Mobile App Development Process

The word “Mobile app” is the most trending word which we are listening from a decade.

If you are a tech person or using the smartphone, you will be aware of mobile apps.

If you are not, then this article will help you in getting knowledge about mobile apps and its creation.

Before going to learn how to make an app from scratch, let us know some basics about mobile apps.

What is a mobile application?

Definition:

“It is a software application, which is designed to work on mobile devices like a watch, smartphone, and tablets”.

The mobile devices use the apps to do things in a faster and easy way and also used for entertainment. In recent times, some mobile devices manufacturers are coming up with preloaded apps even though they need to download from the device-specific app store.

The mobile apps are build based on the operating system on which we can run that application. Currently, in the market, most people use apps based on Android, IOS, Amazon, Windows, and Blackberry. Some apps are compatible with all operating systems, while some apps will run on IOS only.

Make a mobile app which is compatible with all operating systems.

You got a doubt that why mobile apps are better than mobile websites?

A perfectly designed mobile application will perform actions faster than a mobile website. The mobile apps can reach to maximum people when compared with mobile websites.

What are the different types of Mobile apps?

At present, we have three types of mobile apps in the market.

• Native apps.
• Web apps.
• Hybrid apps.

Read more about : Top mobile app development frameworks 2020

One single idea or a mobile app can be useful for various business categories like health, business, transportation, and which can turn into a successful startup.

Not every idea will become popular due to the lack of app development. So, we need to design the simple app using the systematic approach.

If you search in any search engines like Google, Bing, and Ask, you will get a bundle of search results. You will get many click bait articles like “How can create an app in 10 minutes”.

In the search results, you will find many articles like this only.

Many of the people think developing a mobile app is easy, but they don’t know how hard is it to make an app is.

You can build an app in 10 minutes by using some of the mobile app development tools like Phone Gap, but the final result will be something which you did not expect.

If you want to build an app which is in your imagination, you need to follow the below steps for building an app from scratch to make it a viral.

Let me ask something before we start with how to make a mobile app.

Mobile app development is Science or Art?

Many will raise their voice to say it is an art!!!

But….

Based on the research, we can say it as a combination of both. Because we need technology to develop, and we need art for designing (UI and UX).

 Outline Of Mobile App Development process

1. Discovering Phase
2. Design
3. Development of App
4. Front end design
5. Back end design
6. Development phase
7. Deployment
8. Monitoring
9. Marketing App
10. App Improvements

Here is beautiful info-graph on ” Creating a mobile app from scratch” refer Link: Create a mobile app

#1 .Discovering Phase

It is the first and foremost step in building an app from scratch.

Again the first step subdivided into various sections:

Repeatedly, people plunge into mobile app development without any planning, and they will not have any clue about the whole process. Due to which bang of errors and complications will occur, this will lead to loss of momentum, wealth, time, and human resources.

With the experience taken from a lot of mobile app developers, came to know that the mobile apps will be unsuccessful due to lack of Planning and strategy.

“Think twice before you make a decision.”

* Steps in the discovery phase:

Generate an idea or identify the problem:

If you want to build an app, first of all, you need to have an idea what app you need to build on. Make sure you want a revenue-generating app or just for namesake.

If you want to generate revenue app, then you need to come up with the best idea which can rule the market.

* We can get an idea:

If you have some creative thinking.

(OR)

A solution to the problem faced by you or by people you know.

If you are not enough to think on your own, then make a list of problems, in that analyze which problem is faced by so many people and which has more potential in revenue generating.

Great!! Now you got the idea to make a mobile app.

After getting the idea, you need to evaluate

• Identify the problem
• Assess how your app can solve the problem.

* Analyze your competitors:

Let us say you are planning to develop a shopping app. There are a lot of options present in the app store, which are serving the same purpose to customers.

* Know your audience:

I think you will get a doubt that “How we can know our audience”!?

Before you develop an app, you need to know the audience if you want your app to be successful. The Key elements you should need to target the audience gender, age, education, location, and many more based on the app.

Apart from the demographic elements, we need to consider mobile platforms on which we want to develop and smartphones software and hardware configurations.

