4 Things To Know Before Building A Mobile Application
If you’re in any sort of digital design or development, there will be multiple occasions where you’d think to yourself “we need a mobile app”. Most of the time this idea might crop up from a team meeting, morning jog, or some ongoing joke on the internet. No matter how hard you try, the idea won’t leave your head until you get it on paper or talk logistics with your team.
While it might be a great idea to bring your mobile app idea to life, there are some things that you should know before diving in headfirst in Mobile app development. The mobile application market already has 1.96 Million iOS and 2.87 Million Android apps.
Now, these are just objective numbers, let’s talk about some challenges that you might face during mobile app development:
1. Cheap can turn out to be expensive
A badly made mobile application not only draws away from the users, but it also has larger and long-lasting repercussions like damaging your reputation for good. While we recommend going for cost-effective development practices, do not cut corners on user experience and usability.
However, it is not always about the budget. There are numerous instances where frustrating and clunky apps were released by enterprises and market giants. It is important to research the end-users and business needs for which the application is being built.
2. What problem does your application solve?
We’re living in one of the most technologically advanced decades. We buy/sell anything and everything online. Nevertheless, there should be a potential market for your mobile application.
Let’s take an example of a company that makes gargantuan industrial machinery that costs millions. Even if they do come up with a well-built mobile application, will their buyers make the purchase online? Probable not. Because their buyers will feel safer to meet a real person as the company’s representative while making a purchase. It’s just the way the heavy industrial machinery market works. But that doesn’t mean you can’t touch highly specific and untapped markets.
A lot of companies were successful with their apps simply because they addressed a highly-specific market pain that no one else was addressing. Speaking to your users can help surface such issues.
You can also find market pain points via social media by filtering the unhappy customers. Pay attention to what people are complaining about and upsetting things about products. Writing these problems and it’s potential solution down could help you carve your niche.
3. Mind the competition
The very first logical question you’d ask yourself before even deciding to build a mobile application is ‘Who are my competitors?’. You’d think that it’s only the companies within your market domain, in reality, you’re competing against every other mobile app in the market. If another app has your potential user’s attention, then you’re competing against that app, domain doesn’t matter. Think Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
4. Few seconds decide your app’s fate
People might take hours to decide what they’re going to eat for dinner but to keep or to trash an app is an instant decision. The user’s reason to drop your app might be vague but the only thing that matters is now you don’t have them just because they didn’t like the onboarding. That’s why they say ‘First impressions matter’; once the user decides to jump ship, no amount of feature announcements or better onboarding visuals are bringing them back.
Should I build an app? Yes, you definitely should
- Great apps cost more than what you might expect. Do not let the budget constraints compromise the user experience.
- It must solve a problem that your target user has. Validate your ideas before you start.
- Ask your users what they want. What are the things that will make them open your app over others? Feedback is the backbone of your app. Listen and act upon it.
We hope this article helped you understand the challenges, question your assumptions, and validate your ideas before you take your whole team on a full-fledged mobile app development ride.
And if you’re not sure all these things can be taken care of in-house then you can count on Galaxy Weblinks for full-cycle development of an app, right from the research and validation to deployment and testing. Get in touch with us here.
