The app development market is growing exponentially at a tremendous rate in this evolving digital landscape. Opting for mobile application development opens new horizons for businesses and entrepreneurs in this new digital era. In this write-up, we’ll highlight each and every aspect of the mobile app development process, the advantages it offers to SMBs and entrepreneurs alike, and the different strategies they can implement.
So without further ado, let’s dive into the details!
Statista reports
- There were 260 billion mobile app downloads worldwide in 2021
- As per the second quarter of 2022, the total combined Apple App Store and Google Play app downloads were estimated at 35 billion.
- In the third quarter of 2022, users downloaded approximately 27 billion apps from Google Play. In contrast, the mobile app only generated roughly 8.2 billion downloads in the Apple App Store.
- The Google Play platform has always made up the bulk of app downloads, but the Apple App Store is stronger in terms of revenue generation.
What Does Mobile App Development Mean?
Have you ever wondered how the apps you use on your mobile phones are built? The process of developing a mobile application for smartphones is known as mobile app development. These applications can be installed on your devices through the play store or app store. There are some applications that are preinstalled on your smartphone. The app development process includes the following:
- Building installable software bundles.
- Implementing backend services such as data access with an API.
- Testing the app on target devices
You must also consider screen sizes, hardware requirements, and other factors that affect the app development process.
Why Should You Build an App For Your Business?
In today’s world, a mobile app is not an option but a necessity for every business, be it a startup or an established enterprise. As a business, it’s essential for you to avail the benefits of an app for your business. Ways mobile app development benefits businesses are mentioned below –
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Provide Greater Value to Customers
In the last years, customers’ shopping habits and interactions with businesses have transformed, leading businesses to rely heavily upon technology for purposes like initiating transactions with customers. Mobile apps have now become an integral part of advanced technology, constantly evolving and transforming how customers shop, experience, and fulfill their requirements. With these advancements, customer expectations are also increasing, and thus mobile apps play an important role in accomplishing those expectations.
For example, retail shopping is one such business category that offers benefits from mobile apps. Shifting retail shops to mobile applications assures you to make your goods and services easy to use and accessible to all. Hence, at 9Yards Technology, we craft applications for brands that offer customers real-time information and help use that information as marketing assets that also helps in boosting business ROI.
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Establish a Stronger Brand Image
Establishing an impeccable brand image is a crucial factor for a Business. Higher the value you offer to your customers, the higher the probability of their interest in your brand.
Moreover, it is impossible to attain a higher brand experience without deliberate efforts in branding. This is where a brand image comes into play. Apps offer higher branding elements that you get within your apps which results in bearing a better impact on your brand’s image and marketing.
It can also help you to collect data from the audience that will aid in comprehending your customers better and implementing a specific marketing strategy.
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Enhanced Customer Engagement Level
One of the finest ways to boost your brand awareness and revenue is to put more emphasis on increasing customer engagement. If you elevate customers’ attention with your brand, your business will experience an increase in ROI, customer loyalty, and other aspects. To increase app engagement, the developer must add a few features and elements to the app.
Perhaps the most important aspect for them is segmented targeting. This involves creating multiple user categories and controlling the type of content delivered to each segment of users. User segmentation enables you to make more accurate recommendations, send personalized messages, and better understand your customers’ journey. Loyalty programmes, continuous feature updates, and discounts are some other in-app elements that can help boost customer engagement. Aside from features, it is critical to focus on UI/UX design. A bad user interface may compel users to uninstall your app and switch to a similar and better one.
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Have a competitive advantage in your industry
It isn’t easy to keep up with your competitors in the ever-changing digital landscape. A mobile app gives you a significant advantage over your competitors. When it comes to providing efficient communication and an improved customer experience thus, mobile apps far outperform traditional websites and digital platforms. Given the numerous ways a mobile app strategy can enhance your business processes, the overall impact on revenue generation will eventually become apparent.
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Create a Customized Marketing Channel
The marketing department is another business area that greatly benefits from business mobile app development. The first and most important benefit that digital marketers enjoy when or choose mobile apps is direct access to user information. Data collected from app user sessions can be very useful in improving your marketing efforts and campaigns. When your marketers have access to all the data they require, an app enables them to provide more effective and personalized content to users than traditional marketing channels.
Read More: App Development Cost – How To Organize Your Budget?
How to Develop a Mobile App?
An app gives you an edge over your competitors; below mentioned are some steps you must consider before developing a mobile app. The steps are. Don’t skip any step, as the steps that are discussed below are crucial for the success of your mobile app.
