the Key Points
Analyzing the survey is the major challenge here. If you go a little easier with the survey response, things would be tougher, and you would have to deal with some losses. It is better to build a detailed survey report and discuss the idea and the solution to the problems that your audience is facing with your team.
Visit Also: Reasons to Hire Android App Developers in India
Step 3: Build a Wireframe
Now that you know exactly what you want on paper, let’s get some action. Wireframing is a significant part of the mobile application development process. You have to be alert that the solutions built are engaging and interactive. Hire a mobile app development team to handle the wireframe process and help you comprehend the strategy.
We are available to connect with our clients round the clock to ensure the deployed solutions are easy to use and meet their business objectives.
A wireframe is a basic set of instructions to decide your application’s appearance.
When working on the wireframe, the most important thing to take care of is mapping out the flow of the content. With a well-defined user flow, you must ensure your application reaches the goal.
A well-defined wireframe would be the blueprint of the solution you are trying to build with your team. Your solutions need to be designed in a way that reflects great profits.
A few things to take care of here are:
The Device Size
Build your business application in a way that it sets up with all the devices. You need to be sure of the fact that your app is compatible with all devices and that the content is displayed in the right manner.
Read Also: 25+ Innovative Mobile App Ideas for Startups to Launch
The Aesthetics
When talking about aesthetics, your application must look perfect. We make sure to deliver solutions that are engaging and can impress at first glance. Not just the looks but the feel of the app must be smooth. The application would reach the goal with a few clicks and reflect on how things function.
The Content Goes Well
Another important point to take care of is that the content goes well with the work. We ensure the basic elements, content, and icons are well-placed and can easily engage the customers.
Sometimes, your design may crash. To ensure your application works well, you must go through a design sprint. This is a collaborative way of understanding and defining how your business application would work.
The important Elements of the Process Are:
- Understanding: Understand the problems related to the designing of the application
- Define: Build a key strategy and stick to it for ease of development
- Diverge: Work on similar codes to be prepared with a few alternate functioning ideas.
- Decide: Work on the idea that you think would reflect easily.
- Prototype: This is simply the model of your application, so just be quick to develop it and bring an engaging solution to the ground.
- Get User Feedback: See what sells for you and what doesn’t. Analyze why a few elements failed and can’t impact the audience.
Step 4: Choose a Platform Wisely
When thinking of steps to develop a mobile app, you must be sure of the platform to which you want to take your mobile app. You may want to take your mobile application as a PWA instead of the Play Store.
You have a few choices here:
1. Native App: You can launch your app platform-specific instead of making it global. You can hire Android app developers or iOS app developers from an IT firm to get your solutions. Native app development is great if you have a limited idea and do not want to burn your budget.
2. Cross-Platform App: To target a global audience, you must reach the experts for cross-platform app development. We ensure that the deployed solutions are compatible with various operating systems and help you reach a wider audience.
Read Also: Cross-Platform Mobile App Development Companies
3. Progressive Web Apps: These aren’t mobile applications but can be a great choice to stay ahead. These web applications work like mobile applications but on your phone browser.
Our dedicated app development team can help you make a strong presence in the market.
Read Also: Patenting your App Idea is the Need of the Hour
Step 5: Develop Your Application
Now that you have all the details let the drum rolls begin!
You must discuss the complete process and how things would function with your mobile app development team. You have to take care of some tech here, so just connect with the team, do a little homework, and proceed.
Some of the basic things that you need to consider here are:
1. Backend Technology
You need to be aware of the technology that goes into the backend development. For Android app development steps, you must see the programming language that can offer you the most features with the least complications.
2. Build Your API
When talking about the application programming interface, these are basic tools that function according to the application’s practices, protocols, and tools.
3. Front End Development
This is another aspect of your mobile app that you must consider seriously. The front end of the application is basically where the user interacts. Any flaw here would make your app crash, and your users abandon the app. If the application’s front end is designed and developed precisely, the chances of user engagement rise and bring more traffic and sales for your business.
Remember “What Looks Good, Sells Better!”
Read More: Top Indian based mobile app development companies
Step 6: Test the Application for Its Functions
A code review process can make things easy for you. If you hire a mobile app development team for your product, they would probably use Agile development methodology, where you can test the codes after each milestone and make the changes if required.
The complete testing process is divided into various fragments:
Document Testing
Here we would talk about the layouts, navigational charts, and other important aspects that would bring the right solution to the picture. Here, there is a basic check of the expected features and other details to ensure your application is built exactly as expected.
Functional Testing
The next thing that we talk about is if the app meets its targets. We affirm that the proposed solutions are interesting and engaging and can make things easier. Here, we test the application’s features, like the payment gateway, social media buttons, ticket booking, etc.
Usability Testing
Here, we see if the app navigation can be customized. We make sure that the solutions that are delivered are fun to interact with and that the navigation process is easy. Reaching the end goal should be a minimum tap to ensure the solutions are well-defined and highly rewarding.
Compatibility Testing
Test if your application is compatible with various platforms where it has to be executed. These basic points cannot be overlooked when working on your mobile app development project.
Read Also: Mobile App Development: The Future You Can’t Ignore
Performance Testing
When an app goes live, there are a lot of things that need to be considered. We ensure that the solutions we work on can perform under stressful conditions, too. It is important to test if the app can bear the load of continuous traffic, work seamlessly with all mobile solutions, and reflect how it is expected to be.
Security Testing
We understand security is an important aspect to take care of. When the users install an application, they need to be confident that using it will not affect their other applications or the system. We affirm our commitment to delivering solutions that are high on security and take care of your users’ privacy.
Certification Testing
You need to update all the application elements, like the licenses, terms of use, industry standards, and other details, to affirm that the application can be run on any platform.
Testing your mobile application is a herculean task, and it would take a little longer, but make sure not to miss any of these processes as if, in any case, there is a bug, there is a probability that you may miss it.
Step 7: Launch a Beta Version of Your Application
When talking about the app launch, it is often done in two steps. First, launch the beta version for early adopters and see if the app works for them. If the app reflects well, then a part of your marketing strategy is accomplished. Word of mouth has the power to influence people from the past era.
Let the people understand the beta version of your application and see how it reflects and functions for your business.
Recommended Read: Best iPhone App Development Company
Step 8: Launch Your Application
Once the beta version is launched successfully and reflects well, go to the launching of your final app on Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
Step 9: Post-Launch Activity
Affirm that your app reaches the audience easily. Market your application in a way that you get the best results. Reach your digital marketing team, seek help, and proceed further for better solutions.
Phew! That’s a lot of work for a very steady business.
Little efforts initially can help you relax in the later phase.
Wrapping It Up!
When talking about mobile app development, it becomes quite challenging if you are naive. The step-by-step guide here can help you through the app development process, but you would need to be available round the clock to bring rewarding and highly profit-generating solutions to the screen. We are one of the best mobile app development companies that deliver quality app solutions.
If you have an app idea and want some consultations, contact our techies for coffee and see the best they can do for you.