Top 10 Things to Consider When Developing a Mobile App

Ilya Matanov
JetRuby Agency
Published in
8 min readFeb 20, 2018

Concept proofing

First and foremost, before you start implementing your idea, ask yourself: “Is your application going to be a solution to a challenge that someone is currently facing?” This is also the point that some novice startuppers make another mistake: they forget to take into consideration the fact that the startup market has existed for quite a while now. Don’t forget, most startuppers (Probably you included, dear reader) work at a 9–5 job. Add those two together and they spend their (already limited) spare time; on a project, only to find out that their idea they’ve been cherishing is already in the Fortune 500 list.

Target audience

Just because you’ve got a brilliant idea for your future mobile app; doesn’t guarantee success. There are 3 words that can totally turn the situation around. Try “know your audience.” Most of the ideas are targeted to a specific task or function rather than a specific audience. The target audience becomes important only at the stage of formulating the marketing plan. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t underestimate your target audience. In the end, it’s these people who are responsible for your app’s success.

If you want people to download your app, you have to make sure that they want what you’re offering. To get an overall view of your users, you need to do research before, during and even after the development process. Having determined what kind of users will be most interested in your app, you can plan the design and functionality according to their preferences.

Mobile platforms

As you can probably see by now, whether your mobile application is going to be successful depends on many factors. One such factor is the mobile platform that you’ll be focusing on. In the world of mobile devices, Android and iOS are still the most popular operating systems today and the choice boils down to these two.

In a nutshell, to develop a mobile application for a specific platform, you have to use a language that is natively supported by that platform. For example, iOS apps are based on Swift or Objective-C while Android apps are developed with Java or Kotlin. These apps are also called “native”.

Now you’re probably wondering if it’s possible to use only one language to develop a mobile application for both platforms. Yes, it’s possible. As technologies were evolving, the tech community realized that it’d be easier to create only one app which could be used across different platforms than create separate apps. As a result, cross-platform frameworks were born: Ionic, Xamarin, etc. (they’re called “hybrid”).

Each of the options has its own advantages and disadvantages. Being a business owner, you should have a solid understanding of the differences between the platforms as simply looking into the differences between them, doesn’t give you the broad picture of which one is better, unfortunately.

Database

Today’s users lives hinge on their mobile applications more and more. If their applications glitch for some reason, chances are they’ll uninstall them (well, unless it’s Uber, AirBnB, or another A-list app). With that said, having a speedy database is crucial when it comes to the performance of your app. Choosing the database, you should consider a number of factors. Here are some of the most important ones:

  • Data structure;
  • Size of data to be stored;
  • Speed and scalability;
  • Accessibility of data;
  • Safety and security of data;
  • and others.

Accepting Payments

In our modern world, online shopping and e-commerce have became an integral part of our lives. Unfortunately, while E-commerce and apps have become more and more sophisticated, mail delivery operatives seem to have become more and more obtuse in their definition of ‘’a safe place to leave your package’’.

However, still we trust them and still we shop. That’s the main reason developers started integrating payment gateways into their applications. This allowed customers to easily pay for various goods and services, as well as booking tickets, paying bills, and so on, right there in the moment.

Don’t underestimate the true importance of payment gateway built into your application. This is a helping hand in sending sales to the moon, according to the fact that now, making payments is a piece of delicious cake (the cake is a lie).

Security

The amount of personal info kept on mobile devices these days is absolutely mind-boggling. From the exact location and favorite places, to bank accounts and passwords — our smartphones have become a true gold mine of information that many would like to get their hands on. In light of this, the issue of data protection has never been so urgent — for both users AND developers alike.

In spite of the fact that security has significantly improved in recent years, it is still an actively debated topic, with good reason. If you get it wrong and something goes wrong, you can watch yourself crash and burn right there. It’s probably one of the top issues you need to have on your list.

