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The rising fever of making a mobile app for any small or large business is compelling every industry sector to seek out professionals who can create apps that catches the essence of the respective business and projects the style and message to its targeted audience.
The market today is divided in two types of businesses. One who already have an app but are constantly trying to innovate, update or recreate the designs and the user experience to sustain the acquired consumers or to attract new consumers. Whereas on the other hand, the second type of businesses are the ones who may or may not be a startup but are newly entering the world of modern digitisation and bringing their business to the targeted audience through mobile apps.
You need to answer a few questions to realize the key features of your app project. Why does anyone need this app? What does this app do? Who are your target users and why should they use your app? What are the features that your app offers that are better than the others? What is unique about your app? What will be the payment structure be like? (If Any) How can you make this app user friendly? How can you increase the user experience? How can you retain customer loyalty through your app?
So whether you are a newbie in the world of mobile apps or an already established one, here are a few things to consider while you are on your way to getting an app developed or recreate.
1. Discovery
The first phase of building any app is to brainstorm and lay out a bunch of ideas for the app. You need to research about your subject and build a list of references that goes well with your image of an ideal app as per your requirements. At this stage defining the app idea that portrays its key features is the most important base camp, which makes moving forward easier. This phase can be a challenging one, as you will be encountering numerous ideas, some might be useful some might not be, but it’s important to do an intensive research so as to build a successful app.
2. Demographic
In the second phase of your app project you need to find out your target audience. Knowing your audience is most fundamental thing in any business especially if you are getting into creating a mobile app for your business. Through mobile apps business loses out on the opportunity of giving a face to face sales pitch. This makes it extremely difficult to understand what the customers are looking for. By targeting your audience you will stream line as to who requires your app and these are the people who will actually download and use it.
By identifying and researching your target audience you will be able to realise what your customer is looking for, which in turn will help you design your app in a better way. Features that are not or won’t be used by the consumers are just a waste of time and money.
Research of your target audience needs to start before building the app, during the development phase and even after the app is built. This will also help you in strategizing marketing activities for the app.
3. Market Research
What is the first step that you take when you are starting your Market Research? To search and find out if there is any app that is even remotely similar to your app. The creation of mobile app for your business is taking over the world by a storm. There are millions of businesses out there which already have an app or are on the stage of developing one. Chances of your app being similar to another are high. But that’s not the point of your market research. The point is to figure out what is that they are offering and most importantly where are they lacking behind. This gives you the competitive edge that you require.
By doing so you will be able to customize your app with the most important and fundamental features that are required by the customers and even better you could offer them something that your competitors fail to give. In some cases innovation is not the only important, knowing the minute details of the market is all what you need.
4. Define USP
After identifying your target audience and researching about the market the next step is to define the USP of your app. Understanding your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you do exactly that. For defining the USP, identifying one’s own strengths and weaknesses is equally important. Once you figure out these things you will know exactly how to be ahead of your competitors and offer the end user set of possibilities that they haven’t experienced anywhere else.
This not only helps a business is attracting the targeted audience but to retain them as well.
5. Clear expectations
Building a mobile project is a team effort, hence it becomes extremely important to set out realistic goals and lay out clear expectations that needs to be fulfilled by each and every team member. This results in team members setting out individual goals so as to attain one collective goal of bringing out the best results. This allows the individual to get to the task given without any confusion, which in turn helps in saving time, energy and money. These expectations need to be clearly laid out in terms of an official statement and not just a random conversation.
Reviewing the progress on a daily and holding team members accountable for their goals is a good way of setting quality standards and delivering the project on time. A small tip: while reviewing make sure to correct the things that are going wrong along with praising for the things done perfectly. This helps in building team confidence.
6. Business Objectives
There are three main business objectives that any project manager needs to keep in mind before heading out to start the development process. They are as follows.
Performance and Quality: Quality is what flows from top management downwards. Thus maintaining the quality of the project throughout is not only a team members work it’s a collective purpose required to be achieved by all and that is to be made sure by the project manager and you. He is one who has to see to it that everyone understands the objectives and derive results that were intended and expected thus your communication with him matters the most.
Budget: This is one of the most crucial and difficult objectives that are to be achieved, getting the work done in less or at the exact given budget. Maintaining the cost of the project is a big responsibility. Finances are a tricky business and they need to be controlled from the start, failing to do so can result in either extended budget which is always a difficult task or in a complete abandonment of the project which just puts all the previous efforts into a waste.
Timely Completion and Delivery: You need to lay out a plan as to which phase of the project needs to be completed in how much time. This helps the development process go swiftly and completion can be done in the planned time. If any process gets delayed then it might result in late completion and given the tough competitive market where you never know who pops up with the same idea or even better idea than yours it is an advisable thing to make sure the project runs on time.
Find a Developer
Now this is what either makes your dreams come true or just completely fail them. Hiring a developer/team of developers/Mobile app development company is the last step from where you actually start building your dream project. Now there are many options available out there you can set up an in house team but that is an expensive and time consuming task or you can hire a local company. There is also an option of outsourcing which can prove the cheapest yet the best result driven option. But all you have to keep in mind is whether this company knows and understands your idea completely and who is willing to walk with you till the end to make your dreams come true.
Conclusion
These few things will help you lay out a basic frame of your app and from there you can start filling out the other details. Having a clear idea about these fields will help your team of developers to have a better understanding of your idea and together you can make sure that things go as planned.
