How to Make a Successful Mobile App from Scratch?
Mobile apps have become highly essential for businesses worldwide to survive & thrive. The mobile app industry is growing continuously at a tremendous rate with thousands of apps released every day on Google Play Store & Apple’s App Store.
Even though today’s mobile app market is competitive, it is a major revenue-generating machine for businesses worldwide.
As you have decided to make a successful app that gets praised by users worldwide, then you have to create an app from scratch.
However, if you do not have an idea of how to make an app from scratch, then we have got you covered.
Also, some of the companies which have now become tech giants worldwide choose to build a custom app because it offers a wide range of benefits such as scalability, reliability, security, etc.
Considering the success of these apps, as you also decided to create a custom app, then you have to follow a streamlined process.
We, as a custom mobile app development company, have years of experience in building apps and have delivered several excellent mobile apps to clients worldwide. Hence, we know what is required to build a custom app from inside-out.
So, whether you are a small, medium, or enterprise business owner, here we will walk you through a comprehensive process on how to make a successful app.
But, before we move ahead with the process of making a successful app, you must have a basic app idea. If you have a thorough app idea, then it’s wonderful.
After defining your app idea, you can follow the process given below to create your own app without much hindrance.
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- Define the Objective of Your App
- Conduct a Market Research
- Choose the App Platform
- Create a Proper Documentation
- Create a Realistic Wireframe & Ensure the Details
- Create a Prototype of Your App
- Test Prototype & Obtain Feedback
- Create an Attractive App Design
- Choose a Development Approach
- Test the App Thoroughly & Resolve Bugs in Your App
- Launch Your App on Relevant Stores
Now, we will look at each point in detail:
Define the Objective of Your App
The first and the foremost thing is to define clear goals & visions of your mobile app. It doesn’t matter what the ultimate goal of your app is, it should fulfill two main things; it should reach a wider audience and help you expand your business.
Prior to building an app from scratch, you should answer some of the questions given below:
- What is the main purpose of the app?
- What is the niche you are targeting?
- Which monetization methods do you want to integrate?
- Which area of your business do you want to focus on with this app?
- How will this app help you to increase sales?
Here, it is highly important to define the goals for your app, because they help you to move in the right direction. Also, with a proper goal, you can use your time and resources more effectively.
Conduct a Market Research
The next crucial step in to make a successful app is to carry out a thorough market research of your niche. If you neglect this stage, there is a strong possibility that your time, money, and other resources get wasted.
On the other hand, if you invest sufficient time in this stage, you can make your app successful.
Now, if you are planning to create an app for your current business, then reach out to your target audience to know their actual needs. For this, you can carry out surveys and interviews.
However, if you are planning to work on a new app idea, then consider the following questions:
- Is your app idea unique?
- Is there any app available in the market, similar to your app idea?
If your app idea is fresh, you can do simple market research to understand users’ problems and how you can resolve them with your app.
But, if your idea is not unique, then you have two options. First, you can find the unique and innovative app idea. Second, you can do a market research of competitors, understand issues faced by these apps, and how you can resolve these issues by providing some out of the box features in your app.
Choose the App Platform
Now, the next important step in the process of how to make an app is choosing a suitable app platform.
Years ago, there were various mobile operating systems in the market. such as RIM, Symbian, Microsoft, Android, iOS, and many smaller ones. It seemed that the market would never end expanding.
However now, there are only two leaders in mobile platforms. iOS and Android. Hence, it is not a complicated task to choose one.
Moreover, the majority of businesses and brands across the world are launching their app on these platforms.
Based on the research, future goals, and target audience presence, you can decide to go for android, iOS, or both.
Create a Proper Documentation
Now, you need to define the key features to make your mobile app successful. For this, you should make proper documentation of your mobile app.
The documentation consists of the BRD (business requirement document), FRD (functional requirement document), user story, and monetization model.
Let’s have a brief about them:
BRD: A business requirement document emphasizes the business viewpoints because it consists of information about the business outcomes of a project. It includes things like scope, risks, constraints, etc.
FRD: A Functional requirement document is mainly used to define the system or service a project has to offer. In other words, functions essential to fulfill the business requirement. It consists of methodologies, data flow diagrams, etc.
User Story: Here, it would help if you defined a user story of your mobile app. In short, you should have a rough idea about what you want from a user to perform from one screen to another.
Monetization Model: You should decide in advance how you want to generate money through your app. The selection of a monetization model depends on app complexity, type, competitor, and platform. Some of the well-known mobile app monetization methods are advertising, in-app purchases, subscriptions, etc.
