How to Develop an Enthralling Mobile App & Design a Best Digital Product
Introduction:
On your way to make your next viral mobile app? We have got some valuable insights that’ll make your app an instant hit.
In this age and time, we are all familiar with what a mobile app is and how to use it. However only a few are aware of the technicalities and thought process that goes into the successful development of these applications.
Whether you’re a professional software designer or a noob, this blog will educate you about all you need to know about developing a fruitful mobile application and the essentials of digital product design.
Let’s start with the basics, what is a mobile application?
A mobile application is a software that runs on your mobile device designed to perform special tasks according to user needs. In today’s era, mobile apps are commonly used for our daily tasks. They are utilized for communication, entertainment, commuting, getting groceries, services and whatnot.
With billions of annual downloads, mobiles have become not just convenience tools for users, but also a vast market for generating profits. Recently, they are rapidly becoming an emerging source of eCommerce and sales providing opportunities to people like never before.
Digital Product Design & App Development:
What do we mean by digital product development?
Well, it is just the process of developing a digital product or a service that effectively helps to solve an existing problem.
Digital app development is a rapidly growing field, having an increasing demand in all the major sectors like businesses, telecommunications, software houses, healthcare, schools, industries and retail. All of these departments rely heavily on mobile apps for the exchange and transaction of valuable information.
There’s no doubt that mobile apps have become a preferred means of communication among the masses, connecting businessmen and people to the internet. All organizations either emerging or multinational, are required to develop applications that their customers and employees need to function. Thus, there’s a huge demand for mobile app development in almost every sector. And despite there being millions of apps already available on the play store, entrepreneurs are still coming up with new ones and making fortunes out of it.
However, the knowledge of designing and developing a mobile application is essential. However, the process of developing a useful app is not that easy. It takes months of hard work. Below are some useful tips that can help speed up the process and increase the success rate by 100%.
Identify the problem:
Firstly, you have to put yourself in your client’s shoes to get an idea of their needs. You need to intelligently identify the problems being faced by your target customers.
Offer solutions:
After you have a sound idea about the issues faced, all you need to do is come up with some useful solutions to cater to user needs and make their work easy.
User satisfaction:
It’s a fact that user satisfaction plays a groundbreaking role in the success of any digital product or application. So, to come up with a good digital product, we need to empathize with users and understand their needs carefully. Only after that, we will be able to accurately develop something that’ll bring solid utility.
The Art Of Digital Product Development:
Getting the right people:
The more efficient and skilled the team the better performing would the product woulda team having the most experienced user experience specialists, graphic designers, software developers and business analysts. In the end, you’ll have the product only as good as the people developing it.
Brainstorm:
To reach your product’s maximum potential, you need to keep coming up with the latest ideas and improvements to enhance your product. It may seem insignificant but these are the things that will prove to make your product stand out. Constantly brainstorming and sharing relevant solutions and alternatives with your team is the way to move forward. For successful brainstorming, make sure to use the right technique and a mind map maker to create a mind map and organize your thoughts and ideas better. Also, make sure that all team members are on the same grounds and actively communicating to meet their counterparts.
These practices may seem tangible but will make a massive contribution to maximizing your business product.
App development in 3 easy steps:
The Research and idea:
The first step of the mobile application development process is to come up with an idea of what the purpose of your app is going to be; What do you want the end-consumer to benefit from or take away? You can begin by asking yourself simple questions like what kind of app it will be. what problem will it solve? How will it serve users? How will it generate business?
By the end of this, you should be easily able to:
- Define the use of the application
- Determine the potential targets you’ll be meeting
- The audience of your application
Also, you’ll have to have a sound idea of the kind of data you’ll be showcasing on your app.
Design and development:
After knowing the demands and the purpose of your app, the next most important aspect of an app is its design and appearance. You have to come up with interactive concepts and designs to make your app more eye-catching and attractive. If an app has an aesthetically pleasing design and a good user interface, it is more likely to be a success.
Validation and testing
This step is all about testing and improving. Run beta tests, get feedback, look for possible mistakes, fix bugs, make improvements and repeat! You need to must this until you get the best most effective version of your app.
5 Attributes You Can’t Compromise On:
Problem-solving
A poor-performing app in the eyes of a user is a bad app. And nothing makes an app look worse than when it doesn’t cater to user needs and fails at fulfilling its purpose. All good apps always satisfy their user demands and provide a useful solution to an existing problem.
