Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones.
This article will help you learn what type of mobile application you’re planning to build and how you’ll be using it in the future. We aim to help you and your company choose the right technologies, trends, methods, and tools. With this information you’ll make sure the final product matches your expectations.
You may already have a few good mobile app ideas for your business, and that’s a good place to start. But before you move into the design and development phase, your first step should be a deep dive into research—into your own business and target audience, as well as that of your competitors.
Sketch Your App Idea
Every app starts with an idea. It doesn’t need to be big, ground-breaking or clever. Just an idea is good enough.
Sketch out your app idea with pen and paper. The goal is to make the idea tangible. You define how your app works and what its features are, before you start developing the app.
Strategy
The first phase of the mobile app development process is defining the strategy for evolving your idea into a successful app. You may include a more significant part of this in your overall enterprise mobility stragegy. As one app’s objectives may differ from another, there is still an app-specific impact to the mobility strategy to address during the development process. You can read some questions that every startup needs to answer here.
In this phase, you will:
- Identify the app’s users
- Research the competition
- Establish the app’s goals and objectives
- Select a mobile platform for your app.
Analysis and Planning
At this stage, your app idea starts taking shape and turns into an actual project. Analysis and planning begin with defining use cases and capturing detailed functional requirements.
After you have identified the requirements for your app, prepare a product roadmap. This includes prioritizing the mobile app requirements and grouping them into delivery milestones. If time, resources or costs are a concern, then define your minimum-viable-product (MVP) and prioritize this for the initial launch.
Cost of Developing a Mobile App
The cost of developing an app can range from almost nothing to millions of dollars — it all depends on the type of app and its intended use. Following is a breakdown of the ranges you can expect to pay for building a mobile app:
- No-code app builders. A developer doesn’t need to know how to code if the app has basic feature requirements. Free tools such as Good Barber, Appery.io, Shoutem, Appy Pie and BuildFire offer the freedom to build apps without learning Swift or other programming languages. Although these tools are limited in their functionality and can’t be used to create a game with no-code apps, the no-code approach will meet some organization’s needs.
- Enterprise apps. The concept of Citizen Developer, where anyone can build a mobile app, is exploding with tools such as Amazon’s Honey Code, and Microsoft Power Apps. These devices offer drag-and-drop interfaces that can connect to data sources and manage content flow. The price is typically tied to a monthly subscription of less than $50.
- Mobile optimized website. Although it’s most practical to build websites for both desktop and mobile devices, the website content management tool you’re using will likely have plugins you can buy for less than $100 to optimize your website for mobile devices.
Learn to code and build it yourself: This is most time consuming option but you’ll gain a valuable and in-demand skill to build your own apps or get a job as a developer. If this option appeals to you, check out our free resources to start learning iOS development and how to get started.
To learn more about the cost of building a hybrid or native mobile app, check out this article.
Prioritize Features
If you’re planning to build an MVP, prioritizing features will be a huge help to developers. Indicate which features are more important than others, so developers know what to focus on first. You can do that by marking them as Must, Should, Could, and Won’t (this method is called MoSCoW).
As you start building the app, you should always be developing an MVP—minimum viable product. The idea behind an MVP is that it forces you to think about your app’s most essential features.
App Testing
Mobile applications are first tested within the development environment using emulators and later subjected to field testing. Emulators provide an inexpensive way to test applications on mobile phones to which developers may not have physical access. The following are examples of tools used for testing application across the most popular mobile operating systems.
- Google Android Emulator – an Android emulator that is patched to run on a Windows PC as a standalone app, without having to download and install the complete and complex Android SDK. It can be installed and Android compatible apps can be tested on it.
- The official Android SDK Emulator – a mobile device emulator which mimics all of the hardware and software features of a typical mobile device (without the calls).
- Test iPhone – a web browser-based simulator for quickly testing iPhone web applications. This tool has been tested and works using Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 and Safari 3.
Start marketing the app before you launch.
I recommend that you start creating a buzz before your launch. It is important to attract and engage your target audience before launching so that the app gets some instant downloads. Focus on creating curiosity and communicating the perks of using the app. Distribute press releases, and use social media platforms to inform the audience about the app. Get the audience hooked. Here is an article on 4 App Marketing Strategies you can use to market your mobile app.
Further Reading On Mobile App Development:
- What You Should Know About the App Design Process
- Creating Wireframes and Prototypes with InDesign
- The Skeptic’s Guide to Low-Fidelity Prototyping
- UX Sketching and Wireframing Templates for Mobile Projects (Free Download)
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The power of a well-designed app to gain new customers is key in today’s market. Our cutting-edge mobile app development solution is what your business or startup needs! Our developers are adroit with any mobile app development platform you need. We help execute your app development to perfection. If you need the best mobile app development companies, you have found them!
We offer a complete solution with the latest technologies to solve your obstacles and scale your customer base. From the start of any project (and at every stage, step, phase, and release) we focus on the client and always ask for feedback while we develop the project. Creating a quality solution for a business or startup is our end goal. Our strategy and processes are based on solid communication with our clients. 5280 Software LLC is one of the top mobile app development companies in the USA. We are far better than other mobile app development companies that charge more money for lower quality.
All projects are built according to a clearly defined scope of work. If you need assistance with scope creation, we offer this as a service. This scope of work will be used in the provided development contract. Make sure whomever you hire for your project provides you a development contract with clearly defined pricing, development timeline, payment schedule, and deliverables. We would like to learn about your project and help refine your scope of work. Our custom website, software, and mobile app development agency is here for you every step of the way.
If you have an idea for a mobile app, please emails us your full name or company name and we will send you a signed NDA. We send NDAs to all potential clients to guarantee your ideas and documents will be kept in confidence. Once an NDA is in place, feel free to book a free discovery call. You can also fill out our app development questionnaire to share the details of your project before your call. We are the leading firm specializing in building solutions for the web, iphones and other smart devices including IOT. Our company can create a custom solution on a variety of platforms using the most current popular programming languages. Weather it is a cross platform hybrid app or a natively programmed solution, we have you covered!
We look forward to speaking with you about your project. Learn why clients around the world trust working with 5280 Software LLC. We support our clients from mockups, sketch, wireframes, and graphic design, development, product launch and ASO when we publish your app, and even code updates at a competitive price point. Feel free to visit us on our social sites Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or send us a LinkedIn connection request to learn about our offers to get answers to your questions. Want to hear firsthand from our previous clients the superior service we offer? Check out our testimonials! Call us today at 888.510.0833 to learn about our mobile app development services!