That’s why it’s better to analyze your competitors to go ahead of them. While you examine your competitors, you need to look out these aspects:

• Ratings
• Reviews
• Number of installments
• History
• Features & services.

The research will help you to provide the best utility, separates our app from the crowd, and we can target the right audience.

* Create a business model:

You have the idea, analyzed the competitors, and get to know about your audience.

The next thing you should know from where you will get the revenue? For that, you need to create a business model.

“Everything on the earth revolves around the money.”

Many will say no, but the brutal truth is yes.

In the business model, you need to describe the revenue generating methods like sponsorships, ad revenue, in-app purchases, traditional paid ads, and freemium memberships.

If your business model impressive, many people are ready for the fund or sponsor to your app.

* Define MVP:

After creating your business model, you need to focus on building MVP.

MVP abbreviation is Minimum viable product. The MVP is the application which developed in the initial stage with minimum features and will upgrade based on customer feedback.

It will help the developer to build a perfect app.

#2. Design:

There are millions of apps in the app stores, but only some apps are well known to users, while some are invisible to users.

Ever you thought why this is happening??

The reason is poor designing.

Defining the user experience (UX) in a simple way It is a process by which we need to satisfy the user with a product by improving accessibility, usability, human-computer interaction, and desirability provided while interacting with the product.

* Information Architecture:

Information Architecture will be useful to find how the content should organize to escalate the ease of use and accessibility. Information Architecture involves both art and science.

In this, we can decide how to represent and construct the information.

In the AI process, it will start with the writing features and sketches which emphasizes where we need to display and how it should flow.

In this process, we prepare some flowcharts and user journey, which used for creating the wire-frames.

* Wire frame:

Wire frame also called a page schematic. The wire frame is a visual guide which serves as the skeletal framework for your app.

In this stage, we describe the page layout of the app in which we arrange website content, including navigational systems and interface elements, and how they work.

With the help of wire frame, we can get some idea of the look and feel of your app.

If you have a wire frame for your app, then it is easy to interact with the developer about our app to get expected results from the start of developing an app.

We can launch our app more effectively with the help of wire frames.

* UI design:

There is a quote saying

“The first impression is the best impression.” It may be good or bad.

It is in the case of a person. It is also applicable to mobile apps.

For a normal human being, it will take 0.05 seconds to form an impression on anything it may be human or an app.

So, everything will depend on the look and feel of the app.

Definition:

“User interface (UI) design is the process of making interfaces in software or computerized devices with a focus on looks or style. Designers aim to create designs users will find easy to use and pleasurable. UI design typically refers to graphical user interfaces but also includes others, such as voice-controlled ones”.

By Interaction Design Foundation

* Develop a style guide:

For your app interface style guides are used as building blocks.

Every day, we use 5 to 10 mobile apps in which they will use 15 different colors, eight different gradients, and 15 different fonts. Due to this reason, the app look will be affected the developers are familiar with this pitfall, which can avoid with style guide.

It is like a meager design system.

The style guide is helpful for developers in coding and the app’s interface development.

* Develop rendered design:

It is a simple and straight forward process. In this, we need to drop all the elements form the style guide on wireframes.

After dropping the elements, we need to stick to the style guide up to date. If you are planning to make any changes, don’t afraid to do.

At this stage, you will get some idea about the look and feel of your app. If you wish to have any changes, you need to change before you handle it to the mobile app development team.

 

#3. Hand over to the development team:

As of now, you completed the research and documentation part. Now, we are in the crucial stage of mobile app development.

This stage requires regular interaction between the developer and designer from the starting of project development. This communication will help to develop an app without risks and confusions from both ends.

* Design files:

• Name and organize your layers and screens accurately for easy access. Assign names to the data meaningfully.
• Group the layers accordingly
• Use the color code to the groups and files to highlight hover states, click states, and interactive elements.

* Define pivotal user goals:

Make a list of user goals based on that developer able to code by keeping them as reference.

Sharing of user goals to the developer, make him think in user’s perspective to convert the goals into the Algorithms.

* Share prototype & design specification with the developer:

After defining pivotal user goals, you need to concentrate on prototype and design specifications of the mobile app.

The prototype gives a clear picture to the developers, what they need to build, and things to think while developing the mobile app.

