In the world we live in today, smartphones are such a substantial part of life, whether you are commuting to work on the subway, or waiting for a friend in the café. An average adult spends about 300 minutes on mobile devices, which makes the need for mobile applications and platforms a significant need for all businesses. About sixty percent of the online traffic is through smartphones.
- Advantages of a Mobile Application for Entrepreneurs
- Types of Applications
- Stages of app development
- Planning and Budgeting
- Support and maintenance
Advantages of a Mobile Application for Entrepreneurs
Having a mobile app is always essential for a business today. While this got you pumped up, here are a few advantages to creating a mobile application for your entrepreneurial work:
Incredible accessibility: With a considerable amount of online traffic is through smartphone access; there is a considerably high reason why people prefer being able to access your information on one device, which would foster maximum attention.
Focused engagement: Strong target audience and focused engagement applications are widely used by all kinds of people on the smartphone network – whatever piques their interest, someone who is interested in what your business does (according to your category) would be a focused target for you and that’s the kind of consumers you get through an app.
Significant sales growth: This is valid because if you are able to catch attention and generate interest, there would be a growth in your sales, as more interested people are exposed to your idea. Keeping your transaction easy to do, through the app itself, will help you distinguish from competitors
Types of Applications
Now that you are entirely in charge of creating a mobile app for your idea, a quality app developer can be instrumental in developing the different types of applications possible.
Basics: Basic functionality apps aim to help use the mobile devices in a more utilizable manner, for instance, applications like the weather forecast.
Database-driven: These applications are driven by the organization of programs, files or more.
Games: Complicated but the most engaging type of mobile apps.
Modification: These objectively improve specific functions of the smartphone.
Dynamic: Dependent on information from external sources.
Designed Utility: To help formulate and organize content.
Stages of app development
You have a solid idea for your mobile app and you are all set to make this concept your reality but how to create an app for your business that drives sales. Nonetheless, going from an idea to reality is not as easy as a breeze. Understanding these mobile app development stages at least theoretically helps you set the right expectation for your team, be prepared in advance for certain discussions and know why these stages are inevitable.
Develop a business strategy
Business strategy is a compendium of deliberate choices that an organization makes to maximize the application’s value over a given period of time. Developing an application without a business strategy is like building a house without a blueprint. Here are the three primary things that need to be considered before developing an application:
Business Goals
Organizations should set and reach business goals for varied purposes using suitable strategies. Basically, a strategy specifies the methods, activities and other related resources that should be considered in order to achieve a given goal purpose. Business goals are aimed at evaluating, testing, developing and maintaining entities of a mobile application.
Market Research
Mobile app development is a precarious business, a new app could be a mammoth success or an entire debacle. But one thing you can say for sure is that performing market research on your mobile app increases the chance of success. Marketing research often serves a descriptive function that refers to the gathering and presentation of information about a marketing phenomenon or situation.
Logistics
Logistics of an application should be done professionally to ensure that end users’ needs are learned and clearly matched with their expectations. They are classified from high level to detailed analysis that corresponds to business requirements, user requirements and then the system requirements that are the most important.
The last is what the system does, how well the application performs, whether it suits user goals and user point of view. Then, after having all the requirements analyzed, it is crucial to perform project estimation in terms of timeline, costs, efficient workforce numbers and resources.
Hire App Developers
After you think of a great idea for your app, the next big thing to do is to find an app developer. You have flexible options of different hiring models when searching for an app developer and here are the most widely applied options in terms of hiring programmers for your app development:
In-house app developers
When you look and hire in-house app developers you get more control over the entire app development process and can make changes at any time. In such cases, communication is on a very high level as you are under the same roof.
Freelancers
Freelancers are a widespread hiring option as it allows you to work with specialists worldwide and they typically charge less than in-house developers and you get a large pool of developers with different skills. It significantly results in reduced mobile app development cost.
App Development Company
One of the easiest options to create an app is to outsource the development to experienced mobile app development companies. By doing so, you get top professional services in a budget-friendly manner. It doesn’t force you to hire mobile app developers all by yourself or rent an office making unnecessary expenses.
