The Path to Project Success
The foundation for a successful mobile app development project is laid long before your teams commence coding. It necessitates meticulous planning to navigate numerous challenges and needs. To get a successful product, you must consider the use and reception of your new application by users and partners alike.
Product teams must adeptly juggle stakeholder priorities, user expectations, and existing technical constraints before launch. Additionally, conducting pre-development research is imperative to ensure your application’s functionality resonates positively with its intended market.
Are you gearing up to embark on a mobile app development venture? Here are five proactive measures to position your business success and guarantee optimal results.
1. Conduct Thorough Market Research
Before delving into the intricate plans for your mobile app development endeavor, invest time in comprehending its place within your industry’s current landscape. Market research is the compass that steers your application’s value proposition. Use that research to also determine core functionalities and the best way to introduce your app to users.
Comprehensive research serves to:
- Assess the current offerings and competitors in the market.
- Identify gaps within the market that your app intends to address.
- Craft an effective solution to the problem your app seeks to solve.
Conducting a comprehensive competitor analysis offers valuable insights into their strengths and weaknesses. This information, coupled with your organization’s internal priorities, assists in delineating the primary objective of your application and your distinctive value propositions.
Armed with these insights, you can:
- Steer clear of the mistakes made by your competitors.
- Discern the demands and expectations of your target audience.
- Define your unique approach to solving the problem at hand.
In a market inundated with a plethora of applications offering diverse services, methodical research empowers you to make data-driven decisions. Use data to set your tool apart from the competition and deliver the desired outcomes.
2. Define Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
With market research as your compass, it’s now time to collaborate with internal stakeholders and product teams. Use these insights to consolidate data, business objectives, and other needs into well-defined, measurable goals for a central value proposition.
Your application’s distinctive value proposition (UVP) serves as the guiding star throughout the stages of ideation, planning, development, and launch. It ensures that you address a genuine pain point and cater effectively to your target audience.
To formulate your UVP, ponder these questions:
- What is the core functionality we must deliver?
- Which need does this functionality fulfill?’
- Which audience stands to benefit from this solution?
- Why would they prefer our solution over a competitor’s?
- What business objectives will this application help us attain?
The better you comprehend your target audience, the more effectively you can fashion an app tailored precisely to their needs. Without a clear understanding of whom you are creating the application for and why, your mobile app development initiative becomes a shot in the dark.
Whether your focus is on B2B or B2C, your new application must be grounded in a central purpose. Cutting-edge features and a polished user interface fall short if your product does not genuinely enrich the lives of its users.
3. Choose a Platform
Before software engineers begin work on your forthcoming mobile app, there are a number of technical decisions that you will need to make. Be sure to complete your due diligence for these so you can make a well-informed decision. One of the pivotal decisions to be made is the selection of a platform. This choice carries significant weight and should be deliberated upon diligently. There are several options to consider: native app, hybrid app, or web-based app? This decision will greatly impact your application’s development and ongoing maintenance.
As you deliberate these choices, refer back to the market research you undertook and the Unique Value Proposition (UVP) you delineated in the second step. In many instances, the core functionality of your app will play a pivotal role in steering your platform selection. Additionally, considerations such as budget, project timeline, and the technical proficiency available in the programming languages associated with each option will also weigh into your decision-making process.
To help you better understand the platform options, we have noted several fundamental distinctions among native, hybrid, and web-based apps:
Native Apps
These apps work well for heavy-duty tasks like photo and video use. They are the most expensive to develop but easily findable in Apple and Android’s app stores.
Web-based Apps
Web apps facilitate seamless updates and do not require access to the device’s native capabilities. While they are economical to develop, they lack the capability for users to download them or customize their experience.
Hybrid Apps
Hybrid apps amalgamate the strengths of both worlds by employing a shared code base for both platforms, rendering them well-suited for a wide array of use cases, including productivity, utility, and enterprise applications.
Your choice of application type will fundamentally shape the remainder of your development journey, underscoring the importance of a thorough evaluation of each option. It is imperative to contemplate how the platform you ultimately choose will reverberate through the long-term success of your mobile app.
4. Consider Monetization Options
Depending on your target audience and your business goals, you can leverage your mobile app’s value in various ways, including generating direct revenue. Monetization strategies are often used to bring additional revenue in a way that adds value to users.
Before you commit to monetization, it’s important to work with stakeholders to define your new mobile app’s role in your overarching business model. If you are planning to use the application as a revenue-generation tool, you have a few monetization models to choose from.
Freemium
An app free to download with certain “locked” features and content that can only be accessed through a purchase.
Paid/Premium
A model requiring users to pay upfront to download the app from the app store in order to use it.
In-App Purchases
A system that leverages the app as a mobile commerce channel to sell digital or physical products.
Subscriptions
A platform that brings in recurring revenue with monthly or annual subscriptions for critical features.
In-App Ads
A solution that offers your app as ad space for other vendors or products, effectively turning it into an indirect revenue stream.
Each model has unique advantages and disadvantages. While you can change your monetization approach later on, it’s essential to evaluate each model and steer your mobile app development toward the option that best aligns with your business.
5. Designate Technical Resources
After establishing high-level objectives, constraints, and your technical approach, the next pivotal phase is embarking on the heart of your project: the development stage.
Initiate discussions with your software engineering teams, focusing on critical factors such as the time required for scoping, design, development, and testing of your mobile app. Collaborate with leadership to pinpoint a core team of technical talent tailored to the specific requirements of your application. Their insights, along with the team they assemble, will be instrumental in steering the entire project effectively and allocating appropriate resources to various phases, including:
- Gathering Requirements
- Wireframing
- Development
- Testing
- Publishing
- Maintenance and Management
This juncture also presents an ideal opportunity to define a realistic budget by seeking input from technical teams regarding how the app’s complexity, features, and infrastructure will influence its overall cost. It’s essential to bear in mind that the actual expense of mobile app development hinges on the choice of developers, whether they are in-house or outsourced through a reputable vendor.
You will require a dependable team capable of overseeing the initial development project and providing ongoing support for the application. This support encompasses monitoring, system updates, and fine-tuning the user experience based on user feedback. Opting for a partner possessing industry experience, knowledge, and expertise is critical for achieving a well-functioning application that is visually appealing and delivers the anticipated functionality.
Streamline Mobile App Development With Xperity
Once your business and technical teams are prepared, it’s time to embark on your mobile app development endeavor. Xperity stands as a comprehensive development partner capable of guiding your organization through every facet of the process, from initial planning to ongoing management. Our team of software development experts harnesses well-tested strategies, adheres to industry best practices, and provides data-driven recommendations, ensuring the success of your project at every stage of the journey.
Discover how we partnered with a sports media organization to craft a dynamic content management solution and deliver a high-touch user experience through a mobile application available on both Android and iOS platforms.
Envision and strategize your next mobile app project with Xperity, creating an application that not only attracts users but also fosters adoption and attains your desired objectives.
Contact us today to get started.
