Creating your app from scratch can feel overwhelming and complicated at first. Since the process is long, project leaders and software engineering directors need to know the steps to successfully creating an app. Knowing how to go ahead is like having a map for creating a successful app project.
Getting this process right is vital in order to stay ahead and avoid any pitfalls that cause your app to fail.
This is why in this article, we’re bringing you a thorough step-by-step guide to creating your app, from its inception to steering to success after you’ve released it.
Table of content
• Setting product goal
• Sketch of the screens(low fidelity)
• Competitive market research
• Writing features in technical requirement doc
• Interface Design (high fidelity)
• MVP build
• Quality assurance & testing
• Landing page design
• Releaseing the app
• Market the app
• Track KPIs
• Gather user feedback
• Continue with maintenance and support
Setting product goal
Your app project won’t be successful unless you set your project goals and track their attainment using a specific set of criteria from the start. What you want to achieve through this
app, who are going to be the users, how they will use this etc. such objective's rough idea comes out in this stage. Cause blueprint of the product is this stage.
Sketch of the screens (low fidelity)
Before you lay the foundation for your app, create a rough sketch of your idea first. App idea sketches are simple drawings that show what your app should entail, how it will work, and what you want it to look like.
They make the idea tangible for yourself and other team members you want to convey it to.
This step is a risk-free way of developing an app idea that helps you get a basic outlook of your app.
For example, you can start by drawing the basic outline of an iPhone screen to visualize what the app is going to look like to the user. wireframing image Fill it with user interface elements such as buttons or icons.
Finally, make a separate screen preview for each page of the app and start listing ideas on the side of each sketch and keep drawing until you run out of ideas.
When you’ve put down all your initial ideas, you can start refining them.
This means writing the first draft of your app’s feature list. Keep in mind that you’re still working on the conceptual level.
Competetive market research
Competitive market research is a critical step of successful mobile app development that comes after you’ve sketched out your app idea. Weabers will help you to define
Competition analysis: This gives you key insights into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in terms of online presence, content marketing strategy, and app store listings. You want to look at average ratings, user reviews, and how frequently they update apps to determine what tactics deliver the best results.
Understanding prospective users: Directly ask prospective users what they think of similar apps to confirm your assumptions about competitors. Collect as much feedback as possible to make educated decisions on app design, critical features, and user experience standards.
Industry analysis: Understand the current state of the industry so your app can address its specific pain points. You can collect hard data from the latest industry trend reports and by attending industry conferences and key events.
Writing features in technical requirement document
A technical requirements document lists all of the features you want in your app in one place.
It will describe the features that are unique to your app and highlight which ones are a priority, so that any developer who takes on the project has a clear idea of what the app is about.
The complexity of the technical requirements will set a benchmark for choosing a developer.
A good way to go about this is to try to imagine how users interact with your app, and then write it down, step by step.
Picture what signing in to your app for the first time and browsing through its content should feel like and let that guide you as you develop the technical requirements document.
Describe what features the app navigation needs and how the user interacts with media galleries, videos, and social media.
Mention if the app requires access to specific hardware, such as cameras or microphones, and make sure to list any special features such as analytics, payment system, booking, or chat support.
After you’ve listed all the features that you want to include in your app, point out the most important ones, as those will require special attention.
Now that you have the visual design and the technical requirements of your app penned down, you’re will have the idea what you will get as product.
Interface Design (high fidelity)
You will then need to create a visual design of what your app looks and feels like to the user.
The process of designing an app consists of creating app-specific wireframes and building design mockups on top of them.
Think of wireframes as app structures — they tell you how users will navigate through the app.
MVP build and release
The benefit of creating an MVP is that it represents a cost-effective and low-risk solution for testing your app on the app market before launching. It allows you to improve your app as it’s being developed and add features based on reviews, and UX insights, making data-backed decisions. To test your MVP, you will reach out to the demographics and user population you wish to target.
The data from testing the app with your users will confirm if there is an interest in your app among your target audience. When you have a field-tested understanding of who your audience is, you can polish your app to meet its expectations. After successfully releasing, analyzing and improving your MVP, you will have reduced development costs, tested your app, and hopefully attracted investors to back your launch.
Do some quality assurance and release
Without quality assurance, you’re setting your app up for an unsuccessful release that will fail user expectations. Quality assurance is the process of relentlessly testing throughout the app development. Its purpose is to detect any defects in your app as early as possible in the development.
A report by Anoda found that 71% of all app uninstalls are because of crashes, while 52% of all app users are frustrated by app performance. Additionally, 65% of users report that a bad mobile app experience causes them to think negatively about the app brand. In short, flawed bug-ridden apps drive down the user experience and increase bounce rates.
