Quick Guide to Mobile App Development Strategy
Top mobile app development companies around the world have created mobile applications that have helped small and large enterprises with their business goals, and themselves have benefited greatly from the digital revolution. If you are reading this article, you probably want to become one of the successful enterprises that routed for mobile app development at the right time. But then again, there is no such thing as the ‘right time’, and you can always get a mobile application for your business to get along with the wind of competition.
Applications develop an existence that translates into a mobile application development strategy. It is here where you build your successful apps and use all the parameters you want while you ensure that you are keeping pace with increasingly important emerging mobile technologies.
Want to have a Mobile App Development Strategy?
This is the first step before dipping into the waters of strategy but it must make the difference of why it is important to have such a strategy in place. A comprehensive mobile app development strategy ensures that your application includes the following:
- It meets end users’ expectations: Design to meet an audience, identify that target market audience, and think about how the application will address their needs.
- Aligning with business goals-the application must contribute to wider strategic business goals as laid out in the strategy that the targeting is indeed done.
- Increase Returns on Investment-an effective strategy reduces risks and time and other invested resources are used to build towards the desired and maximized results for ROI.
Why Choose Custom Mobile Application Development with Partnership?
The right development partner is very important while developing a mobile application. SMACware has specialization in the development of unique custom mobile and web applications according to the specific requirements of your business.
A user-centered agile approach of developing high-quality scalable applications for your business problems coupled with an excellent customer experience. UI/UX design, development, and testing to client launch post should ensure that the app stands out in today’s highly competitive market.
If you think most of the work has to be done by the developers or designers, you may be mistaken. Of course, the technical side has to be handled by the technical people, but even as a layman investing their money into something has to have a strategy for app development and shall take up a strategy for the entire operation. This way you can actively involve with the people working on your project and ensure that the app development is heading in the right direction and is at par with your expectations. In this article, we will take you through a step-by-step guide of mobile app development strategy that you can follow to define your requirements with the team, to ensure a great app for your business.
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Get an idea and define it
Most of the budding entrepreneurs would just have a basic idea of what they want to shape into an app. Three cheers for them for having an idea, but unfortunately, having a basic understanding of your idea and relying on project handlers to shape it, is no good. You cannot just tell yourself “I want an app like Amazon. Beyond this, let the development company advise”. Concerning the idea, your goal should be to know how your app will look, function and provide value to people, and convey it clearly to the development team to avoid any future hassles.
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Define your customers/users
Apart from the idea, you must know what kind of users would you app attract. This will help you in finding the right features, the right utility and even the right development company. Defining your customers should be easy, provided that you know your idea well. For example – if your app is about digital payments, you must know that your audience is going to be more from the present generation because current generation is more aware on those grounds. In case your app is about food delivery, your obvious target audience would be working people because they are usually short on time to prepare meals. The key to defining your customers is going by the idea of your application and deducing who would be interested to use that.
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Determine relevant features
Although the mobile app developers engaged in your project would give you suggestions regarding what features you should be using in the application, always carry out a little research to make sure your money doesn’t go in waste. Research the heck out of the application distribution stores and see what features are common among the applications that resonate with your idea. You can also consider adding features if you have some in mind, but remember that even the biggest application developers include some common features because they are convenient and the audience readily accepts them. Also, there are some features that are common among most of the applications, irrespective of the type of utility they provide. Some such features are – Hamburger menu, floating buttons, top or bottom navigation bar etc.
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Determine the cost and time of development
Time & cost estimation is probably the most important aspect of app development strategy. Without defining your budget and looking for a suitable development company that fits your budget would keep confusion high from the very beginning. Decide your budget, look for companies available that would work under the budget. If you have a large enterprise and have adequate money to invest, go for dedicated-team based model. If your enterprise is small, you should consider price-based model. Once the app is developed, proceed to testing.
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Test and Quality Assurance
Launching the app without testing is no less than suicide. The testing period of the app mainly depends upon the utility, features, users and few other factors. To make sure your app is ready for the launch, ask for progress on testing process. Ask for reports on testing of each feature, and also check the app by yourself, once the test process is completed.
Test types to take into account include:
- Functional Testing: Ensures that the application works as required.
- Performance testing: Measures an application’s speed, responsiveness, and stability.
- Usability testing: finds out how easy and satisfying an app is to use.
- Security testing: safeguards your app and makes sure that user data is kept safe and clean.
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Pre-Launch and Post-Launch Strategy
Launching an application will only be the beginning. Subsequently, the performance and user feedback would be taken into consideration, and improvements will be made.
- App Store Optimization (ASO): The app listing should be optimized for app stores- App Store or Google Play Store- for visibility and downloading.
- Marketing Strategy: Promote the app by social media, e-mail campaigns, and paid advertisements to gain users.
- Feedback Loop: Keep gathering and analyzing user feedback to continually improve the application in future updates.
So these were the steps that you should be following while you are getting an app built for your business. If you manage to follow the steps in the order they have been mentioned here, the outcome would surely be positive. But then to make the app work the room, there are few other factors as well, such as app marketing, app optimization, consistent analytics and monitoring etc. that you need to keep in mind to build a great application that fetches downloads in no time.
How Does Developing a Marketing Strategy Help Your Business?
- A marketing strategy gives you defined plans to cater to customer needs.
- Marketing strategies help you reach new customers systematically, which would further expand your business.
- When businesses look at their sales strategy with nobility and uprightness for a target market, they can save a lot of money on marketing that occurs when targeting the wrong group.
A Conclusion
In today competitive milieu, successful development has proven to be the backbone of value-adding mobile application metamorphosis. You have clear objectives and thorough research before you really embark on a well-monitored development process for an app that finally benefits its users.
The easy way through which we can ensure quality app building in terms of delivery and meeting business timeframes is through a reliable partner, such as SMACware, which is trusted to manage a proper development process for the application.