User-friendliness
This is extremely important; your application should be easy to use and understand. If your app takes a lot of time for the user to comprehend, they will quickly lose interest and switch to other alternatives despite all its other good attributes. On the other hand, if your app is simple and user-friendly, people will have no reason to go somewhere else.
Marketing strategy
We’re surrounded by content and information. However, it’s harder to advertise to get the attention of your targeted audience. But with the right approach, everything becomes possible.
A successful app intelligently combines the three key factors that are – product, market and user. All of these aspects are supposed to align together for an application to succeed. A smart marketing strategy however is essential to boost your app in the initial stages. Do your research, know your audience, and with the right marketing tools hit the target.
Market competition:
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, this saying stays valid in the mobile app genre too. You should always be aware of your competitor’s marketing strategy and it’s crucial to conduct a mobile app analysis before launching your app.
The targeted party has a lot of needs that are to be met by products and services. offered by you and your rivals. By keeping a check you’ll get to know the lacking in your competition’s services. Now you can easily fill in those gaps and ultimately become the better choice.
Self-belief:
Self-efficacy is the most vital attitude while developing an application. You have to have faith in the process and trust that your idea and team are going to achieve the set goals. Honestly, there’s no point in spending hours doing all this research and development if you don’t believe in your idea.
Product Design Technologies and Methodologies
Business analysis
For your product to succeed, good business analysis is required. It is essential so that we can achieve maximum profit whilst gaining customer satisfaction. A good and extensive analysis results in a positive outcome for both parties.
UX and UI design
The acronyms UX AND UI stand for user experience and user interface respectively. These are the total game changers for your digital product. No matter how great and groundbreaking the solution your app provides if it fails in the UX/UI, the app would be a failure.
Therefore, having a fast and responsive user interface along with providing a proficient user experience is a must-have for a well-performing application. This is why it’s important to put a considerate amount of effort into researching, prototyping, and optimizing of software with the latest user experience and interfaces.
Following are some characteristics of good UX / UI designs:
Intuitiveness– after installation a lot of apps get uninstalled if they show low engagement. Good UX/UI designs are easy to learn and almost feel intuitive of their user’s next step
Clarity– most of the time the apps only get used once after installation. This is due to a complex user interface that leads to the total abandonment of the application.
Consistent in service and operations– the services should be satisfactory throughout, not just at the beginning.
Data analysis
You’ll find a large amount of valuable data would be at your disposal along the development of your digital product. With the help of the newly found insights, you would be able to come up with better solutions to all your previous issues. But you must make decisions based on facts and logic, not just mere assumptions. In the end, this data would prove to be a big support to strategize the best version of your product.
Web and mobile development:
You need to have a product design team that is efficient, not only in the technical aspects but also has a great sense of aesthetics. The key is to build a reliable and convertible web and mobile application. You have to design a product that not only has an appealing user interface but also doesn’t compromise on its performance. Investing in proper infrastructure, design and coding from the very start will eventually pay off in the success of your application. After all, your code will decide the fate of your product!
Testing and quality assurance
To achieve a great digital product, you need to go through iterative tests and quality assurance exercises. These tests should never stop even after your launch. In the pursuit of becoming the best possible version and maintaining the highest quality standards, you must constantly adjust and adapt to the latest trends. One thing you should always remember is that you should never compromise on quality. If you don’t pay much attention to these protocols in the initial stages, it is going to cause you immense loss down the road. So, keep testing your MVPs and updating your features, there’s always room for improvement!
Launch:
After being fully sure of the tech and all that it revolves around, now you have to prepare for the final step-the release. You need to come up with a title that is unique but not difficult to remember. Along with the title you are required to write one short and one long description of your application and some images for promotional campaigns.
Make sure to use easy-to-understand language, so that your potential users familiarize themselves easily.
Also, don’t forget to use the relevant keywords in the descriptions so that your probability of scoring more downloads increases. Now submit the app for approval and wait. However, it doesn’t end here you need to keep in touch with the developers to come up with new ideas or features to further improve your product. This could include minor updates or bug fixes that’ll help enhance the user experience.
Deployment and support:
As mentioned above, after the launch of the app you need to work with a seasoned developer to fix the minor issues and bugs that your app may have. Sometimes the bugs go undetected during the QA process and that’s okay. An app having zero bugs is not realistic, and almost impossible. To improve you can ask your users for feedback and support so that you can make your app perform better!