The prototype will help the developers when they got stuck in the middle. They can go back to the prototype to check the flow of screens.

The other document you need to share with the developer is designing specifications of the mobile app. If we provide key design specifications like height, colors, opacity, fonts, alignment, width, spacing, and many more will help the developers in making of the mobile app.

#4. Front end design:

Now, we are moving into the technical aspects of the mobile app development like choosing the right technology, programming language, and development approach.

We need to think about all the pros and cons while choosing for the better development of mob market apps.

When I interacted with the few people regarding the development part, they have a misconception that only front end development part need more care and concentration rather than back end development.

But, that is not reality. Both the front & back end are essential to developing a mobile app.

Both developers need to work together to get the user expected simple app.

We have numerous ways for front end development of a mobile app, but we are providing the top approaches which are very useful for developing a simple app from scratch.

We have two approaches Native & Hybrid app.

The Native app approach again subdivided into two parts.

* Platform-Specific:

If a simple mobile app is developing based on platforms like Windows, Android, IOS, and blackberry. In this approach, the code used in the developing process of the mobile app from scratch will support only one platform.

* Cross-platform specific:

In cross platform-specific native apps, they use shared Software Development Kits even though they run natively. All though these are native app approach, we can run on various platforms.

The cross-platform native apps technologies are cost-effective, user-friendly budget, and optimized.

Nowadays, many developers are opting the cross-platform native apps for developing a simple app.

* Hybrid app:

The second approach in the front end development is Hybrid app.

If we develop a simple app on this approach, we can use it on different devices and platforms. In the current scenario, more developers are shifting from the native to hybrid.

The reason to opting the hybrid apps are quick to deploy ability, portability, user-friendly budget, and write once use anywhere.

#5. Back end design:

As of now, we looked into the best front end designs we can opt for while building an app from scratch.

Now, we need to look after the back end design, which involves the coding part. Before the code development, you need to consider the following factors:

If you want a simple app, then you to need a code. For developing, you can choose any programming languages based on your choice and interest.

We have diversified languages like C, C#, Java, PHP, and Python.

If you want to develop a mobile app with less code, you can choose the frameworks, which is the current ongoing trend in mobile development companies.

• Select the database and data structures required for your simple app. The known database is MySQL.
• Select your hosting, as we have numerous hosting for the mobile app development. In the market, we have free and paid to host available. The performance of the app will depend on the hosting itself.

#6. Development phase:

Up to now, we defined the strategy and design for the mobile app.

Now we are entering into the development part of a simple app. If you are techie, you are aware that the development of a mobile app or a project is a recursive process with the order of steps.

In the process of how to make a mobile app, we need to follow a flop to develop a simple app.

* Plan:

Before you start developing a simple app, we need to set all the things right for quick development.

The planning process starts with the requirement gathering before that you need to breakdown each task into small chunks for smooth operation.

The divided small chunks will assign to individual developers to start the plan for completing the assigned tasks.

* Develop:

After completing the planning phase, the development phase will start. The documents related to the development of the functionalities will hand over to the developers.

After completing the development of a simple app, we move forward to the next phase that is called testing.

* Testing:

Testing is a crucial part of the development of the mobile app, which used to fix the bugs in the development phase.

If we release a mobile app or project without proper testing process is done, it is like throwing a valuable thing in the dust bin.

Testing will help you to check the technical functionality, interface, and application for providing a quality product to the user of the client. As we move further in the development process, the problems will be harder to fix.

We have various types of testing:

* Unit testing:

We can perform unit testing using white box testing.

We can unit testing in two ways;

While developing the code itself

(OR)

After completing the development process.

* Functional testing:

Functional testing is used to assess requirements/functionalities of the app for which the developer designed. We can test the functionality by providing the inputs to get appropriate outputs.

In this stage, we need to prepare the test cases for each test we conduct. We need to submit the report to the developer to improve the functionalities if we get any negative output.

* Performance testing:

The reason behind performance testing to check the efficiency of the app components when we use under pressure. The primary reason for performance testing is:

• Speed
• Stability

If the simple app works according to the guidelines, then no need for improvements if not, you need to write the recommendations to the developers, where the app is lacking.