Design

Historically, a mobile form design presents specific challenges for designers. Having created a good design, you’ll bring clarity to the interface and remove all obstacles from the user. Here are some pieces of advice for creating a really intuitive design. As a result, you’ll have beautiful mobile design capable of enlarging and engaging your audience, from day one.

  • Content is your interface. Try to get rid of any unnecessary elements that don’t support users tasks. Having reduced distractions, you’ll allow users to focus on the content they’re looking for.
  • Use a single input field whenever possible. When you create two, three or even more fields as well as making users switch between different input modes; they’ll probably abandon your application due to the terrible user experience caused by all the forms that split data into multiple fields and create frustration.
  • Create a conversation flow. To make your application as user-friendly as possible, the information flow of your application should give users an impression of having a conversation with their friend.
  • Don’t overuse push notifications. Have you ever been bombarded with huge amounts of useless notifications that annoy and totally distract you from your day? Annoying notifications are one of the main reasons why people may uninstall your app.

Future-proofing

Developing an application is more than creating a great user experience. In addition to creating a product that your target audience wants, it’s also about making sure that the application can bring you profit for further development. The earlier you’ll be able to receive this profit, the faster you can grow the functionality of your app and, thus, make it better for the users. Especially today, when app marketing is so dominated by such players as Uber and Amazon. In the highly competitive world of apps, even the best product needs some serious marketing efforts behind it.

With the right technologies, you can create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of your app and launch it on the market in just a month! As I’ve said, there are two main platforms that should be definitely covered by your application, such as Android and iOS. Cross-platform app development frameworks will the best cost-saving solution to proof of concept. With cross-platform development you’ll be able to save money as well as allow for early market entry with an MVP.

Likewise, choosing the right tech stack can also allow you to scale the app when it grows beyond the size of a startup. Speaking of scalability, it’s a very important factor to be taken into consideration when creating your mobile app, especially if it’s meant for a large number of users and managing large volumes of data.

Getting it built: should you learn to code?

The main barrier to creating a mobile app is that the majority of people are not coders at all. In all probability, this includes you…you have a few options. The first one is quite straightforward: you can find some literature about mobile development or sign up for courses or tutorials. This is basically what every beginner developer does at the very outset of their career.

If you chose the first option, you should understand that coding, just like any other field, will take years to master. Of course, you can learn some tricks and programming basics in a few months, but this knowledge will hardly be sufficient to create a solid MVP (we didn’t mean to upset you).

But that’s not the main issue here. If I want a new house, I’d like to build it myself, to my own specifications…of course. Do I: Learn all the skills and techniques needed, by all the different disciplines and build it myself? Of course not. I find people I trust, impart upon them my vision, designs and plans and let them get on with doing the job better and faster than I ever could.

Concentrate on your core business process. If your core business process is not ‘’building beautiful apps’, find someone amazing, whose is. Then pay them what they’re worth and watch your idea fly.

Monetization and Beyond

With open source being the dominant force in the software world, there is little wonder that online customers are used to having most of the things on the Internet for free. In that case, what are the options for monetizing your app if the customers aren’t really happy about parting with their money? Well, here are a few of them that you should consider in the first place:

  • In-App advertising;
  • In-App purchases;
  • Paid app download;

There’s plenty of other ways of monetization. You just have to find out which will work in your case — and if it won’t, just try another one.

After spending hundreds of hours thinking about your app concept and even more hours on its implementation, you’ve finally developed your masterpiece. Nevertheless, your work is not finished. There’s a popular misconception that a mobile app can be built once and deployed forever. Unfortunately, it’s not how it works in practice. If your app stably works today, it doesn’t mean that it will always be so. Times change and so do requirements for apps. A

App maintenance is as equally important as its development. When I talk about app maintenance, it’s most important to keep your app up-to-date as well as fighting off bugs. In its turn, it requires constant vigilance and a good system in place.

Of course there is a whole universe of things that should be considered in addition to what was mentioned in this article. Luckily, we’ve created an extensive guide on how to implement your own mobile application from scratch, which you can download in the form of an ebook via following link:

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Published in JetRuby Agency

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