Gone are the days when voice of consumers didn’t matter. Thanks to smartphone devices, each individual consumer is empowered to make purchases and give businesses ways to boost their sales. As a result, today’s consumer market is tough to break which is why companies are thinking of innovative ways to increase their revenue margins. An obvious giveaway lies in mobile applications that are easy to create if the right way of specialized mobile app development process is followed.
Asking necessary questions about Mobile App Development process
Application development can be easy if done correctly; however, there are many pitfalls to avoid. On the surface, Custom Mobile Development requires time, cost and resources at your disposal. However, there are many questions to address in this journey. For example:
- Which platform do you want for your mobile app development?
- Do you want to outsource the project or hire resources for the duration?
- Which software methodology would you follow for the needful?
- How do you intend the resources to communicate with each other if they are geographically dispersed on various regions?
- What market trends do you need to follow?
- Is the scope locked for the mobile app development?
- How much budget at hand do you have?
- Do you want to launch the product within a respective time frame?
- Who are the end-users for the product?
These questions help you define the foundation on which you will plan your mobile application. If you are a company looking for expert-level services in mobile app development domain, then it’s best for you to hire a third-party custom mobile app development services company to help you build a mobile application that caters to your business requirements from end to end.
By hiring a company to take up this challenge, you are at a better position for planning, monitoring, and managing the product life-cycle and its release; various other logistics pertaining to marketing and sales while the hired company is responsible for the project and its delivery within the agreed scope, time and cost dimensions.
Step-by-step Mobile App Development Process
The following are essential steps of the mobile app development process.
- Finding the Right Fit
- Sensing the Market Pulse
- Analyze, Design & Prototype
- Hiring the Expert Resources
- Going Live with Product Launch
Let’s elaborate the procedure of mobile app development process in detail.
Finding the Right Fit
When you embark on your mobile app development journey, you will come across hundreds in fact thousands of companies offering you mobile app development solutions. Some of them have very cost-effective models while some offer you expert resources for the project. Getting the right fit for your project is dependent on your requirements.
You need to narrow down your search by considering what you can compromise on. For example, you are a little low on budget but you’d rather hire 2-3 resources with high-end capabilities. You might also have existing units within your organization so that you don’t need to entirely outsource your project to a third-party. For example, you might have your in-house project management and business departments available.
Therefore, you are able to assemble a team with your own PM and BA by hiring third-party Dev and QA resources for creating a mobile app. So, you have to decide on the aspects you want to hire for and what are the must-have checkpoints for the company that you want to hire for your project.
Sensing the Market Pulse
Often, the market dictates how a product is built. It is important to do a thorough analysis of your business need and figure out what you want to develop is viable or not. At times, there are some existing solutions or even plug-in components available from off-the-shelf at very nominal prices for your app needs. So, instead of going through an entire excursion of a project life-cycle. It is important for you to go through a rigorous market analysis to assess the viability of your mobile app requirement.
If you are not able to do the needful, you can always take help of third-party advisory consultants who can guide you on what your requirements are and how they can be achieved through the best possible way. A third-party reluctant for signing an NDA is a red flag. So, make sure, your idea stays safe as you discuss it with a company by signing off an NDA with them.
Analyze, Design & Prototype
Specialized App Development is an art that needs to follow the steps as mentioned in this section’s heading. Usually, a Business Analyst carefully handpicks the set of features required for developing the product. A minimal viable product (MVP) is the way to go especially if it’s the first time you are taking up mobile app development solution for your product. This means you will start off with the minimum set of features for working out a holistic app. Call it App 1.0 – which means you handpick key features that can give some kind of completeness to end-users for performing certain functionalities through the app.
On basis of these features, a designer (or a team of designers) will create an app design – possibly wireframes in the simplest form or proper app screen designs if you are raising the bar. Through this way you will create a mobile prototype with lucid functionality of what happens when the user clicks on a button; the navigation and broad look and feel of the app (the branding, color scheming etc. need to conform with your company’s image).
From here onward, you can conduct a demo (small unit of users) to go through the app’s prototype and provide their feedback. This is a crucial stage as the approved design and overall feel of the app will be the basis for development. So, make sure you get the right stakeholders to make this decision.
Hiring the Expert Resources
It is important to hire the right set of Developers and Quality Assurance resources which again is dependent on the type of language, platform and technology you are using for mobile application development. The magnitude of the mobile project scope and the agreed timelines also dictate this factor in terms of the quantity of resources required for the project.
You can hire front-end or back-end or hybrid developers who can create both back-end and front-end layers for the product. The Dev and QA units work hand in hand; as the developed product has to be thoroughly tested not just on happy scenarios but also those corner case scenarios that occur very rarely but can affect the app’s market repute.
As part of Custom Mobile App development services provided to you, make sure that the hired company takes this entire process with extreme carefulness in all aspects. You should also demand high visibility of the developed product through constant communication, product demos and even ask for a separate product environment for you to carry out User Application Testing for ensuring that the delivered product is fluent in terms of translating your business as soundly as possible. You should not progress towards commercially releasing the product unless you are confident of attaining a certain level of success in the consumer market.
Going Live with Product Launch
As exciting as these two words sound; this is not just the end of the project but the beginning of your product in the market. From here onward, your product will be commercially available to users so it should be without any bugs, glitches or known-errors without immediate fixes in the pipeline. As part of bespoke mobile application development, a lot of companies also provide support and operations services for the developed app.
This way, the infrastructure and various operation logistics remain the concern for the hired party. As a result, you can best focus on the product launch, it’s marketing and majorly the ways to churn out higher sales for your business.
Conclusion
Specialized App Development isn’t an easy feat. However, it should not be a very difficult task either. By getting the right mix of resources, or completely outsourcing your project requirements; you can get a product developed that resonates of your company’s business and image. The right product not only connects with the target audience but it also helps you achieve higher sales and paves way for further success in the market.
If you are looking for custom mobile app development services; then contact with Techliance today and we will set you up with one of our consultants for a free discussion about your mobile app requirements without any cost.