In the dynamic and ever-changing business world, mobile apps have become an indispensable tool for companies looking to stay ahead of the curve. They provide a powerful platform for reaching customers, improving workflows, and driving revenue growth.
However, building mobile apps that meet your business’s needs and your customer’s expectations is no easy feat. The complete build of a mobile app requires a careful balance of technical expertise, creativity, and strategic planning.
In this blog, we’ll take you on an enchanting journey through the art and science of mobile app development.
We’ll explore the nuances of ideation, design, development, testing, and deployment and equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to create a mobile app that sets your business apart from the competition.
We’ll delve into the intricacies of crafting a compelling user experience, leveraging the latest technologies and app development trends, and optimizing your app for maximum performance.
Whether you’re building a B2B mobile apps to enhance your internal workflows or a B2C mobile app to engage your customers, this guide will provide you with the insights and expertise you need to succeed.
So, sit back, relax, and let us guide you on this captivating mobile app development journey, where the possibilities are limitless, and the rewards are immense!
How to build mobile apps from scratch?
Understanding the process of building mobile apps is very important before diving deep into the ocean of mobile app development. So let us now explore the steps to build a mobile app with scrutiny.
Step 1: Define what your objectives are!
To ensure that you achieve your app development standards, you must comprehend the difference between a goal and an objective. Goals portray the final result that you want to attain.
On the other hand, objectives are the steps you take to accomplish those goals. Break those objectives down into “SMART” objectives:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
People often make a known mistake in defining goals in a monetary sense, such as “make more money.” Yet that goes without saying. It nowhere makes you different from every other business on the planet. Rather, a great objective should be directed at your purpose and mission.
Each desire or goal must have legit KPIs (key performance indicators).
Moreover, you must ensure that you have predefined plans to attain success. The KPIs work best when they are set in a numerical manner.
For instance, let’s say that you want to build a mobile app for your e-commerce shop, and one of your goals might be to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates over mobile phones.
So to verify that you are on the verge of reaching that goal or desire, you must know your present abandonment rates to compare them against the numbers when your own app eventually launches.
Step 2: Perform in-depth market research
After defining your goals, it is essential to ensure that there is a market demand for your app. While every app idea may sound promising, validating your concept before proceeding further is crucial.
Building mobile apps without conducting market research can significantly waste time, money, and resources. To make your idea into a reality, you must consider the following steps:
- Create surveys: Design surveys to gather feedback from potential users or target audiences.
- Conduct interviews: Engage in one-on-one conversations with individuals who could be potential users or experts in the industry.
- Run a focus group: Organize a group discussion with a selected set of participants to obtain insights and opinions on your app idea.
- Research your competition: Analyze existing apps or services that are similar to your concept to understand the market landscape and identify areas for improvement.
- Determine how to enhance the customer experience through your app: Identify key pain points or areas where your app can provide added value and improve the user experience.
If your app extends your existing business, leverage your current customers as a valuable resource for conducting this research. However, if your app pertains to a completely new idea, connecting with potential users who align with your target audience is necessary.
Step 3: Determine the features of the mobile app
Consider the core functionality of your app as you decide on its features.
It’s common for people to be tempted to include additional and unnecessary features in an app. However, such features can detract from the app’s primary purpose. Moreover, each additional feature increases both the cost and the development timeline.
Here are some examples of popular app features:
- Push notifications
- Community wall
- GPS capabilities
- Surveys and questionnaires
- Video, image, and audio hubs
- Booking Capabilities
- Calendar integrations
- E-commerce carts
- Menu ordering system
- Customer loyalty
- User directory
During the early stages of mobile app development, simplicity is crucial. You can omit the GPS feature if your app’s primary function does not require the user’s precise location.
Step 4: Create a robust wireframe
A wireframe serves as a basic layout for your mobile app. It doesn’t have to be overly formal, and you don’t need to worry about the app’s graphic design at this stage. Y
You can create a wireframe using various tools such as paper, a whiteboard, a napkin, or digital wireframing software.
The primary purpose of a wireframe is to visually depict the app’s features and layout.
When creating a wireframe, you don’t need to consider the mobile app’s design elements. This tool is not intended to replicate exactly how the final app will look. Instead, the focus should be on establishing the structure and flow.
