How to build your first mobile app: A step-by-step guide for beginners
The mobile application era is here!
Every business wants to develop an app to promote their product and service, and to provide information to the users at their fingertip. Apart from the retail apps, there are many categories there are several apps for entertainment, utility, productivity, gaming, news and lifestyle to inform and entertain its users. There is an app for everything right from tracking your heartbeat, analyzing your mobile storage and teaching you how to annoy a teenager. Any mobile app development company India can build your very first mobile app.
But as a person outside this niche, you might have an awesome app idea, but clueless about where to start and how to develop your app. Then, this article will put you on the right track in building your first mobile application. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Set your goal
Before getting into the development, you must set your goal. Be clear about what you want from your android or iPhone app development company and how you want your app to be. Think: How will your app impact the audience? Will it be useful to them? Does it solve their real life problems?
Remember, all that starts well ends well! Defining your goal at the very beginning will give no room for any chaos and set you on the right track to reach your goal in a short time.
Set your goal before you start app development
Step 2: Design your concept
Transform your abstract app idea into a visual platform by creating a rough sketch of your concept onto a sheet of paper. This layout will help to create your future interface and helps your teammate to understand how your app.
Step 3: Do a market research
Before you step into this market, do a thorough research about your competitors and the market trends which will give you the idea of your competitor’s strength, weakness and the mistakes they’ve done in the past. Make sure you don’t repeat the same. Analyze: How is your app different from your competitor’s app? iOS or android app development? Who are your target audiences? What are your marketing strategies? What are the ways to monetize your app? At the end of this market research, you will know what to do and what not to do.
Step 4: Develop a Wireframe
Wireframing helps you to get a clear picture of your app concept. It creates a visual mockup or protocol of what your app does without the struggle of verbally communicating it to others. There are many online prototype tools like Balsamiq Mockups, Axure and Mockingbird, which allows you to easily drag and drop the placeholders and graphics to create your wireframe.
Wireframe of a mobile app from Balsamiq Mockups.
Apart from developing your wireframe, you need to create a storyboard for your app. It will be a guideline for your app screens so that you will know about the connection between two individual screens and helps to track the user’s navigation.
Step 5: Define your backend
Based on your wireframe and storyboard, now you can define your backend structure which will give a clear view of your server and database. This rough sketch can be a helpful reference for your mobile app development company India.
Step 6: Get feedback for your prototype
Let your friends, family and experts review your app. Ask for their honest feedback and note where they get stuck and resolve that problem while developing your app.
Try to resolve all the problems in your prototype to avoid any corrections during the designing stage as it requires more time and effort to change.
Get feedback from your friends and family circle
Step 7: Create your developer account
It’s time to work on your backend structure. Your Android or iPhone app development company need to set up the server, database, API and cloud storage for your app. At this point of time, you need to register your developer account as some platform requires several days to approve your account. Google charges a lifetime payment of $25 to register as a developer while Apple charges $99 annually.
Step 8: Start designing your app
At this stage, your app developer will design for the individual screens called “skins”. It’s just a high-resolution format of the prototype which you have developed through wireframe tools. Make sure you have incorporated all the feedbacks given by the users at the time of prototype testing so that the end-users can have a better user interface.
Step 9: Test your app
Once you have completed designing, you can go for another round of testing. It helps to identify the bugs, crashes and missing features. Later these issues can be fixed at the next development phase. It aims at creating an environment close to how the typical user works with your app.
Step 10: Go for a Beta test
Yes, test again! Test your app once again before it reaches the app market. Implement the comments from your users, add or change any critical features if necessary. The Beta test is the final yet important step in every iPhone and android app development process.
It provides you the ‘real-time’ testing as the actual end-users are using your app. At the end of the day, perfection matters a lot to your end-users.
Do beta test your app before going to launch
The final Step: All set to release!
Now your app is all set to release in the app market. Submit your app before 3-4 weeks of your launch date as different app stores follow different publishing policies. Before setting your launch date, go through the guidelines followed by the Apple and Android.
Apple - https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/
Android - https://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/launch-checklist.html
Finally, you’ve accomplished your goal. But the process does not end here. Once your app has listed on the app store, you must deploy effective marketing strategies to make your app visible on the app store. Remember, app development isn’t a one time process, you need to improvise the features based on the feedback from your users and leverage your marketing strategies to make them download and use your app.