Therefore, to ensure quality, you need to have a person dedicated to quality assurance working on the project from the start of the development phase.
That person will execute automated tests, review code, and manually test the app for specific use cases.
In order to set high user experience standards and avoid releasing a faulty mobile app, conduct quality assurance tests as the app is being coded.
Before launching your app, we do this quality assurance checklist make sure you have everything covered.
Landing page design
An app landing page is a powerful tool for converting users to your app. You should view it as a part of your mobile app marketing strategy.
A stellar app landing page helps potential users overcome the hesitation of downloading your app and sets it apart from your competitors.
Landing pages are especially important when your app users need extra convincing to try out the app. This is what you should do when designing your app landing page.
Keep in mind that your landing page should answer the question: “Why should I download the app?”
Showing your app in action is a great way to convince potential users that what you offer can add value to their lives, so a good visual representation can make all the difference between bouncing and downloading.
Use video or animation to highlight the benefits of using your app effectively.
Releasing the app
When you’ve done all the testing and made your best possible app, you’re finally ready to release it on a major platform.
The two major options for releasing your app are either the Google Play Store for Android apps or Apple’s App Store for iOS mobile apps.
The way you go about the release of your app will impact how many users will download it.
A strong app release should include an optimization strategy to improve the app’s visibility in the store search results and benefit your marketing efforts.
For instance, 47% of iOS app downloads are driven by the App Store’s search engine, and 53% of Android downloads came from Google Play’s search engine as well.
Since both of these platforms are different, they have different user behavior and rules of use, which means that they require different app store optimization tactics.
Make sure your app store release has been fully optimized for the specific platform to yield the best results.
Market your app
A great-performing app isn’t enough to achieve large amounts of downloads — it needs a complimenting marketing strategy to succeed. App marketing strategies include tactics you use to increase the volume of users coming to download your app. Like some of the important factors are
• App Store Optimization
• Using social media promotions
• Cross-promoting your app on different apps
• Reaching industry-known influencers
• Using Apple search/Google Ads
• Encouraging user feedback
Track KPIs
The success of your app will depend heavily on whether you track your KPIs and which metrics you study.
Tracking KPIs is important because they tell you how well your app is performing and if it will achieve its goals. KPIs are necessary for understanding how your users are interacting with your app. Tracking them answers the question: “What specific reasons do users have for embracing or rejecting my app?”
When releasing an app, you’ll face massive volumes of data in your analytics. Knowing which KPIs are the most important to track will keep you from being overwhelmed.
Here are the most important KPIs you should watch closely.
Revenue Metrics – These allow you to make financial decisions and business projections.
User Engagement Metrics – Engagement metrics help you understand user behavior specific to your app.
App Performance Metrics – They assess the functionality of your app. App performance metrics include tracking the average load speed, collecting crash reports and performance based on specific things like screen resolution and mobile operating system.
Depending on your project requirements, use free or paid analytics tools to track your KPIs and stay ahead of any issues.
Gather User Feedback to Improve Your App
Collecting feedback from users is essential for improving your app, as direct feedback tells you precisely what you should do to improve user experience.
Without a great feedback collection system, you miss out on learning opportunities critical to the success of your app. If you want to adapt to the expectations of your users in a timely manner, you need your feedback system to be quick, relevant, and uninterrupted.
Since demanding user feedback is often frustrating, you have to make sure your process of gathering feedback does not hurt the user experience.
There are several elegant solutions you can try. By using the following methods, along with traditional app reviews, you can collect and rationalize volumes of data essential to improving your app.
Continue with support and maintenance
Your work isn’t over after you’ve released and marketed your app. You’re now responsible for its maintenance and support.
Maintaining means releasing updates, monitoring performance, and fixing anything that might hurt the user experience of your app.
App maintenance is critically important because it allows you to fix any issues and gives you a chance to add new features so your app can stand out from the competition.
The way you maintain your app will have a direct impact on whether your project is a success or a failure in the long run.
A report from Upland found that 71% of users uninstall the app within the first 3 months of its release because of negligence and failure to enhance the user experience.
In order to achieve a large number of active users and keep your app up and running well after 3-6 months post-release, have a support and maintenance strategy ready before you launch the app.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that creating an app is a challenging feat that demands a lot of resources and team stamina.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulties inherent to the process, we see successful apps launched every day, making waves in the industry.
Having a system in place keeps your team ahead from the moment you write your app idea down to months after you’ve released your app.
This is critically important in order to avoid the risk of failure.
In Weabers we proceed with an effective step-by-step cautiously so you can make your app idea come to life, achieve its full potential and create new opportunities for your business.