Create a Realistic Wireframe & Ensure the Details
Now, you need to create a proper wireframe for your mobile app. A wireframe is basically a skeletal framework of a mobile app.
It is also known as the low-fidelity design of an app.
There are three main purposes for creating a wireframe:
- It provides details about the information displayed on every app page.
- It offers a brief overview of the structure and layout of an application.
- It guides the entire direction & description of the user interface.
With the help of the wireframe, you can check and ensure that all the details required for your app are correctly displayed.
Create a Prototype of Your App
The next essential stage is building a mobile app prototype. It is actually the method of getting your idea and converting it into a mobile app with some basic functionality.
A prototype can be used to build medium or high fidelity design of a mobile app. It is also known as a clickable and interactive version of your app.
Also, a prototype helps you to determine the user experience of your mobile app. Hence, after designing the app prototype, you should test the user journey of the entire app.
Test Prototype & Obtain Feedback
After developing a prototype based on the ideas you and your team generated, it’s time to collect valuable feedback from the users on whom you are testing these.
Based on the feedback obtained from the users, you can improvise the prototype of your app and make it user-friendly.
Create an Attractive App Design
Now, it’s time to create the final UI/UX design of your mobile app. Depending on the feedback obtained from the app prototype, you need to update your app accordingly.
Here are some of the essential tips to design your mobile app:
- Android & iOS have their own app design guidelines, and therefore, you need to follow standards set by them to meet the store’s guidelines and provide a better experience to users.
- Ensure that your app has a polished design with the latest graphics, animations, images as per the current market.
- Follow the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle to design your app. Here, that doesn’t mean you need to compromise on your design. You need to include elements that are valuable and make their task easy.
Apart from these, there are some essential mobile app design practices that you should follow to design a successful app.
After designing the mobile app, you need to test your design thoroughly to ensure that the flow of the app is correct.
Choose a Development Approach
After designing your mobile app, the next stage is to decide the proper development approach. Selecting a proper app development approach is one of the things that makes an app successful.
In general, there are two ways to build your mobile app: Native and Hybrid. Let’s have a brief about them:
Native App Development: With this method, you can develop a mobile application for one specific platform only. It is highly suitable for building robust, feature-rich, scalable, and reliable mobile apps.
Hybrid App Development: With this method, you can develop a mobile app for multiple platforms (android & iOS) simultaneously using the single code base. This method is suitable if you want to launch an app on multiple platforms in a short amount of time and at a cost-effective price.
Based on your requirement & future goals, you can choose the development approach. However, if you have issues choosing one development approach, then check out this quick guide on native Vs. hybrid app.
Apart from the app development method, you also need to decide the backend architecture for your mobile app. There are two types of backend architecture: serverless and with the server.
If you want to build an app that works offline, then serverless architecture will work fine.
On the other side, if you want to build a mobile app that requires a constant internet connection, data exchange, etc., you will require a robust backend server.
After defining all these things properly, you will be able to determine the app development cost and develop your app efficiently.
Test the App Thoroughly & Resolve Bugs in Your App
As your app is developed, it is time to test it in the real environment before making it public. Testing is crucial to identify and correct any errors in the user experience.
Here, we suggest you share your app with team members, friends, relatives, etc.
Get constant feedback for your app from them for the next few weeks and understand their needs, pain points, and their context of using your app.
By gathering all these essential insights, you can resolve bugs in your app until it becomes error-free.
Launch Your App on Relevant Stores
Now, before launching your mobile app on a particular store, you should be familiar with the app store optimization guidelines. Here, it would help if you have the app description, screenshots, short video, etc. needed for the particular app store.
You should create an account on a relevant store, which is Google’s Play Store for the Android app and Apple’s app store for the iOS app. After this, you have to submit your app, and the app store will approve your app within a span of a few days.
Conclusion
We hope that you have understood the entire process of how to make an app from scratch.
Your app plays a vital role in your business; therefore, always treat your app equally to the business.
The main goal of your app is to provide services to the users for a specific cost. For this, you need to ensure that your app is user-friendly, feature-rich, visually appealing, and useful.
Therefore, to make a successful mobile app, you need to plan many things before you start the mobile app development journey; as it helps you to build an app quickly and efficiently.
Moreover, developing an app from scratch requires a lot of time, effort, and money; hence it can’t be completed by a single person. Therefore, it is highly recommended to approach a leading mobile app development company like us.
Lastly, we provide app development from start to finish. Hence, we will brainstorm on your project thoroughly and then deliver you the best mobile application.