Map out the user journey within the wireframe. Illustrate what happens when a user clicks on a specific button. How will the subsequent page appear? What changes occur on the screen when a user selects Option A versus Option B?
Wireframes facilitate alignment among your team members by conveying your vision for how the app will function and operate.
Step 5: Select your development approach
When it comes to building mobile apps, there are numerous approaches available. Before diving into app creation, it is essential to identify the most suitable method for your specific circumstances.
You have various options to consider, including utilizing a no-code mobile app builder or outsourcing the software development process.
Selecting the right approach depends on various factors, such as your budget, technical expertise, app complexity, and time constraints.
Step 6: Conduct research on existing solutions
The final step in the pre-development process involves researching existing solutions. Rather than investing valuable time and resources into building mobile app and its components from scratch, it is wise to explore whether similar solutions already exist in the market.
Within the realm of app development, services are available to address standard functionalities that every app requires.
These solutions encompass areas such as infrastructure, hosting, design, analytics, and push notifications. Why go through the trouble of hosting an app alone when you can easily rent servers from an existing solution?
Opting for pre-built solutions is generally more cost-effective than building everything from scratch. Additionally, you can often make minor customizations to these existing services.
Learning how to build mobile app is already a challenging endeavor. It’s essential to avoid unnecessarily complicating the process.
Focus on building only what is necessary from scratch, and for everything else, use the tools that are already available and can be further reused.
This approach saves time, and money, and accelerates your app’s time to market. Moreover, it simplifies your life as a mobile app developer.
Once you have completed the groundwork in the pre-development stage, you can proceed to actually creating your mobile app. By this point, you have validated your app ideas, conducted thorough research, and understood how the app should function.
Step 7: Define the technical specifications
Use the wireframes you developed during pre-development to construct a “tech spec.”
The tech spec encompasses the behind-the-scenes workings of your app, which remain unseen by users. It may be beneficial to strategically rearrange elements to optimize time and cost efficiency.
An app developer examines your wireframes to evaluate the visual aspects and technical challenges involved.
Through the tech spec, potential alternative approaches to achieving your goals can be identified. Discovering these alternatives early on can save you months of work and thousands of dollars.
At the very least, gather the information and assess your options. While prioritizing the user experience is crucial, the tech spec process remains vital to development.
It is better to address it promptly rather than realize three or six months later that different decisions could have saved significant time and resources.
Step 8: Establish achievable milestones
Setting milestones is crucial to maintaining progress and alignment within your team throughout the app development process. Without defined benchmarks, it becomes challenging to track your advancement.
The concept behind milestones is to break down your extensive development project into smaller, manageable tasks. Focusing on numerous smaller projects makes it easier to make progress rather than tackling one overwhelming project from start to finish.
This approach aligns with the principles of the agile framework, a widely adopted methodology for mobile app development.
Each small app project should have a designated timeframe for completion. Depending on the task’s complexity, this timeframe can vary from a few days to several weeks.
Measuring progress against these milestone timelines allows you to monitor whether you and your development team meet deadlines.
Implementing a project management system specifically designed for software developers is essential. Agile development and scrum development are two popular options worth considering.
Regardless of the system you choose, it is crucial to have a means of tracking progress. This provides a clearer understanding of when you can launch your app, allowing for effective planning.
Step 9: Develop a minimum viable product (MVP)
The concept behind an MVP is to focus on the essential features of your app. It compels you to prioritize and think about the core functionalities that are crucial for your app’s success.
Instead of getting sidetracked by additional features, build the fundamental components first.
App development offers endless possibilities, making it easy to lose sight of your goals during the building process. A few months into the project, it becomes tempting to think, “Let’s add this feature” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if the app could do this?”
However, such notions can prolong the development timeline and increase costs. They may even divert attention from the app’s core functionality.
Keep in mind that additional features can always be incorporated later. We will address this in more detail later in the app development process.
An MVP represents the basic structure of your app, focusing on the necessary components. It includes the core features required to fulfill basic functionalities and use cases. At this stage, design aesthetics and extravagant elements are not a priority.
For example, consider a messaging app. The MVP would involve enabling two users to send messages to each other. Building mobile app features like video chat, font customization, photo uploads, or background color adjustments would not be the initial focus.
To draw an analogy, an MVP for a house would be four walls and a roof. It wouldn’t be a fully furnished kitchen or a tent. You cannot transition directly from a tent to a complete house, but you can add a kitchen later.
