From Idea to Launch: A Complete Guide to Starting Mobile App Development

Introduction

Smartphones are changing the way we are doing business. Today, it is the heart of every business, every household, and every individual irrespective of geography. Even brands today have started engaging more and more with their audiences through mobile devices as they consider it to be the most effective way to capture the user’s imagination, build brand interest, and lead them to purchases.

And this is the reason behind the explosion in smartphone users and their applications. These days, there are apps available for almost everything from personal shopping to enterprise operations and everything in between.

With thousands of apps launching every day on the market, the mobile app development services have become very competitive. So, as a mobile app developer when you think about building a promising mobile app for iOS or Android, you need to think beyond “how to build an app” to gain popularity and generate ROI from it.

And to do that, here are the steps that you need to follow to build an app that can master the market!

So, let’s begin!

Ideation

Before you start with mobile app development, you need to have a clear idea of what you want on the plate for your target audience. For instance, you want to build an iOS app or Android app, or you want to launch it on both platforms.

Also, ask yourself what’s the need for this app or how can my app help the users. Does my app have the potential to fill the gap in the market? Your idea of building a mobile app might not be different, or it might not be the first-of-a-kind app, but it’s best not to develop an app for a space that is already flooded with thousands of them. But just remember that successful apps are those that have helped solve users’ real-life problems. 

Once you have identified that problem, look for promising ways that your app can offer substantial advantages to your users. Also, give your idea a visual representation and for that, you can draw rough sketches of the interface with all the details.

Planning and research

After your concepts are clearly defined, the next step is the planning stage. In this stage, you don’t have to decide how you will look or perform, instead, it aims on finding answers to the questions about the feasibility of your app idea with the current market situation. 

Planning and research generally refer to market research and conducting a study on practicality. During the planning stage, you need to understand the niche of your mobile app in the market.

You will also need to decide on which platforms you need to launch your app. If you are planning to develop it for more than one platform, will you take the hybrid approach or develop natively for each platform? 

In short, you need to invest most of your time in planning and researching your app to make sure it becomes a big hit.

Wireframes and prototypes

The next step is wireframing and prototyping the mobile app. Ideally, wireframing is considered as the low-fidelity guide to the UI and UX that offers a sense of the app’s functionality and flow without getting into small details like color and style.

All you need to do is focus on representing main functionalities, essentially building a minimal viable product or MVP of the app and in turn receive feedback on that.

In the wireframing and prototyping phase, you can present as many mock-ups to your app users as possible, thus letting your app adapt and evolve. Take your time as you need to make sure that you are making an app that will help meet your user’s needs. 

After you have received suggestions and feedback from your users, it’s time to head to the next step.

Architecture and database

When it comes to the design phase of app development, there are many components to talk about, but the most important is the UI and UX designs. The UI and UX designers should be refining the wireframes, meaning placing and creating UI elements, defining user flow, understanding the element hierarchy, and more. During this stage, you should be having high-fidelity mockups, so that the developers can convert them into a working app, along with other details.

During this phase, a brand guideline should be established, so that the app’s branding is consistent and understood by developers and designers. Along with that, a marketing strategy should be ready during this stage to tell people about the app that you are building with the help of a mobile app development company. This includes building a website to gather emails from your users that are interested in your products.

Agile app development

After you are done designing and prototyping the product, it’s time to move on to the development stage, where the developers will begin to write the code for the app. This is where you will work on the feedback that you received from the wireframes and also make some final, and large decisions.

In this development stage, methodologies like agile and waterfall are implemented. And during this stage, implement an analytics engine in the app that will show you how your app works. Implementing analytics to your app will be useful to learn about your users and further improve app design.

QA and app testing

The next step is the testing process. Preferably, testing is done simultaneously with the development stage. It is crucial to keep the testing app at every step to keep post-release costs low. Make sure the enterprise mobile app development company starts with Unit tests, UI tests, and integration tests to ensure that your app is free from major bugs and errors.

However, test cases are very time-consuming, but in the long run, they can substantially reduce time and monetary costs for maintenance and support of the app. Testing the app will also help you during the last stage of app development; maintenance and support.

App deployment

After finishing all these steps, the last thing left is to launch the app on the Android Play Store or Apple App store. This is important, as you will be doing this every time you build an app. At this stage, your app should be bug-free and it should have a quality that will help you pass the guidelines of the store.

Tracking metrics

As your app is now live on the market and now you can see the number of downloads. But this is not the end, now you will need to keep tracking the app performance and its metrics. For instance, check if there are any glitches that your users are facing, etc.

On the final note 

Congratulations, your app development process ends here! Although it may seem a long and tedious process for someone new to this, for a custom mobile app development company like Bytes Technolab Inc, it’s not a big deal. As we are the best mobile app development company with years of experience. Also, our professional mobile app developers only use the best mobile frameworks and technologies for native mobile apps and cross-platform applications.

Our mobile application development services include:

• iPhone app development services

• Android app development

• Hybrid app development

• Cross–platform app development
• Custom mobile application development