So, you’ve decided that your business needs a mobile app in order to be successful and, you’re all set to mobilise your development team. Before you go any further, the first question to ask yourself is, why do you need a mobile app? In many cases, the answer is ‘Because everybody else has one’ – which is never a great basis for spending a lot of time and money on a project. Before making a start, you need to thoroughly examine the benefits that your app may offer to the user as well as the benefits to your business in terms of increased revenue and profile. Once you’ve done this – and you’ve decided that a mobile app is right for your business – the following will help you to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in developing your app.
Too many platforms – not enough drivers
One of the most common mistakes made by businesses is to try to do everything at once. Many companies have multiple platforms and, they assume that it will be quicker and more cost-effective to develop their mobile app to cover all of them all at once. Stop right there – in most cases, each platform is very different; with different characteristics, different requirements and different users. This means that each will have different requirements when it comes to developing an app. The trick here is to take it slowly – one platform at a time – that way you can evaluate and tweak before moving onto the next.
Testing, testing
OK, so you’re super-excited about your new app and you just want to get it out there as quickly as possible. Don’t. When it comes to launching your mobile app, it’s impossible to understate the value of testing. This doesn’t mean a few quick trial runs before launch – it means running a series of test stages to ensure that the app works perfectly. These days, users have an incredibly short attention span and, any glitches in your app will see those mobile customers motoring over to the competition.
In a similar vein, once launched, you need to have dedicated employees who will deal with any bugs and issues immediately and efficiently in order to avoid losing custom.
Inferior interfaces
For most businesses, budgets tend to be tight and, there are things that you can scrimp on – and things that you can’t. The design of your app, including features and interfaces is one of the things that you can’t. A badly designed mobile app is worse than no app at all when it comes to retaining your customers and attracting new ones as clumsy features and poor design will come across as unprofessional and, can also be flagged as ‘fake’ or fraudulent.
Online on the go
When developing your mobile app, it’s important to look at how features will be accessed. For mobile users, internet access is not always available – which means that, if your app contains features such as GPS, it may not have optimum functionality in areas of low or no internet signal.
Keeping activity in mind
These days, we use our mobile phones for everything but doing the dishes and feeding the cat. This means that they are constantly in use for phone calls, text messages, photography and internet access. For this reason, it’s vital that you take a long hard look at the activity stack in order to make sure that your app is available when needed – the best way to do this is to create all of the app’s important objects in onCreate for optimum use.
Marketing
Despite the fact that there are hundreds of magazines, websites and forums dedicated to marketing, many businesses underestimate the importance of this when it comes to their shiny new mobile app. Incredibly, some companies will actually leave it until a couple of weeks before launch before starting to publicise their app. In order to make sure your app is successful, you need to make sure everybody knows about it – by shouting it from the rooftops! The moment that your app is in development, it’s time to start creating a buzz on social media, forums and, on your own business website.
A mobile app can be a really valuable asset to a business – particularly at a time when more and more of our daily activity is reliant on our phones. In order to develop a successful app, you need to make sure that:
- It benefits your business (think cost versus benefits)
- It offers real value to your customers
- It’s easy and pleasant to use
- You have personnel in place to keep it running properly
- Your digital transformation strategy is in place
By taking the time to research, design and develop your app, you can save time, money and effort and, remember – don’t ever neglect that all important testing!
Written by Zachary Hadlee