Remember, an MVP is not a final app; it goes beyond a mere test app in terms of functionality and scope.
Step 10: Perform quality assurance (QA)
After completing your MVP and having a functional app, performing thorough testing before deploying it is crucial.
Testing should be conducted on various mobile platforms to ensure optimal performance. Given the diverse range of devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android devices, PWAs, smartphones, and tablets, the quality assurance process must encompass extensive testing on different platforms.
Assessing the app’s online and offline functionality is important, considering that devices with varying software versions and screen sizes may present unique challenges not encountered elsewhere.
Merely testing the app on your phone once and assuming it works correctly is insufficient. Rigorous testing across different platforms is necessary.
As a first-time app builder, you might question the need for a dedicated QA process. You may wonder whether it is necessary to invest in professional testing. After all, shouldn’t app developers be able to create bug-free code?
While it would be ideal if apps were flawless right from the start, the reality is that developers do encounter bugs during the coding process.
Furthermore, developers often struggle to identify their own bugs effectively. Therefore, a dedicated QA process is essential to identify and resolve issues before deploying the app.
What type of costs are involved in building a mobile app?
While the rewards of building mobile apps can be immense, the cost of developing one can vary significantly. The total cost of building a mobile app depends on several factors, such as the complexity of the app, the features it includes, the platform it’s developed on, and the location of the development team.
Therefore, it’s essential to clearly understand the costs involved before embarking on the mobile app development journey.
The cost of creating a mobile app can be broken down into three main categories:
1. App Development Costs
App development costs include the cost of designing, coding, and testing the app. The more complex the app is, the higher the development cost will be. The choice of the development platform, such as iOS or Android, can also affect the cost.
2. App Deployment Costs
App deployment costs include the cost of submitting the app to the app store, ensuring that it meets all the necessary guidelines and regulations, and marketing it to potential users.
3. App Maintenance Costs
Once the app is live, maintenance costs come into play. This includes ongoing updates, bug fixes, and improvements to keep the app running smoothly and up-to-date with the latest technologies and trends.
The cost to build mobile apps can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the complexity and functionality of the app. However, it’s essential to remember that the cost of creating a mobile app is an investment in the success of your business.
To ensure that you’re getting the best value for your money, it’s crucial to choose the right mobile app development partner with a proven track record of success and expertise in your industry.
A team that can help you navigate the complexities of the mobile app development process and deliver an app that meets your business goals and delights your customers.
While the cost of building a mobile app can vary significantly, it’s a worthwhile investment for businesses looking to stay ahead of the competition and engage their customers on a whole new level.
By understanding the costs involved and choosing a reliable and experienced development team, you can build a mobile app that meets your business goals and exceeds your expectations. So, don’t hesitate to take the plunge and invest in the future of your business with a mobile app!
Why hire a mobile app development company like Netweb?
Since we walked through the journey of building mobile apps, not telling you an adept company from where you can build mobile apps won’t be justifiable. So here are the reasons why hiring a mobile app development company like Netweb is a wise choice:
1. Expertise and Experience
Hiring a mobile app development company like Netweb means gaining access to a team of experienced and skilled developers, designers, and project managers.
These experts bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, ensuring that your app is developed to the highest standards and meets all of your business goals.
2. Customized Solutions
We understand that every business has unique needs and requirements. Our team works closely with you to comprehend your specific needs and create customizable solutions that address them well.
We take the time to understand your business, your target audience, and your goals to ensure that we develop a custom app that meets your expectations and exceeds them.
3. Quality Assurance
Quality is at the forefront of everything we do. Our team of experts uses the latest tools and technologies to ensure that your app is developed to the highest standards.
We conduct thorough testing and quality assurance checks to ensure that your app is bug-free, user-friendly, and meets all of your business requirements.
4. Cost-Effective Solutions
Outsourcing mobile app development companies like Netweb can actually save you money in the long run. Choosing an experienced team that uses the latest technologies and development tools ensures that your app is developed efficiently and cost-effectively.
This means you get the best value for your investment and can achieve a higher return on investment.
Bottom-line
Mobile app development companies like Netweb can be a game-changer for your business. With our expertise, experience, and commitment to quality, we can help you build a mobile app that meets your business goals and delights your customers.
So, if you’re looking for a reliable and experienced mobile app development company, look no further than Netweb!
