With over 2.8 million apps in Android’s play store and 2.2 million apps in the iOS Apple store, the potential of enterprise mobile app development is unprecedented. Creating sound marketing strategies and high-quality applications are the only ways to attain success.
But with the increased levels of competition and saturation in the app marketplace, the chances of becoming a mobile winner are meager unless you follow a documented strategy for developing an application.
The mobile app development “lifecycle” ensures you never engage in wasting valuable resources or time during such critical phases of application development. These steps are:
Step #1: Ideation
While an idea is the starting point of every application, your idea may not be prone to making money or gaining a big enough audience. A successful application targets a large market of potential users.
During the idea stage, here is what needs to be done:
- Market and discovery research. Spend time researching the market instead of jumping ahead to the design phase. This gives you confidence that your efforts will bear fruits.
- Choose a niche. Instead of targeting everyone with your app, clearly list which groups of people your app will be made for. This research acts as your “buyer personas” and will help developers customize their design for the ideal user experience.
- Solve a problem. Make sure your app fills some sort of gap or solves a problem. Despite the common saying, there’s not an app for everything. Make sure your app adds value.
- Consider keywords. It’s never too late to consider keywords. Trending keywords from Google can give you insight.
Once you understand the market and have evaluated the data, proceed to establish the objectives of the application.
Step #2: Design
Depending on your project scope and application budget, the app can take thousands of team hours, or be completed in a single afternoon. Either you or a developer will start by sketching how the main screens will appear. You can also download sample screens for tablet and mobile platforms.
Once you finalize the frame, it’s time to develop a high-fidelity, interactive prototype. A prototype is a base where developers begin the actual application development.
Step #3: Development
The development stage can leverage platforms like Buildfire and Shopgate, or set up databases, storage, APIs and servers as they commence the actual development of the prototype. The app will go through three primary phases as it progresses:
- Alpha Phase: This phase presents the functionality before the app is tested for bugs.
- Beta Phase: This is when the proposed functionality is tested and bugs are identified.
- Release Candidate Phase: This is when the bugs are fixed and it’s ready for release. The app may need to go through another round of testing, in which case developers return to Beta phase.
Throughout the development stage, consider factors like OS fragmentation, device, form factor and multi-tasking.
Step #4: Testing
With the development of mobile applications, it’s imperative to test regularly. The aim of testing is to ensure you remove bugs before it goes live for customers. In addition, maintenance costs will be kept low by undergoing sufficient testing. Always refer to the planning documents and original design when developing the various test cases.
The different types of testing include:
- Compatibility testing
- Usability testing
- Services testing
- Security testing
- Low-level resource testing
- Interface testing
- Operational testing
Apart from testing the mobile app manually in different devices, use tools like Bugsee, Appium and Testflight for crash and testing analytics.
Step #5: Launch
Launch is always critical to the success you expect the app to deliver. If you botch this phase, you’ll have wasted all the money and hard work you’ve invested so far. Make the app known to as many users as possible. This phase typically includes:
- App Store Optimization: Optimizing your app for the app store is critical to improving its rankings since 65 percent of users depend on stores to search for and download new applications.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Your app will be ranked in search engines like Google and Yahoo using the keywords that describe it. Optimizing your site, building back links and guest blogging are just some of the things you should be doing simultaneously to launching your app.
- Landing Page: It is also important to create a landing page or website made specifically for your application even if you already have a website.
- Paid Ads: Consider using social media advertisements on Twitter and Facebook, and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns via Google.
What’s Next?
Mobile application development does not end in the launch phase. In fact, it has only just begun.
As your application grows its users, you will need to get feedback to develop future versions. If you are developing this app for the first time, it takes time to get used to this process. However, you will get the steps more predictable as you develop more and more mobile apps.