An Ultimate Guide to Develop an Application

The world seems to be craving for more and more apps and much like everybody else, I guess even you have an incredible app idea in mind but don’t know how to make things work or how to turn the idea into a million-dollar venture just like WhatsApp or Facebook or Instagram. 2022 is the time when you find technology still making some relevant advances towards the website and app development realm. Over the years, the concept of app development has taken off in a big way! The following post focuses on how to develop an application that could be your next winning move.

The digital landscape is transforming to a great extent. Did you know there are more than 4 billion global smartphone users? Today, everyday smartphone apps are developed more than babies are being born. More and more users are becoming tech-savvy and are finding applications and softwares that can ease or smoothen their day-to-day lives such as ordering food online, buying apparel and accessories, banking, travel bookings, buying groceries and whatnot!

How is App Development Beneficial?

The demand for exceptional mobile app development has never been so high and businesses irrespective of their size and industry vertical are struggling hard to keep up with the market needs and competitors. In addition to all this, a mobile app certainly assists well in enhancing client relationships and developing brand loyalty for the long haul.

Further below I would like to mention a few benefits of considering mobile app development for your next project.

• Enhanced Efficiency – One of the obvious benefits offered by mobile app development projects is the overall efficiency of your business increases significantly. The app has the potential to perform a variety of functions, especially monotonous or tiresome ones. As a result, businesses can definitely focus on their core competencies. Overall, this surely enhances productivity and increases return on investment. 
• Strengthens Customer’s bond with the business – One of the most precise benefits of developing these mobile applications is that this softwares surely assists well in strengthening the bond between customers and the business. You see with the help of such mobile applications, there is a huge possibility for direct and precise communication. As from the business perspective, they can send push and in-app notifications to be directly in touch with their relevant customers.
• 24/7 access – Another crucial advantage of conducting a mobile app development project is here you get 24/7 easy access. Your end users can get in touch with your business whenever and wherever they want. In fact, you can even think of developing an application that can work without the need for the internet as well.

On and all, in today’s times developing an ideal mobile application has become a sure-shot norm to succeed and maintain the topmost position in the long haul. Further, I would like to shed some light on how to develop such an ideal application that can take you places.

How to develop an Application?

Well, developing a mobile application is not child’s play. One has to put ample time, energy, effort and money into developing one. However, you can think of hiring a team of the best mobile application developers or mobile app development company which has skills, tech stack and experience in delivering nothing less than the best possible solutions from their doorsteps. Apart from that, you need to consider these below-mentioned steps just to have a basic gist of developing a secure mobile application.

●       Decoding the Idea

One of the basic yet crucial elements or should I say the foundational stone of any application development project is the idea. After all, what makes you think of such a product? Why are you even trying to develop such an app? Is there any issue or problem among your target audiences that you want to resolve? Now even while you are ideating or conducting brainstorming sessions, there are certain things that must be taken into consideration right away.

• Is your Idea Unique?
• Do you think your developed mobile application will stand out?
• Are there any similar apps in the market? If yes, what is their success rate?
• What exactly is your competitor doing?
• How can you not remain unnoticed in the market?

An app idea could be anything right from a social media marketing app to a content app, a POS application for a restaurant, a fitness application, a UPI payment application, an augmented reality app, a health-check app, language learning, eCommerce app,  criminal alert apps, gaming apps, karaoke app, and whatnot!

●       Conducting research, and more research

Another step is to conduct relevant research prior. Here is the time to put your Sherlock’s cap on and get to work. First of all, you need to know that the market is becoming very tough especially when you are planning to compete with 142.9 billion apps. By conducting appropriate research, you can take care of certain aspects such as:

• Audience pain points
  • Following industry trends
  • Understanding the psychology of potential users
  • Strengths and weaknesses not just from within but as well as competitors

Which are the top market research methods? Well, you can begin by conducting a detailed survey just to probe into the minds of your potential users. Fortunately, there are a plethora of tools and technologies available that can assist in automating even the most boring or tiresome parts. Apart from regular surveys, you can think of conducting competitor analysis. After surveys, you need to do competitor analysis, check what exactly they are up to and then decide for yourself.    

●       Seeing around for different approaches of developing a mobile app

Any software development or mobile application development lifecycle comprises these stages – planning, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment and high-end support. Apart from these basics, another aspect of any app development project includes which methodologies or development approach will you pursue.

• Waterfall – One of the best yet crucial methodologies is the waterfall model. After the entire project is outlined and mapped out, you need to move further. Here is the time when you must consider exactly what type of features and functionalities must be there in your application. This is when a waterfall model or methodology is considered. As the name implies, much like a waterfall when you go down, there is no scope for going back up, you just keep going downward. Slowly, the app is built and then tested just to ensure that everything falls in its place precisely. One of the best advantages of the waterfall method is that it is pretty meticulous and is a pretty amazing way to train budding or newbies in the development world. 

