There can be hardly any doubt about the dominance of mobile apps in our everyday life. Mobile apps play an invincible role in making our lives brighter. A significant number of people spend more time looking at handheld screens than at the television screen now. Mobile apps are very much at the centre of digitizing businesses and people’s interactions with them. More people would likely aspire to develop a unique and successful mobile app in such an era.
Are you lured by the overwhelming success stories the mobile apps present? Do you want to build an innovative mobile app and become one of the success stories you took your inspiration from? Let’s show you a thumbs up and explain a few things that, as a newbie App Ontwikkelaar, you should know.
Table of Contents
Know your value proposition
There are so many apps out there in the market, representing almost every niche and purpose. Why should people prefer using your app? What extra value are you offering to your would-be users? How does your app stand apart from other competitor apps? It would help if you had satisfactory answers to these questions. Knowing the value propositions for your users and how they help your app stand apart from others requires knowing your users and knowing your competition.
Make extensive audience research and know the demographic attributes, preferences, cultural lineage, typical use patterns, related trending aspects, etc. This will give you a better idea about positioning your app in the right way to draw and engage user attention.
Secondly, to know your competition, do extensive research of all the competitor apps in the market and their strengths and shortcomings. Know in which areas you can give your app something better to outwit the competition.
Based on audience and competitor research, you know how to create a unique value proposition that outweighs the competition in respect of being popular among the target audience.
App type, platform, and technology stack
Now you need to decide on the type of app you want to build. Do you want to develop two separate app versions for iOS and Android? This is called the native development approach, which is great if you can afford plenty of budgets. Since you need to build two separate apps, allocate resources for them and maintain them as storefronts, native development is not resource-consuming and challenging.
Hybrid app development may allow you to build a single app that runs on all platforms, but such a “one size fits all” approach lacks performance and a smooth user experience. Lastly, you can choose cross-platform app development that, in spite of sharing maximum code across platforms, ensures a highly custom and platform-specific user experience.
Based on your chosen development approach, you need to select the technology stack. As for native development, your choice is limited to platform-specific technologies such as Java or Kotlin for Android and Swift or Objective C for iOS. For hybrid development, both Ionic and PhoneGap are effective technologies. For cross-platform development, React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin are best.
Choosing between no-code development vs expert development
Another major consideration that newbies in the app world must consider is choosing between no-code development and expert development. You can choose to create a mobile app from scratch or develop an app using DIY development tools involving no code. It entirely depends upon the complexity and size of your app project and budget considerations.
No-code development tools coming with powerful theming engines and drag and drop functionality can quickly help you shape a mobile app to perfection. Such tools are particularly great for simple and straightforward apps with a limited number of features. Hiring expert app developers is always advisable for multilayered, complex, and feature-rich app projects.
These days newbie developers have a wide range of no-code development tools for app projects of all niches. From shaping the look and feel with experimental prototyping to shaping the app functions to perfection, there are many highly efficient no-code development tools to choose from for each and everything.
Some of the no-code development platforms that newbie developers can choose include Appy Pie, Adalo, VoiceFlow, Apian, Bubble, Glide, Thunkable, and many others.
Building a fully-fledged app or MVP app
The final choice that newbie developers need to consider is building a fully-fledged app or an app following the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach. While the first is about building the app loaded with all intended features and UX attributes, the second refers to an incremental and audience-validated development approach.
When you build a fully-fledged app with all the intended features, you take considerable risks of not winning user confidence and satisfaction just because of some shortcomings here and there. Naturally, the required course correction will result in higher development costs and a less optimized user experience.
On the other hand, an MVP app project focuses on releasing a basic app with elementary features and a key value proposition. As user feedback and responses from the market start coming, incremental value additions and required changes can be incorporated through app updates.
For newbies with the least experience with the app market dynamics, it is always advisable to take every forward step cautiously and with due diligence. This is why the MVP approach is more befitting to startups and new app projects. This can also help you keep the initial development cost within control.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the final piece of advice for newbie app developers is to emphasize app testing. Ensure the app goes through stringent testing procedures and clears all major tests ensuring smooth and scalable performance irrespective of the increased stress, load, and network condition.