Mobile App Development Steps: A Path to Build Stunning Products

Mobile App Development Steps: An Ultimate Hassle-free Process that Works for All

Mobile App Development: An end-to-end guide

Nowadays, mobile applications have become a common and crucial part of every industry. App development has become an impactful source to connect to the masses. Looking at the number of mobile app downloads of the last year, Statista reports 255 billion downloads which show that the app market is thriving rapidly. Hence the need to hire the best mobile app development services is also on the rise.

Every industry business is drifting towards a strong digital presence by having a custom mobile application. You have an app idea, now what? No matter, what your brand niche is if you want to grow your business you need to maintain pace with the digital world. The app market is generating huge revenue and it reached $430.90 bn in 2022.

First of all, you need to be aware of the mobile app development steps to have the best mobile app for your business. Whatever your business niche, a mobile application is going to add value to your firm.

Top 6 crucial mobile app development steps

The mobile application can be of different types and according to the business niche, it is customized; nevertheless, before you hire the best app development services, you need to equip with basic knowledge about the entire process. There are five basic mobile app development process steps common for all applications.

Mobile App Development Steps

The five steps to develop a mobile app are –

  • App strategy building phase
  • Analysis and app planning phase
  • App design phase
  • Core app development phase
  • Mobile application testing & deployment phase
  • App maintenance phase

So, these were the six fundamental steps that are followed to create a mobile app. All the steps in the mobile app development process are mentioned below in detail for better understanding.

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App strategy building phase

According to the detailed app development guide, creating a plan for the mobile app is referred to as strategy building. This is the initial step and most essential task that will decide the objectives, business plan for mobile app, and capabilities of your future app.

Identify the app’s objective

Whatever the type of app, the main thing you need to do is discover the purpose of creating a specific app. To find out, the main motive for creating a mobile application for your business, you can look out for answers to the following questions –

  • What impact the particular mobile application will have on my business or consumers’ lives?
  • Who is its intended audience?
  • What outcomes are expected by the mobile app to produce?

These questions will help find a strong reason for creating a customized app. Well, you know your brand niche so the main goals are already clear but answering these questions will give better, clarity of thought.

Research your peers

To stay ahead of your competitors, you need to be alert to the competitor’s brand. Apart from must-have features in your mobile app, you must also look out for your rivals in the market doing similar work to perform better.

Check out the following points carefully –

  • Find out the apps with similar niches or functions in the market.
  • What are their results?
  • Do they possess a great number of installations and good reviews from users?

By closely examining your competitors in the market, you get to learn about the loopholes in their business and application. Also, you will be aware of the current market scenario and trends. This in turn will help you decide how to build a successful app that sets your business apart from rivals.

Choose the platform

The third step in the strategy development process is to select a platform for your app. You need to decide for which platform you are creating a mobile application. It can be an android or iOS mobile app or a cross-platform application.

Draft the business model

Draft a proper business model for the mobile application. Everything depends on the purpose of the mobile app.

You can choose from a variety of options like –

  • In-app advertising
  • Paid apps
  • Subscription basis
  • In-app store purchases
  • Affiliate marketing

Analysis and app planning phase

The next steps that come in how to build a successful app are analysis and planning. As the strategy is created and the right direction to proceed is known, it’s time to analyze and plan. Now, you need to gather all the crucial details before moving toward the design and creation process.

Functional and Non-functional necessities

Functional needs of the mobile application refer to elucidating the basic software system behavior. It outlines what the application should and shouldn’t do to operate without issues. Whatever function the app will perform or specific features that will be part of the app comes under functional needs.

Non-functional needs refer to how well the system performs the task. How are the mobile app’s performance quality and its user experience?

Roadmap

Preparing for the app roadmap is a very important step to build a successful app. App roadmap will help reach the end goals with a clear vision.

While creating your app, make sure you have Here clarity of thoughts makes it easy to set the tasks and prioritize them. Be very clear about the functions which the mobile app needs to be able to perform. When your MVP or minimal viable product is released, you need to make sure it’s successful and avoid failures.

Tech stack

Before moving on to the next step all the mobile app development project stakeholders together figure out and select the best from the tech stack for mobile app development. Depending on the app type and for which app platform you are willing to create, you can have the individual skilled in that particular field. Additionally based on the mobile app development project you can also opt to hire skilled developers to work from a remote location.

Design Phase – Craft UI/UX design

To draw users’ attention and provide them with the best experience, need to focus a lot on the app designing process. If there are any loopholes left or messes in your app design, your audience will drift towards the competitors and all your time & efforts will go in vain.

The UI/UX of the mobile app must be intuitive, user-friendly, fascinating, and offer a trouble-free experience. Look at each of the design areas carefully, to develop a successful app.

Information architecture and workflow

Making proper guidelines is the first step of the app design process. Establishing the data that will be present in your app, the ways it is introduced to the users, and how seamlessly users will connect with it is very significant.

In the design stage, the mobile app development experts will ensure that mobile app architecture works well in tandem with balancing the user interface. Further, along with the app UI, the UX design strategy also needs to be implemented to improve user engagement.

You need to curate a workflow diagram for the app based on the guidelines provided above. These are quite beneficial for keeping track of all the potential user interactions. The purpose of this step is to help you examine how the navigation in your mobile app is carried out.

