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Checklist of Development Solution Companies for Developing an App

It takes much more than we think when an application needs to be developed. Banking Apps, eCommerce apps, and several other mobile app developments take a lot of time and study when the tech-savvy team sits together to produce the best solution for any specific clientele.

Following Are Some of the Basic Steps Any Developments Company Would Consider

  1. Planning and Analyzing

The planning stage should begin as soon as you have imagined your app idea. The term “planning” does not refer to deciding how your app will look or how it will be programmed; rather, the planning stage should aim to answer several high-level questions about the feasibility of your concept in the current market space.

Typically, planning entails conducting market research and directing a feasibility study. Questions like “Are there other apps that do what mine will do?” “Is there a need for my app?” and “What is the value proposition of my app?” must be addressed. Before you invest significant resources in developing and marketing your mobile application.

You should also consider which platforms your app will be available on (iOS, Android, Web, etc.). Assume you’re working on multiple platforms. In that case, you must decide whether to use a hybrid approach or develop natively for each platform. Consider the competition and where most of your audience is when deciding which platform(s) to use for your app. These last two questions will help you determine the app’s feasibility and where to focus initial development efforts to create a proof-of-concept.

In planning, investing a lot of time upfront is necessary to ensure that your app has a chance at success. Ask the questions 1) Will your app be useful, and 2) are there people ready to get charged for your app? Before heading forward to the design phase, you should be able to answer “yes” to these questions confidently.

Don’t worry about investing some time, As you might have yet to invest many resources. Be confident in the marketability of your app, than to publish it and acknowledge you should’ve geared your app toward a different target or not wasted your time on developing it at all.

  1. Prototyping

Prototyping is the stage where you rapidly produce wireframes and iterate on user feedback. A wireframe is a low-fidelity guide to the UI and UX of your app. It gives a generic sense of the app’s functionality and flows without digging into the minor details of color or style. Your wireframes do not need to be completely featured. Focus on representing your app’s crux functionalities (essentially, the minimal viable product or MVP) and getting feedback on that.

Some tools can help you collect feedback on your app wireframes, like InVision. Obtaining feedback from many people in your target audience is critical. Without it, you might design an app that doesn’t quite hit the mark for usability for your audience. 

At this stage, it is critical to use an iterative approach to present as many mockups to your users as possible, allowing your plan for the app’s functionality to adapt and evolve. Don’t be afraid to spend time here because you want to ensure that your app will meet the needs of your target audience! It is preferable to begin in the right direction rather than return to this stage halfway through development.

It is time to move towards the design phase after iterating over the critiques you’ve got from your audience and confirming that your users are positively receiving your prototype.

  1. Designing UI/UX

The setup phase of app development has many components, so we will briefly cover the most important ones. To begin, it is up to your UX/UI designers to refine the approved wireframes further. This includes placing and crafting UI elements, defining user flow, comprehending the significance of the element hierarchy, and so on. You should now create high-fidelity mockups that your developers can use to create a working app, as well as details on what happens when elements are tapped, swiped, dragged, and so on.

Establish a brand guideline so your app’s branding is consistent and well-understood by your designers and developers. To design a cohesive app, each screen must respect your guidelines.

Designing a marketing strategy should be done at this stage. This means figuring out how you will introduce your app to the audience (social media, creating a blog, etc). It may also include making a website to collect emails from users interested in your product, a newsletter, or a social media following.

  1. Developing An App

You write the code for the “final” app version during the development stage. This is where you take the feedback from the wireframes and make some final, potentially significant decisions.

Methodologies can be implemented at this point. In general, an agile approach is preferable when creating a mobile application.

Integrating an analytics engine into your app during this phase is also critical. Create events for all possible user interactions to see how your app is being used and the general flow of the users. Once your app is released to the public, you can use this data to learn more about your users and improve the design of your app. As a result, you end up with the best product possible.

  1. Testing Before Launch

Ideally, testing occurs in parallel to the development stage. It is important to test to keep post-release costs low continually. Unit tests, UI tests, and integration testing are necessary to ensure that you work out any major bugs or oversights as early as possible. Test cases can increase the time spent in the development stage. Still, they can dramatically reduce time, monetary maintenance, and support costs in the long run.

Testing will also pay off later in the maintenance stage of your app. You can run all your test cases when a minor change occurs and identify where your changes may affect other app segments.

  1. Introduce Your App to the Audience

This is where you submit your app to the Play Store for approval. Learning this process is important since it is required every time you are about to release an app’s latest version. At this point in the development process, you should have worked out most of the major bugs your testers found. You should have a quality app that will pass the guidelines for the store to where you will be uploading it to.

Congratulations! Your app is available to the public. But your work is still ongoing. After releasing your app, you return to the prototyping stage. You will review feedback from your users, potentially adding new features and then re-releasing. These 5 steps will be looped, further refining your product to your audience over time.

This is also the stage where you begin marketing your product. The marketing strategies and social media efforts planned and developed before this stage should give your app a chance of being seen out there in the wild.

  1. Maintenance of an Application

This stage begins simultaneously as a release and should progress in parallel. Maintenance is where you monitor the status of your app, fix any bugs that may be present, and ensure the app continues to work as expected. Updating your app for iOS’s new versions to support new devices is also a part of maintenance.

Ongoing maintenance of your app never ends. Until you discontinue support for your app (potentially abandoning your users), you will be maintaining your app indefinitely.

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