The mobile application industry is vast, so it is no surprise that so many talented young developers want to create an app with the hopes of making it big. Developing an app is a complex process. Here are seven things you are going to need to keep in mind if you want to develop a successful app.
Search Engine Optimization
Most developers will be at least partially familiar with Search Engine Optimization. SEO marketing is an extremely important part of all online promotional and brand marketing campaigns. For the uninitiated, Search Engine Optimization is the process of making content (like websites, applications, and videos) rank highly when consumers use search engines to make inquiries. Good Search Engine Optimization involves the incorporation of keywords, market research, the insertion of metadata, and the building of links that flow towards the desired website.
SEO best practices for the promotion of applications are always changing alongside the changing algorithms used by search engines like Google for ranking inquiry results. Google tends to rank sites and applications with demonstrably good User Experience quality above complex or clunky designs. An entire branch of SEO known as App Store Optimization has formed, focusing on methods that can make apps more visible within app stores.
If you want your application to find success in an incredibly crowded marketplace, taking SEO and ASO into account in the development process is immensely important.
Ease Of Use
If your app is not intuitive and easy to use, it won’t be very successful. User Experience – or UX for short – is often heavily reliant on ease of use. Reducing needless user input and simplifying control processes can make the use of an app far easier. Likewise, consistent use of colors and fonts can cut down on the complication. Sensible, indicative design can make control inputs obvious, improving the comprehensibility of your app. Ease of use and simplicity are considered to be inevitably connected for a reason – complication breeds abandonment. People won’t keep using applications that are complex or nonsensical.
Your Audience
Just like any other product, an application needs to be developed with a target audience in mind. To find your target audience, you are going to have to use market research methods. Data analysis can be conducted to see what kinds of people are downloading similar applications to yours. Surveys can be distributed online to ascertain audience preferences. Qualitative evidence of your likely target audience can be found by looking at reviews for similar apps from consumers.
Good knowledge of your target audience should influence your every developmental move. The age of your target audience is especially significant in the design of your app’s User Experience. TikTok, for instance, has clearly been developed with young, technologically literate people in mind. It has an intuitive interface, but only for people who grew up using Instagram and Snapchat. Over 60 percent of teenagers in the United States use the app.
However, designing apps for older people involves a completely different set of considerations to those so successfully kept in mind by the developers of TikTok when producing an app for teens. Older users typically have different usage patterns and desires. If you don’t know the age of your target audience, you could make a costly step in the wrong direction.
Accessibility
If you want your app to reach a wide audience, you will have to ensure that it is broadly accessible. A great deal of app accessibility goals can be met by creating a clear and simple User Interface. As a rule of thumb, it is always worth treating User Interface requirements, such as these ones released by Apple, as the bare minimum.
Adding closed captions and transcripts to any video content contained in your app is key to making it accessible to people who are partially or entirely blind. Likewise, making all of the text that is displayed as part of your app compatible with screen reading software is good practice. Ensuring that colors contrast well and that user input options are clear will help your app be more accessible to people with neurological conditions.
Cash Flow And Monetization
According to figures collated by Statista, 96.9 percent of the applications on the Google Play store are free to download. 93.4 Percent of the apps offered on the Apple IOS store were also free. This does not mean that these applications are doomed to earn nothing for their creators. Instead, alternative monetization paths are often sought by developers. Unless your application is extremely specialist, it will need to be free in order to be competitive. Advertising is one of the most common ways that a developer can ensure income from an application. Monetized premium features are also common.
How you choose to monetize your app really depends on how you want it to be used. Withholding features unless consumers pay might not be an especially well-received idea if the features that are withheld are essential to the successful use of the app. Likewise, advertising might not be appropriate for healthcare, workplace safety, or scientific instrumentation apps. Incorporating donation links into your app is another way of monetizing it. This technique allows you to offer full functionality and ad-free usage without haemorrhaging cash.
Your Competition
The chances are that you are not developing an app that does something entirely novel. Getting to know the limitations and strengths of similar applications will help you build a set of development requirements that can guide you towards making an app that people actually want to download! As well as knowing your audience, you will have to get to know your competition so that you can develop an app that stands out to consumers in an immensely crowded marketplace.
Security
Digital security is a pressing issue. The near-ubiquity of mobile technology and internet connectivity means that hackers have more potential than ever before to seriously compromise, weaken or steal from systems. Applications need to be secure in order to prevent them from being the way in for hackers and other malicious actors. Plenty of apps are vulnerable to compromise.
In 2020, a software library common to many different Android apps that allowed them to communicate with the Google Play store was found to have a vulnerability that allowed malware to ‘piggyback’ on those apps’ permissions. This allowed hackers to steal login credentials, identities, and banking details extremely easily – all thanks to an oversight on the part of app developers. When developing an application, care needs to be taken to avoid mishaps like this. It is a wise idea to conduct a security audit. If you are unsure of how to conduct a full security audit of all your code, hiring in a 3rd party security firm is always a wise idea. They will also be able to aggressively try and find vulnerabilities in your app by hacking into it themselves. If you need some pointers, head over to the Android development site. The company has put out some great tips for keeping your app secure that can protect your data and the data of your users. Top security can boost confidence in your app, and this reliability can lead to more downloads.
