7 Things to Consider Before Developing a Mobile App
Published on 28 Apr 2022 inKey Takeaways:
Market research helps you gain insight of your competitors so you can choose the right path by building on their strengths and avoiding their mistakes.
The identification of specific purposes of the app for your business is crucial in order to reach your business goals.
Understanding your target audience helps you offer what your potential customers are looking for in an app. .
Allocating the cost and time frame in developing the mobile app helps the development process.
Identifying the monetisation of your app is useful in the long run as it helps create revenue directly for your company.
Harnessing feedback and opinions from customers will allow you to improve your app and what it has to offer.
Hire and work with a team of developers, designers and marketers to help get your desired app running for your business.
Today, nearly all organizational processes have now become virtual. As such, the need for a mobile app is increasing. To give your customers high-quality service, consider investing in the best development of your mobile app.
With mobile apps becoming increasingly popular, investing in a mobile application could be beneficial for your company. In this article, we’ll explore all the major things that need to be taken into account before developing a mobile application.
Why should you invest in mobile apps?
In today’s world of technology, people use mobile apps to remain connected to their favourite brands. Mobile apps are very valuable as they allow brands to acquire new customers while also retaining their existing user-base by helping to provide users with all the information they need through their mobile phones.
Here are some of the reasons why you should invest in mobile apps:
Mobile apps help companies reach a global audience. As more users around the world are switching from a desktop-based interaction to mobile, hiring a mobile app development company to develop a premium app is essential in order to help your business stay competitive in the industry.
Having a mobile app can help you display your goods and services to users in a clear format than normal web applications, facilitating more online conversions for your business.
Things to consider before developing a mobile app
Here are eight of the most important things you should consider before developing an app for your business.
1. Competitive analysis
During the development process, relying on thorough competitive research will help enable you to understand the latest trends, offering an overview of the quality of services provided.
It will also help you understand the channels of contact used by competitors allowing you as a business to be able to prevent gaps and errors made by your competitors.
Doing so gives you the opportunity to create a unique app that helps your business stand out from the crowd, reinforcing your brand in the long-run.
2. Define your app’s purpose
The app has to be explicitly built to have value. When you’ve finalised your business requirements, you will then need to figure out your app’s purpose by placing yourself in the shoes of your users. Some questions you should be asking include:
What are users looking for in your app?
Who would want to use your app?
How can your app improve your service?
You must ensure that you add value and explain your business in a new perspective for the consumer experience. You may want to invest in a responsive design if you wish to have your website turned into an app.
However, once you have decided that a mobile app is useful to your internal employees and your clients, you will then need to recognise and focus on their interests on the offer to ensure that the app is successful.
3. Understand your users
You need to find out your users’ needs and wants early on in the process because every decision you make during the development process will be significantly influenced by it.
It is important to know the needs of your customers as your app’s success depends on it. If your app doesn’t solve their pain point or add value, it won’t make its way to the user’s phone.
Take feedback and customers’ views and know what they want. Align your objectives with your users’ demands, and there would be nothing that would stop your app from being developed.
4. Time and money allocation
Mobile apps are not only a financial investment but also a time investment. Like technology-based applications, mobile apps need to be maintained to give users the best support.
Budgetary limitations can delay your application’s development. The cumulative development budget should therefore be estimated and correctly allocated at all phases of development.
The development timeframe is another factor to consider. It is important that you set deadlines for every step of the development to ensure you complete the project on time and keep track of whether or not these deadlines are met.
It will help you to effectively handle the whole project and assign adequate due dates to various planning and development levels.
5. Identify monetisation opportunities for the app
A mobile app has many different roles that can successfully serve your business. It can directly generate revenue for your company, improve your brand visibility or indirectly support you in your sales process.
How do you intend to monetise what you’ve built if you want to raise money directly from the application? There are several different models, such as:
Freemium apps : The app provides some features free of charge and other features can be bought.
Premium apps : These are the apps that users want to buy from the app store and should provide premium value to the users..
Subscriptions : This is a type of freemium that’s content-oriented. A subset of the content is available for free to consumers, but to view the entire content provided in the app, users will be required to pay a subscription.
In-app Advertising : The app can be downloaded and used for free, but it requires advertisements to help you generate revenue.
In-app purchases : The model for selling physical and virtual items in the app. A good model of purchase for people working the e-commerce or gaming vertical.
Sponsorship : It helps you to collaborate with other brands and different sponsors as you reach a solid user base. Users can here redeem discounts and rewards by taking part in some activity or completing some in-app action.
6. Create a user-testing focus group
The best way to fully appreciate what users are searching for in a mobile app is to spend time with your target users. The focus groups can provide feedback from far beyond the initial discovery phase.
By implementing changes according to real user feedback, you will be able to build a truly user-centric mobile application that solves the users’ pain points.
7. Hiring an app development agency
Once you have conducted your research, figured out the purpose of your app, and have allocated your budget, you are ready to get on with the development phase.
You can set up a development committee and gather a team of developers, designers and marketers. If your in-house capabilities are lacking, you can also consider the option of hiring a mobile app development agency.
The key advantage of hiring a high-quality app development agency is that the vendor will have a myriad of experience developing multiple mobile apps in the past.
This means that they will be able to help you spot obstacles that could arise in the development process, as well as seamlessly execute the development sprints in accordance with your functional requirements.
Learn more about mobile app development today
If you take these preparatory steps, you will be able to dive into creating your app, to set it up and start successfully!
As a full-service digital agency, our teams at Morphosis are well equipped to develop the mobile app that fits your business requirements and your users’ needs. To find out more about how we can help you develop your mobile app, contact us for a free consultation session today.
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