It is a well-known fact that the future of web undoubtedly belongs to mobile. A large number of people are accessing data and information via smartphones, tablets and other digital devices. Mobile apps are extensively used for managing data, shopping, navigation and for connecting with others. The way people communicate with smart phones has been revolutionized by mobile apps as these apps are fast, more interactive, visually pleasing and easily integrates with other features of the phone. The current apps which are designed have seen a trend of having simple, flat and typographical designs. Business enterprises are going all out to increase their market presence in the area of mobile application development.
The biggest mistake that mobile app developers make is allocating an inflexible budget for building apps to make them stand out from the competition. There are other methods of achieving this such as word of mouth marketing and SEO strategies but without having a successful mobile app development strategy there will be a huge impact on the app’s life in the long run. In this digital age, the mobile app development strategy must be designed in such a way that the application must be convenient, flexible and relevant to the user’s need.
Here are the strategies for mobile app development success:
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Focus on The User Experience:
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When it comes to mobile app development, user experience is everything. The value of an app does not depend on the number of features it has but on how good the user experience is. With mobiles having extremely less screen real estate which, coupled with slow connectivity, can drastically affect the design and execution of an app having a brilliant user experience. One of the critical elements in crafting a compelling user experience and consequently a successful app is close collaboration between the developers, designers and the quality analysis team. Having a great analytics team is quite advantageous in helping the developers in having a better understanding of the usage of the app and brings about improvements in the user experience.
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Keep Your Mobile App Simple:
An app must be designed by having a clear understanding of its functionality in the real world. Since apps are not websites, creating a successful app will require sharp focus. The design and development teams of the business enterprise must focus on core use cases when approaching a new mobile app development project. The complexity of mobile applications can be quite high at its core as they process huge amounts of data, possess incredible power, display engaging and elaborate three dimensional worlds, pin point the user’s exact location and many more. But the real achievement lies in the simplicity of using the app.
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Prioritize Your Platform Development:
Unlike websites, mobile applications have an associated complexity to them-developing for multiple platforms. Gone are those days when Microsoft ruled the web world. Today there are many operating systems, multiple device types and different vendors who have their own native capabilities. The benchmark entry point for mobile applications has been set as the app for iPhones. In the US, close to 52% of smartphone users use iOS devices. Depending on how customer engagement has to be carried out next, the app development can be taken forward accordingly. For example, business enterprises which deal with publishing or broadcasting can opt for android tablet or iPad implementation next as bigger screens will provide a better user experience. Retailers on the other hand can expand to android phones to leverage the huge number of users to generate maximum income. Enterprise apps can look into business users and consider expanding into Blackberry. And finally large corporations or even ambitious business enterprises can consider the possibility of expanding across all major devices and platforms.
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Agile Methodologies for Frequent Releases:
Agile methodologies of software development can be used while developing mobile apps as it specifically focuses on customer involvement, constant evaluation, flexible planning and risk management. This results in the mobile app development project being completed in an efficient and effective manner. The practices that are involved in agile development play an important role in simplifying the mobile app development process which helps the resulting apps to be adaptable after release. Compared to software development for desktop applications, mobile app development differs in the need for constant change and updates. The foundation of the app development schedule is achieved by breaking down the functional requirements into user stories. The mobile development work must be carried out in phases with continuous iterations made until substantial milestones are met. A large number of business requirements are involved and agile development methodology is crucial in breaking down these requirements into manageable chunks.
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Choose a Scalable Development Technology:
HTML web servers were present in the web world right from the exploration phase. As business enterprises worked hard towards building more engaging web apps, application servers and JavaScript were extensively used to support full featured and complex server runtime environments to meet the scaling requirements. In the innovation phase, enterprises saw the potential of the web in transforming relationships with the customers. Full-fledged applications were the offerings in this phase. Business enterprises now started to use enterprise application integration (EAI) products where all integrated systems are integrated with the web which was critical in improving the enterprise’s ability to innovate and reduce time-to-market. Development of mobile apps has taken the same path with developers first using Objective-C to build apps for iPhones only to realize that native SDKs restrict the development of apps to individual devices and not for each OS (iOS and Android). And it is impossible to scale each device as Android tablets alone number more than sixty in the market. Just like Ajax and EAI products used by web developers, Innovative business enterprises can make use of fully-integrated mobile architecture and reusable modules to scale easily and quickly. This kind of architecture can also easily integrate with private and public cloud services thereby creating optimal user experience.
Business enterprise must abstain from hurrying to launch a mobile app without a calculated, thoughtful and patient strategy to achieve the best results. Relentless emphasis must be put on innovation which can open up various possibilities of mobile technology focused mainly on providing the best possible user experience and fulfills all the needs of the customer. Business enterprises can outsource to an expert mobile app development service provider to build apps that meets the specific needs of the user.