App wireframes

App wireframes or to understand in simple language, it’s a digital sketch created by business analysts. The functionality of your app is essentially visualized in these conceptual formats. App wireframes basically serve the purpose of enhancing app aesthetics and user experience.

App Style guides

The purpose of creating the style guides in the mobile app development process steps is to locate your firm’s identity in an individual document.

Typically, these documents include the following information regarding your app’s design –

  • Fonts
  • Color patterns
  • Spacing and positioning guidelines
  • Buttons
  • Widgets
  • Other related design components

Style guides aid in upholding continuity within your application software. It makes sure there is a peaceful balance between the feel and look of the app.

App mockups

The mobile app mockups are generated once your app style guides have been created. They are mostly the completed visual representation of your application. They are curated by integrating the app style guides into the app wireframe.

When this step is over, you need to check out the consistency of your app design throughout the mobile application.

Mobile App Prototypes

Creating prototypes is the final stage in the UI/UX design process. The entire workflow of the app and user experience can be replicated using the prototypes. With this, you will get a clear vision of how everything will work or look after the entire procedure ends.

This process of app development process may take a lot of time but this shouldn’t be the reason for not doing it aptly. Because if you skip this step, you may not be able to check out the design and functionality errors.

Development Phase – The core of app development

After finishing the designing process of the mobile app development phases, here comes the most crucial step. This step is further bifurcated into two diverse parts namely the backend and front end.

Backend development

Creating databases and server-side objects are the main functions performed at the backend phase of app development. These are responsible for your app performance and functionality. At this stage, a programming language, hosting platform, and database engines are chosen to begin the further process of coding.

The backend stage of the app development mostly includes the scalability of your app that makes sure your app works seamlessly in the future.

Frontend development

The front end of a mobile app is where the users will engage with it the most. To develop it, there are three fundamental methods which are –

  • Platform-specific– This means that apps are created for a specific platform either iOS or Android. The code for this kind of app is fully optimized for each platform. It may be more expensive, but the speed and responsiveness such apps provide make it worthy of spending money.

You can hire experts skilled in iOS app development or Android app development to build your apps on the respective platform.

  • Cross-platform app – When a single codebase is used to run apps on a different platform is termed a cross-platform app. They aren’t engaged with any particular operating system and work well with various platforms. Codes are reused in this process and hence it’s cost-effective as well.

You can hire Flutter developers or React Native developers to build your cross-platform app.

  • Hybrid – This kind of app is a blend of components from platform-specific and web applications. It gives programmers the freedom to write application code using terrific web technologies that run inside a native shell. These are the best option to consider if you wish to build an app that works on several platform apps but lacks the time to build a cross-platform application.

You can hire remote developers to build your hybrid app.

Mobile application testing & deployment phase

Once you complete the core app development step, it is crucial to check out that your app is ready to release and free from errors, bugs, etc. The mobile app testing ensures that your app is stable and secure and ready to launch.

Mobile App Testing Stages

The five stages of app testing are –

  • Functionality Testing
  • Performance Testing
  • Security Testing
  • Platform and device-specific testing
  • Extended review-based testing

App Deployment

Depending on the platform you have built your app for, you will have to go through numerous distribution approaches when you eventually going to launch your app.

The deployment process is very straightforward. There are three different ways to submit your mobile application which consist of –

  • Apple App Store
  • Google Play Store
  • Private app distribution channels

To submit your application to the app stores, you need to go through several stages such as form filling. The app stores allow only those apps to its marketplace that meet their highest standards and it’s very stricter.

Even if you are going for private app distribution, you can check out for

  • Apple’s developer enterprise program, and
  • Android’s alternative distribution

This will help you figure out how to best proceed in the distribution process.

App maintenance phase

For most entrepreneurs, once the app is deployed they look to cash-in on success but to make your app success proof it is required to go through app maintenance and support phase as well. Know that maintenance and support cost is one of the factors that most business owners ignore, app maintenance is more of an ongoing process. After you release your app on iOS or android app store, you need to constantly monitor it. Once the user starts downloading and engaging with your app, you need to keep an eye on the app’s performance.

A couple of the most crucial key performance indicators (KPIs) you must look out for –

  • Number of app downloads
  • Active users on the app
  • Ratings & reviews
  • Average watch time
  • Retention
  • Churn
  • Conversions
  • Users’ lifetime value

You always need to keep in mind that your work is not over once you release the app, it just begins. Because to make your app finest and updated with the latest technologies, you need to sort out the bugs, crashes, performance standards, and operating system changes with the help of your app development partner.

Having a word about it right at the time of selecting an app development company ensures that you have a good deal. As an entrepreneur, this is a wise decision and helps you keep a track on the app development budget. At times based on the requirements you might have to look at the needs and benefits of mobile app redesign before it is too late to cater to the changing needs.

Your roadmap to success with Mobile App Development Steps

The App development process is a long and tiring one. Going through the mobile app development steps it may look like it is a difficult job. But all the efforts, research, and precious time applied to this process will surely result in fruitful outcomes. Following these mobile app development process steps and succeeding in creating a useful app will benefit any business.

Having completed lots of app projects across industry verticals, we understand that following all the steps to building an app is critical in delivering a robust product. Hence, to make sure you’re ahead of your competitors and performing better in your industry, contact us now.

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