1. Strategy
The initial phase of the mobile app development process for mobile apps is to determine the best strategy to transform your concept into a viable application. It’s possible to incorporate a important part of this into your overall business strategy for mobile. Since the goals of one app could differ from one another but there’s still an impact specific to each app’s strategy of mobility to consider during the process of development.
In this stage you will:
- Identify app users
- Find out about the competitors
- Set the app’s goals and targets
- Choose a mobile platform to run your app
SEE ALSO: How to Develop a Successful Enterprise Mobility Strategy
In the average, mobile applications cost between $150,000 and $200,000 and take between 4 to 6 months for mobile app development . The method you use helps to you focus your mind on a clear image of your idea for your app. With this information in mind you are ready to move into the next step of your mobile application development process.
2. Analysis and Planning
This is when your app idea begins to take form and becomes, in reality, a project. Planning and analysis begin by the definition of use cases and the recording of specific functional requirements.
Once you’ve identified the needs for your app, create the plan for your product. This will include prioritizing the requirements for mobile apps, and then dividing them into milestones for delivery. If time, resources or costs are a concern, then define your minimum-viable-product (MVP) and prioritize this for the initial launch.
A part of the planning process is identifying the required skills to develop your app. For instance, iOS and Android mobile platforms employ different mobile app development stacks. If you want to create a mobile app that works on each of iOS as well as Android mobile platforms your mobile app development team must include iOS developers as well as Android developers.
Have you chosen for your mobile app’s title? App names for mobile are similar to domain names, and must be unique for every app store. Check each store to ensure that your app’s name isn’t being used!
3. UI / UX Design
The goal of the design of an application is to offer smooth and easy user experience with a sleek appearance.
The effectiveness of a mobile app can be measured by how quickly users are embracing and making use of all the features. The aim of mobile app UX / UI design is to create exceptional user experiences that make your app user-friendly, interactive and user-friendly. While refined UI designs are beneficial for the initial adoption of your app, it is essential that it should have user-friendly user interfaces to keep users interested.The aim of an application’s design is to provide seamless and simple user experiences, with a sleek look.CLICK to SHARE
Information Architecture & Workflows
The initial step in the design process for your mobile app is to identify the information your mobile app will show to users, the information it will gather, user interactions with the final product and user experiences within the application.
For enterprises, enterprise mobile solutions are a mix of users who have different roles and rights, and it is vital to incorporate these rules into the app’s information architecture. Workflow diagrams can help you identify the various interactions users have with the app, as well as the structure of the app’s navigation.
Wireframes
Mobile app developers often begin sketching their designs on paper. Wireframes are digital versions of sketches. Wireframes represent conceptual designs often known as low-fidelity mockups. They provide visual structure to the functional requirements of your application.
Wireframes are a way to focus is on user experience and aesthetics and not colors and styles. Wireframes are a simple and cost-effective method of creating layouts for applications and then iterating them during the designing review. When creating wireframes, you must take into consideration the design specific to your device. It doesn’t matter if your app will be being used on an iPhone, iPad, or Android tablet and phone; it will provide users with intuitive and unique device experience.
Style Guide
Style guidelines Style guides are “living documents” where an app’s design rules, including your brand’s guidelines all the way to icons for navigation are recorded.
Style guides contain:
- What type of font will the text of your app employ?
- What color scheme will it be?
- How will your brand’s image reflect in the design of the app?
Style guides aid in the strategy for designing an app. Setting up the style guide as early as possible in the mobile app development process will increase the efficiency for your developer of mobile apps. In addition using guidelines for style can help ensure that your app’s appearance and style uniform. In the course of developing your app design, you must look at the design guidelines for apps from Apple for the iOS app as well as Google to create Android apps.
Mockups
Mockups, also known as high-fidelity designs are the final visualizations of your app’s layout. They are made by putting your style guideline the app’s wireframes. When your app’s design is beginning to come together, anticipate further changes to the information design along with workflow and design. Adobe Photoshop is the most widely used tool to create high-fidelity mockups.