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Make Your Goals Clear
Before stepping into the app development process, the foremost thing you need to do is make your goals clear.
Be clear about what you want to achieve. What are the problems you are trying to sort through with your application? Your objectives will determine the entire application-building process.
Don’t set unrealistic goals – The goals you set for your website should be measurable and related to end users, as well as your business goals related to users. Each plan must have a KPI to measure and track progress.
For instance, let’s say you want to develop an eCommerce app. Your goal might be to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates on mobile devices. To achieve this goal, you must know your current abandonment rates to measure them against the numbers when you eventually launch your own app.
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Analyze The Target Market
You need to conduct thorough market research to find out more about your target market while developing a mobile application for your business. The groundwork will help you to comprehend your competitors, leading market players, market dynamics, how customers interact with brands, and more.
You must also glance at the reviews of the top apps in the market. This will help you find the best features and loopholes and help you come up with a better product in the market. Understanding your targeted audience is crucial for this purpose; you must do deep research about your user’s location, devices, and age.
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Decide Your App Features
It’s critical to have the right features incorporated into your app. While adding popular and numerous features to your app might sound attractive, adding unnecessary features may leave your users frustrated. Therefore you have to identify the features that are necessary to serve your users in the best possible way. Furthermore, the more features you add, the more it will add to the cost and lengthen the app development process time. So, focusing on simplicity in the early development stages is advisable.
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Opt for Instinctive UI/UX Design
What makes your app appealing to the customers when they open the app? It’s the way your app interacts, offers user-friendly features, and easy control of app features that make it appealing to the customers. If the users are unable to interact with the app’s features or implement them in real time, the functionality is considered useless and will lead them to shift to another application.
Your app’s effectiveness is measured through a combination of its functionality and alluring visuals. Hence you must keep in mind the following aspects while designing your app.
- Must be instinctive
- Easy to use
- Engaging
- Functions properly
Hence, while designing your app using the latest mobile app designs, make sure it not only attracts users but also offers functionality while providing compatibility.
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Employ an App Development Company
Employ a dedicated app development company that ensures a smooth app development process with a team of experts that includes features and functionalities at an economical price. A mobile application development company generally includes a team of proficient in-house project managers, UI/UX designers, app developers, and industry specialists who always consider your vision and offer genuine and valuable suggestions. The company also proffers access to industry experts and the latest tech stack. The experts build an engaging UI/UX allowing users to navigate and complete tasks in a few clicks easily. Furthermore, the team integrates unique features to automate processes that eliminate unexpected delays and boosts the conversion rate.
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Develop MVP
Developing an MVP equips you with a version of an app that consists of the most elementary features; the MVP explains to the users what the mobile app is about but is not filled with all the various advanced-level features. The primary idea behind the development of an MVP app is an indicator that determines its acceptability among millions of users before investing further and scaling to the next level. It is considered the first step to ensure the success of the mobile application. Several brands started as MVPs and have become top-notch businesses, such as Twitter, Dropbox, Airbnb, Spotify, and Groupon.
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Conduct a Rigorous App Test
While crafting an app conducting regular testing is crucial. You must test your app thoroughly and each and every aspect, from content to performance to user experience. Conducting efficient testing helps you to counter bugs and glitches earliest and thus helps to enhance your reputation in the market. Furthermore, it helps to save time and costs.
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Launch Your App
Once your app’s testing is successful, you can submit your app to Apple’s App Store or Play Store. However, it is essential to comply with Apple’s and Google developers’ guidelines. Additionally, it’s important to align the monetization plan with their requirements.
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Post-Launch Activity
After launching your app on Play Store/App Store, the next and vital step is marketing it. If users are not familiar with your app, then there is no possibility that they will download it. To bestrew information about your app and convince your target audience to examine it, consider making instructive and engaging videos that can display your app’s core functionality. And do not forget the prospect of social media; digital platforms can help you reach every corner of the world. They will deliver people a glance at your app and emphasize the key components that can facilitate their life needs.
Concluding Words!
Finally, we hope the above write-up offers you precise insight into how to develop a mobile application for your business from scratch. With the expansion of the mobile app market, considering the current market scenario, the concern no longer exists as “does my business need a mobile app?” but instead “, how do I create the ideal mobile app for my business?”. We discussed the plethora of benefits an app offers a business, but to avail of those benefits, it’s crucial to careful planning, choosing the correct platform, and proper execution of those strategies.
