Nowadays, people tend to convert their business ideas into mobile app ideas. As we see many mobile applications are running successfully across the world. Apparently, the process of transition seems very easy because of the increased dependency and usage of mobile applications. Coming up with a new app idea is simple but transitioning it into a real mobile application is quite complicated. Sometimes, people are unaware of the process of developing a mobile application. It is not as simple as you hire an app developer and handover your idea to him. It is essential to follow a proper validation process before making your simple app idea into reality. To validate and test your idea you can attack it from the following angles or you can contact the experts for app discovery service to transform your idea into an app prototype.
1. Target audience
You cannot accommodate the whole world in your audience. Choosing a specific demographic audience is a good approach to making an application successful. The selected demographic group relies on the nature of the application. The success of your application depends on user engagement. You can alter your app’s feature list according to users’ preferences. You will have to find statistical data of preferred users for your application. This will make your validation process much easier.
2. Market Research
The next approach in the validation process is market research. You have to explore the ways to appeal to your selected demographic group. There must be several other competitors of your application in the market. Here you need to achieve a competitive advantage by making your application unique in some way. Or you can also have a distinct appealing approach that makes your cool app idea differentiated. For this purpose, you need to have a look at your competitors’ marketing tactics. You can find it by understanding the app store optimization. Like the influence of keywords while searching, which leads to grabbing user’s attention towards your app. In addition, search ranking includes other factors like
- How a competitor portrays its app’s description
- What are the criteria of app’s ratings
- What positive or negative reviews users are posting for any competitor application?
- How is the app’s pictorial or visual demonstration? Like screenshots or display video
- How appealing is the icon of the application
- What is the frequency of download rates?
By considering these factors you can be more focused on detailing of your application.
3. Application features
You’ve chosen your target audience and studied their insights through competitors’ app marketing strategy. Now your next step would be defining what features your new app idea must contain. Again, it totally depends on the nature of the application. But keeping in mind the users’ insights you need to design your app by considering some substantial factors like
- Attractive design – It includes the user experience UX and user interface UI. These are used to tell you how your application works and how it looks like. You can make a rough wireframe in order to visualize the interface, its purpose, and the flow of your application.
- Scalability – Mobile technology is changing at a very quick pace and so are the users’ preferences. Keeping in mind the concept of scalability, you need to keep your application flexible and adaptable. Your application must have a room for improvement and advancement according to the users’ feedback.
- Unique preposition – Unique proposition is adding value to your mobile app idea. You can understand it by looking at competitors’ weaknesses that users are pinpointing. Transforming competitors’ weaknesses into your app’s strength will give you a chance to add value to your application.
4. Platform Selection
Selecting a platform is one of the major decisions before developing an application. In previous years, the choice of selecting a platform was quite vast. There were several options of operating systems like Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android and iOS. Now the choice has confined to the latter two only, which are Android and iOS. But still, it is not as simple as it appears to be. Before getting deep into platforms, first, you need to understand the difference between the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Both options have their own preferences over each other in some way.
According to the initial statistical data, Google Play store leads the annual downloads by 63 billion and third-party Android stores monitored 45 billion downloads in 2016. Apple App store had only 29 billion annual downloads at that time. But the annual revenue came out to be different as the Apple led with 34 billion dollars and Google Play and third-party Android stores achieved only 17 billion and 10 billion dollars respectively. It is projected that by 2021, Apple will remain the leader while the Google Play store and third party android stores will exceed the download count. Summarizing this stated factual data, the number of android users is more than iOS. But Apple device users earn more money than Android users.
App development is easier for the Android Platform. And there are fewer restrictions for launching an application in the Google Play store. On the other hand, it is said that it is less expensive and faster to develop an application for the Apple App Store. Hence, it is crucial to choose the platform because of the many considerable factors. Your target audience will help you to choose the appropriate platform for your application, as you can analyze the ratio of Android and iOS users. Here you need to think about your monetization strategy.
