If you have an entrepreneurial mind and you have just come up with an amazing idea for an app that you think can change the lives of many or can solve the problems of millions of people, you should wait no further.
Just get into it and you will find ways. There are times when you find yourself lost. To seek help is the best that you can do in such times. Therefore, if you are lost on how you should proceed with your amazing app idea, we are here for you.
Here is a short guide, which will help you achieve your plans step by step and get you started.
Validate Your Idea
Before getting right into it, it is important to conduct a survey to validate your idea. You can interview people and ask for their feedback on the idea. This will help you validate your idea that the app is solving a particular problem. This will make it easier for you to define your target audience, competitors, geographies, and potential monetization opportunities that you might have. It will also outline other details of the marketing analysis that you would otherwise have missed out.
You might think your app idea is ideal and unique. However, you might be forgetting there are millions of apps already available on the application markets for the different operating systems. These numbers also suggest that there must be multiple competitor apps for your or a similar idea already there in the app markets. However, competition is not always bad. In this case, you can learn from the mistakes of your competitors and cater to the shortcomings of their applications.
Create the App Flow
Now that you are certain that the demand for your app exists, you should now begin to start making the layout of the interface of the application. You can use any free wire framing solutions widely available on the market. These tools let you create app mockups and review them. Additionally you can make a storyboard to understand the users experience and what the app would look like to the users.
You should be able to fetch as much detail from this step as possible. You should have a well thought navigation map after this step. In addition, you should make document listing features and functions of the application. This would help the developer to understand the scope and flow of work before they commence.
Think Of Technical Aspects
Once you have gotten a detailed idea of what your app would contain and what it would look like, you should now start looking into the technical aspects of the idea. You should consult a developer to find out if your idea is technically viable. It is essential to know the technical set that the application back end will use. Also, look into the other technical aspects such as integrations, inclusion of social networks and payment methods, etc.
In addition, you should consider the choice whether your app would be cross platform or a native one. You should also look into the legal limitations such as copyrights or privacy issues etc.
Choose the platforms you need to concentrate on first, and then decide on applications backend. This is the time when you need to go out and start your extensive search for the professionals that can help you with both, the front end as well as the backend of the application.
Some companies might offer you services of a business analyst along with other services. This is a good option for those who do not have a technical background or simply lack an expertise in software or app development in general.
Choose an App Development Company
As important this step is, it might be hard for the non-technical people. And they need to research well and educate themselves on how to choose a designer and a developer since the market is saturated with freelancers and companies offering such services.
The thing that you need to consider the foremost is that how much budget you can spend and how much time you can spare for the project. If you have a limited budget, you might want to resort to the freelance market, however they are difficult to find and the outcomes are not predictable or guaranteed. Freelancers are running multiple projects at a time, which might affect your delivery dates.
On the other hand, if budget is something that does not hold you back; you should get in touch with an experiences app development company. This has many obvious advantages.
- Project responsibility will be on a separate responsible person rather than single person handling everything. This will give you an additional assurance that you spent your money well.
- You will get an access to professionals having expertise in all stages of app development cycle. E.g. mobile developers, QA engineers, UI/UX experts as well as the project managers.
- Working with a company y might even prove to be more cost effective as there are several outsourcing destinations where you can get better rates.
Setting Up Developers’ Accounts
You need to register with the apps store or the Playstore to be able to sell your applications to the general Smartphone users. Registration charges are not too high either and are charged annually. $99 for Apple App store registrations and $25 for Google Playstore registration. Both of these have two registration options, individual and for companies.
Employ Analytics Tools
You must keep in mind the integration of analytics options into the application, which will help you track downloads, user behavior and their engagement with the application. There are several analytics tool available in the market. Only you can evaluate which one would suit you the best, or you can consult your app developing company.
Analyze
You need to analyze the feedback that is collected from the tools that you employ as mentioned above. This analysis will help you keep updating the app in accordance with what the users want.
Finally, the app development process does not end with uploading the app to the app store. It is a continuous process in which you need to provide support and make sure the users are engaging well with the app.