Types of performance testing: Stress, Spike, Scalability, Stress testing, and Volume testing.

As of now, you completed multiple testing’s based on the requirement. The tester will prepare the test cases which will help the developers to remove bugs and to improve the app or device.

#7. Deployment:

After completing the testing process, the next important aspect we need to consider is the Deployment of the simple app. If an app deployed, it means the app is ready for use with all functionalities.

We are listing out some of the best practices of the mobile app deployment.

• Release cycles,
• Developer Certifications,
• Automation,
• Hosting environments,
• App features
• Play store.

 

#8. Monitoring:

Are we done, with the mobile app development from scratch?

The answer will be yes by many people.

But, the real answer is no.

Now, you will get doubt why I am saying no?

Just the development and testing of a simple app is not the complete development of the app. We need regularly monitor the app to provide the improvements, addition of new features, and changes.

Monitoring will help the developer to improve user experience by fixing the bugs and while coming up with the new features.

Again you will get confused about what you need to consider while monitoring your simple app.

• Response time
• Loading time
• Battery usage
• Data usage
• Performance monitoring
• Analytics

If all the above features working fine, then users will fall in love with your mobile app, leads to the generation of new customers for the app with the help reviews and ratings.

#9. Marketing App:

Growth of any business or a simple app depends on one word called Marketing. Every business starting from startup to multinational companies spend a lot of money on marketing.

Even for the election campaigns are utilizing the power of marketing to elect as MLA or MP in India.

After a lot of research, I made a list of ways for the readers to market their mobile app.

* Press:

The first and foremost thing we need to consider is the press. You can contact any PR who are locally available. As it is expensive, we have other ways.

(OR)

Let us say you have a mobile app related to sports. If you want to market app, then contact all the bloggers who are working on the same vertical. Ask them to review your app, give access to bloggers before you release your app to the public.

If you follow this, you can market your app, which leads to an increase in mobile app installs, reviews, and ratings.

* Spend money on advertising:

Paid advertising is the least preferable choice by digital marketing experts.

We can run ads on other apps which are in the same vertical by buying ad space from them. If we can get a little bit of traffic, then we can move to viral marketing loops which leads to the mobile app market and an increase in the number of installs.

* QR codes:

If you’re mobile app exclusively targeting smartphone users, the best choice is QR codes.

We can use codes in many places brochures, ID cards, websites, mobile apps, emails, and receipts.

* Guest blogging:

Guest blogging is another way to market your mobile app to stand out in this crowded market.

You need to contact the blogs owner, who is focusing on your mobile app vertical. You need to post cache blog to attract the visitors to convert them to customers.

The blog main aim is to make the audience or visitors to download your app after reading your blog article. We should place some call to actions in the section which can bring us installs.

* Marketing app agencies:

You are interested in marketing your mobile app, but you don’t know how to?

For that, there are numerous marketing agencies exclusively for a mobile app. I am listing some of the top mobile app marketing agencies in the USA.

• Intuz
• Appency
• Appular
• ComboApp
• Messapps
• Jampp
• me

#10. App Improvements:

As the developer gets the feedback from the monitoring team based on that, we can improve the revenue, the number of installs, responsive rate, and decrease in conversation rate.

With the help of user feedback and competitor research, we can further add some more additional functionalities to the mobile app.

Escalating impacts the way the app is reacting to when they get high-level traffic. We should allocate appropriate data for the mobile app because we don’t know when it will become viral. So, make sure you improve your simple app consistently by estimating future data distribution at a larger scale.

Another factor that needs to improve regularly is the privacy and security of your simple app. In these days user primarily focusing on privacy and security because of the recent malware attacks.

Make sure the data transfer between the mobile app and the server need to encrypt.

Need to focus on two-way authentication and authorization because they are transferring sensitive personal information over the network.

Conclusion:

With the regular improvements, we can make an App to be most exciting and easy to use.

Congrats!!! Now you can develop your simple app.

I hope now you got an idea on how to make a mobile app from scratch. As it enormous one, but it will make your work easy when you go for developing a simple app.

If you are still in confusion and planning to consult top mobile app development company, we are here to help you in developing your simple app.