The only disadvantage here is that whether you are developing an app or any other software, changes keep on happening all the time. When does the waterfall work at its best? Well, when there is no scope for any changes, you have a fixed budget, done the same project before.   

• RAD – The next methodology is RAD. Of course, much like a waterfall, this one also has certain big problems. However, for such a development process, teams need to be pretty large and everything needs to be started right from the beginning. RAD is one such methodology that seems to be highly based on prototypes. In simple words, it’s all about producing a working version of the same application. Both the teams, development team and customer tend to work pretty closely with each other and this happens throughout. One of the biggest advantages of using the RAD methodology is the quick and highly flexible teams. Though RAD isn’t an appropriate development method. It requires highly skilled programmers to work on a project that might be as complex and as complicated you could never think of. In fact, it may quite interest you to know that RAD requires lots and lots of input from end customers who might be as available and as not. 
  • You need an experienced team of developers
  • Highly engaged customer
  • A flexible budget and dates

●       Designing and Development

The next step is designing and development. Now this is the core aspect of any and every application development project. App design is pretty kind of an ongoing process that comprises a wide range of user experience and user interface elements. Now what types of tools and technologies can be used while designing an app, Adobe photoshop, Axure, Miro, Zeplin, Invision and whatnot! Of course, you must consider hiring a reliable team of designers and developers who understand your requirements well and tend to offer the best possible solutions from their doorstep. Try choosing an app development company that can offer services in regards to product development, technical consulting, custom web development, mobile apps, user experience, eCommerce, support and maintenance.

Now here is the time where you need to decide whether you want to choose Native app development or cross-platform app development or hybrid app development. So how are these three different? Well, Native ones are created using Objective-C or Swift and enables developers to use a set of advanced features such as complex networking and USB input access. Not to mention, it supports amazing UI customization. Whereas cross-platform mobile apps are definitely not Native and can be shared across a wide range of platforms such as iOS and Android. And of course, the hybrid apps are cross-platform compatible and mainly developed using Cordova, Ionic, Telerik platforms. This one highly supports Ember, AngularJS, React, PaperJS. In addition, when you are conducting a mobile app development project, just make sure that Java is the best and most popular programming language to take into account. Apart from that, you can consider JavaScript, C#, C++, Ruby, and Kotlin.

●       Testing

After design and development comes the testing part. Of course, software testing should no longer be considered as an afterthought. It is something that must be done with the design and development phase simultaneously so that there are least possible chances of errors. Now what exactly is software testing? Well, it is a basic process of evaluating and verifying in different ways how the software product or app is working. Of course, this also includes erasing errors and bugs, reducing the overall development costs and whatnot! Some of the common yet crucial types of software testing include:

• Acceptance Testing
  • Integration Testing
  • Unit Testing
  • Functional Testing
  • Performance Testing
  • Regression Testing
  • Stress Testing
  • Usability Testing

Now there are many of you who haven’t understood the overall significance of software testing till date. Well, let me go through the basics first.

• No matter how complex or easy an app you try to develop, errors are inevitable. By conducting regular software tests, it is possible to identify such issues and defects and deal with it seamlessly.
  • Next reason to consider software testing is to improvise high-end products, especially in regards to its quality. This is a pretty important metric that must be taken into consideration.
  • No matter how amazing the development phase is, software testing can definitely assist you in gaining customer trust. People will always choose a product which has been tried and tested multiple times instead of one which is not tested even once.
  • All the security vulnerabilities can be detected seamlessly. Today, apps have become victims of cross-site scripting attacks. The bad guys tend to inject malicious code and steal all the necessary and confidential information in a single go. To avoid such situations, software testing must be conducted again and again. 

●       Easy Deployment

As soon as all these stages are accomplished, it’s time for conducting deployment. App deployment is the process of installing, configuring and enabling the app to be released among a specific bunch of people or enterprise app stores. Right from installation to release, performance monitoring, all these steps are included in easy deployment.

Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are some of the most significant names that assist in deployment of your developed apps seamlessly. You must remember that app deployment is something that never be taken for granted as it is a pretty important step to consider and enables you to focus on release strategy and meet legal and technical requirements in the nick of time.

●       Support and Maintenance

Now did you know that even there are different types of support and maintenance available.

• Emergency Maintenance – This type of maintenance is mainly used to address several unwanted and unexpected application errors. Here all the emergency issues are dealt with and all the bug fixes are prioritised well just for the sake of delivering seamless user experience.  
• Perfective Maintenance – Here perfective maintenance includes tracking user preferences, for example, which feature is loved by them and end up offering nothing but the best.
• Adaptive Maintenance – This type of maintenance is all about keeping up and running well with different times and technology trends. This is done right in accordance with your hardware and software needs and requirements. 
• Corrective Maintenance -Here the team is asked to keep regular tabs on bugs and recurring ones in regards to design, coding and app logic.

Final Thoughts

And we are done for now! Hope you did find the following post helpful. If so, feel free to share among your peers and help us in spreading the word quickly. In case, if there are still any doubts or queries, feel free to reach us out by mentioning in the comment section below.