Prototype
While mockups show the capabilities of your mobile app by using static designs, these can be converted into click-thru prototypes using tools such as Invision and Figma. Prototypes are extremely useful in testing the user experience and the expected workflows for the app the final product. Although prototype mobile app development may be lengthy however, the effort is worthwhile as they allow early stage testing of your app’s style and performance. Prototypes are often used to identify changes to the app’s functions.
Some companies even prefer to create prototypes during the wireframing phase in cases where the application’s requirements for functionality aren’t clearly defined. There is also an obligation to go over the app’s functionality in the help of a focus group.
4. App Development
Planning is an integral component of this stage of the process of developing mobile apps. Before actual mobile app development /programming efforts start, you will have to:
- identify the technical architecture
- select a stack of technologies choose a stack of technology, and
- identify the developmental milestones.
The typical mobile apps is comprised of three essential components: server/back-end technologies, API(s) along with the front-end of the mobile app.
Back-End/Server Technology
This comprises server-side and database objects needed to support features of your mobile application. If you’re using an existing back-end system, changes may be required to support the mobile-specific features. Many software development companies, including EcDev Studio use JavaScript-based back-end technologies such as Node.js runtime and Nest.js framework. In the present day, these technologies are gaining a lot of popularity among web developers and mobile app developers.
API
The Application Programming Interface (API) is a way of communicating between the application and the back-end server or database.
Mobile App Front-End
The front-end will be the mobile application that the user will utilize. Most mobile applications are interactive user experiences, which use an API as well as an back-end to manage information. In certain situations where an app requires to let users operate without internet connectivity the app could use locally-stored data.
It is possible to use almost every web-based programming language, as well as databases to run the back-end. To develop native mobile apps you need to select the technology stack that is required by every operating system for mobile. iOS apps are developed by using the Objective-C or Swift programming languages. Android apps are typically developed with Java and Kotlin.
There are many different programming languages and technology stack that can be used to build mobile applications. The key is choosing the technology stack the best fit to your mobile app.
Mobile technology is evolving faster when new versions are released of the mobile platform. In addition smartphones are introduced every couple of months. With the platforms and devices constantly changing, agility is crucial to build mobile apps within the timeframes and budgets. If you are looking to reduce time-to-market then you should adopt an agile mobile app development method. This strategy allows regular software releases that include complete features. Determining the mobile app development milestones in agile development plans helps in the mobile app development of your mobile app in iterations.
Once each mobile app development phase is complete it’s passed to the testing team of the app to be verified.There are many different programming languages and technology stack to create mobile applications. The trick is choosing a stack of technology that is the best fit to your mobile app.CLICK to SHARE
5. Testing
Conducting rigorous testing of quality (QA) testing throughout the process of developing mobile apps helps ensure that applications are reliable, usable and safe. To ensure complete QA tests of the app you are developing, you’ll must create test cases that cover the entire aspect of testing apps.
Like how use cases are the driving force behind developing mobile apps, testing case scenarios drive mobile testing of apps. Test cases serve as tests, recording the test results for evaluation of software quality as well as tracking fixes to retest. The best approach is to involve your QA team during the analysis and Design phases. Being familiar with your application’s functional requirements and goals can help you create precise tests.
Your application should go through the following testing procedures to ensure a high-quality mobility solutions.
User Experience Testing
An essential stage in testing mobile apps is to make sure that the final application is consistent with the user experience that was created by the team responsible for designing the app. The visuals as well as the workflow and interactivity of your app gives users the an initial impression about your application. Be sure your app uses consistent style, fonts and color schemes, as well as space between information, icons layout and navigation. Making sure your app conforms to the design guidelines of the beginning can have a direct effect on user acceptance!
Functional Testing
The precision of the mobile app’s functions is essential to its effectiveness. It’s hard to anticipate every customer’s behavior and use situation.
The app’s functionality is best tested by as many users as possible to test as many possible scenarios as is possible. You may be shocked by the number of bugs you discover when two different users attempt to test the same feature, but have different results. For instance, both users are able to complete exactly the same questionnaire, however they could submit different data, leading to the discovery of a flaw.
Functional testing is to verify that users are able to use the features and functions of your app without issue. It is divided into two parts: tests of the system (the application functioning as an entire) as well as unit testing (individual features of the app functioning correctly).
If you’re building an app that will run on iOS or Android smartphone platforms the functional tests you conduct should include feature comparisons between the two the mobile versions of your application.
