Things You Should Know About Your Market before Building a Mobile Application

We are living in the smartphone era. Mobiles were initially created for their portability as they allow users to exchange messages and calls. However, the last 10 years have seen mobiles transforming into “smartphones” where they assist humans in routine tasks through mobile apps. These apps contain several use cases. They have replaced alarm clocks through alarm notification apps. They have replaced MP3 through their customized music players. Similarly, mobile apps come with different functionalities that help users to solve their daily problems. In case you have made your mind to create a mobile app of your own, you need to consider the following things:

Objectives

While creating an app, you must set your objectives and goals. Consider the following questions:

• Do you wish to create a minimalistic game?
• Are you trying to innovate through an app that solves a major problem faced by the masses?
• Does your app serve as an educational medium for a niche?
• Is your app going to be a mobile-based solution for your customers?

Going through these questions is important so you can go on to next step of your planning and technical development.

Learning From Your Rivals

No matter what your application is, you should always conduct market research. Market research can include your rivals so you can check how your rivals are profiting. You can also examine their common mistakes that resulted in brand or financial damages and learn from them to improve your app experience.

Understanding Your Users

Your target audience holds the key to your app’s success since they will be the ones to download and install it. Hence, catering to their needs is the most aspect before working on a mobile app. Think clearly what problem your app is going to address and how it can provide value to the users.

For example, if you are thinking to create a music app, then you are surely aware of the different music apps. Now in order to outpace them, check the missing features and functionalities that your target audience is looking so you can incorporate your app with them.

Minimum Viable Product

While creating a mobile app, it is not encouraged to generate an app that attempts to solve a wide variety of problems. Initially, develop a MVP that has sufficient functionalities through which your customers can get the most important features of the app.

Use and Test Other Apps

In order to understand the market, open the app stores and start downloading and installing all the popular apps. Check which apps are considered cool and useful now-a-days. Look into the trends of apps that were popular in the last year. For example, recently PUBG has gained a considerable amount of attention for its gameplay.

Similarly, you can also go back in time when apps like Instagram and Whatsapp were newly-created. This reflection is important because it can make you think about the unique features that made an app popular and it may provide you with an inspiration for an exciting solution of your own.

Create a Group for Testing

After getting a general idea of your target audience’s requirements, you can create a group of users for testing. After adding different modules and functionalities in your app, meet with your group and ask them to test the app. The app author cannot replicate the mindset of the app’s user and, thus, by regularly collaborating with a testing group, the app can be refined and developed in such a way that immediately grabs the attention of users on the app markets.

Not Limiting the App to a Single Release

You might have noticed that all the famous apps creators continuously add releases to their apps. This is because research indicates that users find an app that keeps on updating to be tempting. As a result, their engagement with the app goes for a long time.

Hence, do not think that a single release is enough for your app. You have to keep working on it to add releases with newer features. However, it is important to maintain a balance between releases. If you add newer features and release them every few days, then the consistency of the app can be affected that in turn can annoy the users. A total of 3-4 releases are good to go for a year.

Architecture and Technology

A mobile app can be developed through a number of programming languages like Java, Swift, Objective-C, Kotlin, Python, JavaScript, C#, etc. Each of these languages comes with different tools and technologies that can provide scalability, performance, and security for your app.

Similarly, you have to decide a software architecture and model for your project, like whether to follow the traditional monolithic architecture or going with the modern-day microservices architecture. Likewise, you can also ascertain if you require a messaging platform like RabbitMQ or Apache Kafka to bolster communication between different app’s technical components.

Native or Hybrid?

Native apps are apps that are built for a specific platform (Android or iOS). Native apps are faster and provide high-quality UI/UX. On the other hand, hybrid apps make use of the web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, etc. Thus, they are similar to general web development. However, the difference between standard web development and hybrid development is that a native application hosts the hybrid apps.

Whether you are interested in building a native or hybrid app depends on your use case. For example, if you are creating a highly complex app where your performance is a critical factor, then a native app is a good option. Similarly, if your app is not too intensive and you require it to be deployed quickly for all platforms, then hybrid apps serve as a good option.

Maintenance Costs

As we discussed above, the development of an app does not only end with its creation. Since mobile technologies and trends come and go, it is necessary to adapt to changes. Therefore, you have to plan the app costs and expenses for the future, too.