Top 10 Tips for Developing a New App

With tons of apps out there, you probably already have a ton of competition. Conducting thorough market research becomes necessary in order for you to truly differentiate your app.

Once you have the idea, you need to call it into question from multiple fronts. Why people should download it? Why would they use it daily and why shouldn’t they delete it? Furthermore, making a detailed analysis of the competition is essential. Can you find something similar out there? What alternative solution would your app potentially offer?

Take a look at reviews on competitor app pages on the App stores, as well as checking reviews on YouTube and blogs to see what actual users have said about the competition. This analysis will be very useful to choose the most appropriate business model and to consequently make a profit from your app.

Can you articulate your app’s specific purpose? This is probably the trickiest step for business owners and marketers. Boiling all your ideas down to one or two sentences of clear purpose is hard, but it’s also one of the core steps to ensuring the success of your app.

Every app that curates a niche in the digital landscape adheres to be a problem solver. Your app needs to carry a sense of purpose and tick the boxes of requirements of your clientele.

At this time, try answer the following questions:

Not only is cross-platform development the way to go for more reach, but it’s also more cost-effective in the long-run. Choosing between native, hybrid, or a web app carries many implications for your later development and maintenance.

The core differentiations between native and hybrid apps are:

Once you’ve decided on your app type, you will much more easily allocate your resources and plan your entire development project.

An app should be simple, in the choice of the name, in terms of function and in terms of design. An app that is user friendly is just as important: everything has to be where you would expect it to be and above all it must be accessible with the least number of taps.

Apps build with core focus hold the potential to turn odds into your favour by maximizing resources. It all starts with identifying and understanding the worth your app holds, building a core action, and making it an ice-breaker to complete and repeat. Don’t forget the most successful apps are the ones that outperform their response and abide their purpose better.

Simple apps are proven efficient and practical tools to deliver unparalleled user experience. Apps are task-oriented in nature and are used to streamline processes. Thus, in the case of mobile apps, less is way more.

Users crave efficiency, and if your app is not easy to use it often results in users abandoning it.

Pre-launch, you’ll want to claim your accounts in social media, and use them actively to generate interest or even early sign-ups. You can use your social media accounts to showcase the app while it’s in development and solicit feedback and ideas from your future users.

When your app launches, though, be sure to change the link in your social media bios to direct to the app store download. Remember, your goal isn’t site traffic — you want to drive downloads.

Generate some pre-release buzz by customizing a page that lets people sign up for an alert when the app launches.

Everyone likes to download apps without spending a penny. It offers them a chance to test your app, look for the outlook and features without any risk.

On the contrary, making your app free doesn’t assure you great success; it can certainly maximize the number of people who are ready to try your app. Therefore, upholding the chances for your app to be a buzzing word of the era.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t earn money from your app or your breakthrough is to use ads. Providing a free basic app is the key to hook the user and upsurge attraction. If a user finds its value, they will not think twice to pay for the app to unlock content, extensive features or in some musical apps purchase an ad-free version.

Spend time creating content that clearly explains how to use your mobile app. This content should include blog posts, press releases, social media content, website copy, and email marketing copy.

Once your content is done, you’ll want to create a video that shows how to use your mobile app. In your video, clearly explain what your app does and why it’s useful in real-life scenarios. A short video demo is one of the easiest ways to display the value of your mobile app.

In-app communication systems are a common feature in most of the top-ranking apps. A ready to access and intuitive customer service channel holds the abilities to improve the user experience.

Nevertheless, it’s essential to create a channel for communication, ratings and reviews, and feedback. By allowing users to connect to get the right assistance, you can minimize the chances of negative user experience and exponentially boost app retention. Not just this, creating an easy to navigate and use feedback channel within the app motivates communication with the user and helps prevent negative public reviews.

Poor performance often leads to a negative user experience costing you revenue, brand reputation and downloads.

Your app must be consistent in its performance to maintain or improve the user experience. Your mobile app must launch the first time quickly and should exponentially eliminate the waiting time for users. Also, it’s important to abreast any debugging issues, crashes or slow performance. Make sure you optimize your app for high performance and continuously test and retest your app, again and again, to make sure it’s performance well.

Testing your app before launching in the market is vital.

Probably, there are chances that users might not use your app the same way you intended. For this specific reason, it’s mandatory to undergo user testing to have an in-depth understanding of how users are using your app.

Reliable marketing will help you drive app new installations and re-engage target users. It’s crucial to plan on getting the word out early to create anticipation for your app, then do a big push right before launching.

After the publication, following a marketing plan is the key to success: the app cannot generate its own audience by itself.

Social networks are the most common means of communication to promote applications and it’s crucial to take advantage of all available channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. You can also set up paid, targeted ads on Facebook to drive users to your Facebook fan page, where they’ll be greeted with your welcome screen encouraging them to sign up for your mobile app.

Influencer marketing is only growing in 2020, so if you want to spread the word for your app, we can’t emphasize this step enough. Choose influencers whom you think will benefit greatly by using yours, and conduct personalized email outreach marketing to effectively build relationships and win them over.

So, it’s recommended to divide your marketing plan into respective campaigns phases:

• Pre-launch
• Launch
• Post-launch

So, make sure you plan everything perfectly to reach your target audience.

I understand App development is not a walk down the aisle, but it’s not rocket science too. So, to help you sustain the behemoth waves of dynamically changing technology, it’s essential to ace the unfurl secrets of app development.

Are you ready to launch your mobile app this year? Simply follow the steps above to make sure you’ve got everything covered for your launch, while making sure you can keep users around for the long haul. I’m excited to see your app come to life.

Ready to get started with your very own app?