Performance Testing
There are a variety of quantitative standards to evaluate the effectiveness of your application.
- How does your app react to users’ requests?
- How fast are the application’s screens loading?
- Is your application draining the battery of your phone or causing leaks of memory?
- Does your app make use of bandwidth effectively on the network?
- Does your application greater than it is supposed to be?
Even if your app meets the basic requirements for performance, you should check the application, API, and backend to ensure that they can handle your maximum amount of users concurrently. Your app must be able to take on the load and function well even in the event of a spike in usage.
Security Testing
Security is a top priority when it comes to mobile apps for enterprises. Any vulnerability could cause a hack. A lot of companies employ outside firms to conduct extensive security testing for their applications. You QA as well as mobile app development team are able to implement a few easy steps to secure your application.
If your application requires users to sign into their account, the log-in sessions must be recorded both on the device and in the backend. Sessions should be canceled by the system if an individual has been inactive for a long period of time (typically 10 minutes or less for an app for mobile devices). If your app is able to store user’s login passwords on the device in order to allow users to log in again, you should make sure that you use a reliable service. For instance the platform used for mobile app development of iOS apps offer the Keychain feature which can be used to store information about a user’s account for a particular application.
Forms for data entry within the mobile application should be checked to ensure that there isn’t any leakage of data.
Device and Platform Testing
On average new mobile devices are introduced to on the market each year, with new firmware, hardware, and even design. The operating system for smartphones is upgraded every couple of months.
Many mobile device makers like Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola use the Android platform, however they modify the platform to suit their device (since Android is open source). They come in a variety of dimensions and forms.
Compare it with Apple iOS, which is more of a controlled environment as they manage both the hardware as well as the OS. There are a variety of iPhone and iPad (Apple iOS) devices available for sale.
This is the reason testing during the mobile app development process is different from web-based app testing. It is possible to avoid testing your website application using the Chrome browser within the Windows environment. However, your mobile app needs to be tested on a variety of devices, or device simulators to ensure the smooth functioning of your app for every user.
The complexity of mobile application testing across every mobile device, the ongoing support costs and the headaches of managing mobile devices are the main reasons why businesses prefer to develop their corporate mobile applications for only one platform (and frequently offer mobile devices for their users). We have observed that most firms tend to create their mobile apps for enterprise initially using the Apple iOS mobile platform. Only in the event of a need, they create an application to run on an Android platform.
Testing is essential to the success of your app in the future It is an integral portion of our mobile app mobile app development . A comprehensive mobile testing plan is essential for the mobile app development of an excellent mobile app.
In the test phase there are a variety of options to distribute your app’s build files to test users. The most commonly used method for iOS apps is through Testflight and for Android apps, you can send them via mail and Over The Air (OTA) downloads.
6. Deployment & Support
Launching a native mobile app requires you to submit your app for sale on the App Store, Apple App Store for iOS applications and Google Play for Android apps. But, you’ll need an account for developers for both Apple App Store and Google Play Store prior to launching your mobile application.
A new app’s publication on the App Store needs metadata, which includes:
- The app’s title
- Description
- Category
- Keywords
- Launch icon
- Screenshots from the App Store
After being submitted to the Apple App Store, iOS apps are reviewed during a procedure that could take anywhere from a few days up to some weeks, based on the caliber of your app as well as the extent to which it complies with Apple’s iOS guidelines for development. If your application requires users to sign into their account, you’ll have to give Apple with the test account in the course of the approval process.
There’s no review process in the case of Android applications, and they can be downloaded from stores within just a few hours after submission.
Once your app is available on the app store be sure to monitor its use on mobile analytics platforms and monitor KPIs (KPIs) to gauge the app’s performance. Be sure to check frequently for reports of crashes, or any other complaints from users.
Invite users to supply your business with feedback and suggestions to improve your application. Fast support for users and frequent patching of the app with enhancements is essential to keep users interested. In contrast to web-based apps, where patches are accessible to users immediately and mobile app updates need to undergo the same review and submission process similar to the first submission. Additionally, when it comes to applications for native devices, you need to stay abreast of the latest technology and make updates to your app for the latest smartphones and OS platforms.
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