Also know:- Freelance Developers or Offshore IT Company
Planning and Budgeting
Determining the cost for developing a mobile app is based on the complexity and time it would take for the team to build it. For instance, simple apps can be developed in about ten weeks with about a hundred hours of design and eight hundred hours for development. Complex apps can take nearly thirty weeks with two to three weeks for design and the rest for development.
For starters, making an android app is costlier than creating one for iOS, because iOS apps can be built quicker, and owners of iPhones and iPads tend to be open to paid applications, giving an idea of how the app will work well on other platforms. A mobile app development team needs a project manager, a UI/UX designer, a Coder and a Quality Assurance Engineer.
Cost ranges for android apps can vary from $25000 to $150000 depending on the complexity of the applications, whereas for iOS apps, they can start from as little as $1000 to $250000. Other costs might include adding in-app purchase capability, web services, game center and other analytics to help you track your users.
App Development
At each stage of mobile app development, there will be varied costs involved which would depend either on time spent or on a project basis:
Ideation stage
The main idea for the application – your definition of the concept behind the app and justifying its need on the mobile platform. This stage would need people who understand your brand; either an in-house strategist or an external content/design/brand strategist would be of help while ideating a concept that catches the eye of your target audience. The costs involved for a strategist if in-house, vary from company to company, for a freelance strategist, it depends significantly on the experience.
Function layout
After the brand strategist is ready with a concept, making it tangible would require a User experience designer, developer and strategist to analyze the components as are necessary for the layout. At this stage, your idea becomes more practical, with its initial planning of what functions are to be present, what is the content, how does it add utility. There would be information architecture wireframes created providing further clarity.
Design
The design layout is a holistic mix of the function, the look depending on the concept of the application. This stage involves the design of the front end and the back end to optimize better user interface and user experience. This also requires development and testing.
A lot of rendered wireframes and sample layouts will be produced at this stage, out of which one idea would be finally selected. Even the revisions after every opinion are taken into consideration, how much time would be spent on creating the final idea? Most designers work on an hourly basis, while few would charge on the basis of the entire project.
Core development
The developer gets all the design input and specifications from the designer, and their task starts in assembling the parts and coding them into place. This also depends on the initial wireframe and the changes after a final visual idea. Development takes long hours and is also charged on an hourly basis.
Different versions of the project are produced, finally reaching a finalized one. Simultaneously, based on the project management cycle followed testing will be conducted at regular intervals.
Testing and launching
Lastly, QA engineers test the developed functionality and if necessary, software engineers polish everything to reach total excellence and ensure the app works with no bugs. After rounds of testing, redesign and redevelopment, the application is finally ready to go live, on the iOS platform or the Android Platform, depending on your target market survey ensuring feasible cross platform mobile app development.
Support and maintenance
The software development team regularly checks the deployment process to eliminate possible issues. When the system is maintained and deployed properly, software companies provide further maintenance of their product and ensure bug fixes, code refining and enhancements.
App maintenance includes enhancing your app with new features, security updates and ensuring its compatibility with the latest versions of iOS and Android platforms. Conclusively, the truth is no matter how perfect your initial version of the application is, there is always room for improvement. You must consider new advancements, trends in the technology, market demands and most importantly user feedback. To know more about the latest mobile app development trends for 2022.
Marketing
When the stages of software development are over, the code is clear and no bugs remain, the application can be pushed for final release into an environment where customers can easily find and use it. Performance of the application depends on the competency of the team as well as on the right marketing prioritization, expectation management and on-time releases.
Stages of app development are milestones of successful project implementation. One of the most effective approaches is focusing on executing activities, meeting clients’ needs, user expectations, maintaining flexibility in a team but not focusing on reporting, paperwork and constant planning that does not bring results. In all these stages, consistency is the key.
Winding-up
A good idea would be to create a budget and deadline for the app development and approach teams and individuals on the basis of your final budget and timeline for each stage. While setting aside the budget also be sure to set aside a certain budget for efficient app marketing, which has become a necessity to reach out to the audience.
A mobile application helps you get ahead of the competitors in many ways; there’s a lot you can achieve through them for your business goals. A good concept is the only way to ensure success for the application!