5. Monetization Strategy
The selection of the platform affects your monetization strategy or vice versa. If you are thinking to develop a paid application then Apple is a better option. Earning money from Android applications is possible through advertisements and in-app purchases. Although the revenue might be less, you will gain more users. You can also develop your application for both platforms simultaneously but it totally depends on your budget, as it is quite expensive. You need to hire two different developers for this purpose. Another cost-efficient option, for both platforms, is to develop a hybrid app. A hybrid application can run on both platforms simultaneously without writing code twice for each.
6. Choosing a Development team
Once you are done with the superficial yet important process of app development, now you need to look for vendors who can develop your app technically successfully. You can search for local or global companies that buy app ideas. There are many app development companies or freelance app developers. You can select any option according to your requirements. Some of the renowned mobile app development services are found in Folio3, Konstant Infosolutions, Willow Tree, Dom & Tom, Toptal and Hired, etc.
You can short-list the companies or freelance developers according to your preferences. But here you need to assess the good qualities of developers. A good vendor should evaluate your requirements and give you suggestions to improve your idea. You must get a proposal, timeline, and schedule along with estimated costs from developers. You can also assess the developers by their profiles, reviews, past projects, testimonials and their devotion towards the project.
Other than developers, you need an entire management team to make your app into reality. In this aspect, to make things easier you could go with a complete development team that helps out with the overall strategy of the product. There are many development firms that specialize in this model.
7. Cost Estimation
App development is an expensive process. The average cost for app development for an app is estimated at about $250,000 for a six-month to a year-long project. Apps with complex features may cost much more and may take a couple of years. Therefore, you have to plan your budget accordingly. The cost will not incur for development only. There are also other expenses likely to incur such as marketing, app evaluation, license fees, and overhead costs, etc. Therefore, you need to plan your budget accordingly.
Capital investments also play a vital role in app development. Collaboration with Investors/financial institutions helps you in creating a competitive edge over your competitors. If you are short of funds, there are many financial institutions that provide you investments that will help you in cost-sharing. For this purpose, you must have a clear demonstration and defined plan of your app, good creditworthiness and brand reputation in order to appeal to investors/ financial institutions.
8. Make your Application live
The ultimate step after app development is to launch your simple app idea either on the Google Play Store or Apple App store or both. Once you get your new app idea live, start direct and indirect marketing of your application through different mediums like social media that includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter, etc. You can also hire bloggers or reporters to promote your application to the target audience.
9. Users’ feedback and future work
After launching your cool app idea successfully, further, you need to get the users’ response by collecting their feedback through reviews, ratings, and recommendations. The feedback will help you to alter the application according to the users’ preferences. You must leave room for future work or advancement in order to improve your application. For this purpose, you should consider the after-sale service of a mobile app development company or developer.
How can I get the new app idea?
You can find a new app idea according to your business plan and requirements. You can transform the services of your business into an app and can make it more feasible to use and approach. Furthermore, there are many websites that are presenting new app ideas that have not been implemented yet.
What major steps do I need to consider for a good app idea?
You consider some aspects like target audience, market research, application features, platform selection, monetization strategy, choosing development team, cost estimation, making your application live, user’s feedback and future work.
What are the considerable factors in market research for a cool app idea?
Market research is based on a competitor’s app’s description, app’s rating criteria, positive and negative reviews, the app’s demonstration, and the app’s icon and download rate frequency
How can I make my application cross-platform compatible?
You can opt for a hybrid application that can be compatible with both platforms of Android and iOS.
How can I improve my app in the future?
With the reviews and ratings, you can amend your application according to the user’s preferences. For this purpose, you can avail of the after-sale services of app development companies or developers.
Conclusion
While considering the above-mentioned procedure, you can conclude that app development is not an easy task. If you have enough funds, resources and time you can develop a good mobile application. But if you lack any of these you can hire the services of a good mobile app developer that is more cost-efficient. There are many app development companies that can make your task easy.