Apps – GOODPOSTS

MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Mobile applications are a modern technology user’s best friend. The past few years has seen a substantial increase in cell phone usage. Many web applications have added mobiles apps, readily available in app stores free or with a small fee simply because the demand is for “neat resolutions”. This desire to have a “mini station” that trumps complex computing that requires sitting in front of a computer or a laptop, is fuelling regular innovation in the mobile app industry. Smart phones have become a necessity and with each passing year the need for mobile apps for virtually everything and anything is slowly becoming a requirement. But with the market being saturated with mobile apps the competition is tough and you don’t want to develop anything that falls short of the average user’s basic requirements. Users are quite quick to comment and strip any mobile app that doesn’t satisfy them.

Mobile apps have become another important facet of our lives, restructuring and operating things like out calendars, making our lists, setting our appointment and health reminders etc. entertaining as through game apps, reading apps and making it easier (not to mention cheaper) for us to communicate through apps like Whatsapp, LINE, Viber, Tango etc.

The most common app glitches tend to frustrate the average user. It is here where mobile app developers can learn from user experience and feedback. Here are a few things to remember if you’re developing you first mobile app.

*ROTATES SCREEN* OOPS!

Screen rotation is a feature that is present in all smartphones and sometimes it can lead to layout issues. Although iOS and Android make things easier for mobile apps by automatically setting and regulating widths of numerous on-screen graphic features, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes rotating a screen can lead to stretching or distortion in the visual or it just doesn’t look appropriate. Make sure to adjust and tweak your app and test it for this error before you proceed further in the development process.

Users never like to be restricted, especially when it comes down to locking them to a single orientation. This risk can be taken with game apps that require single orientation to function properly, this is a grave flaw however, when it comes to statistical or commerce apps.

Keeping steading adjustments and consistent testing will assure that the final product is user worthy.

CONTEXT RULES

Does your mobile app need an Internet connection to work? How does it assimilate with real-world work patterns? Does the app usage become a tributary action to a primary task? Does the user require one handed usage of an app perhaps because of industrial settings? An app should always fit your target audience’s needs like a glove. One of the most common features that all app users now expect is offline sync capability. You have to work with the possibility that a user may not always have internet capability like underground, hotel meeting rooms, rural areas.

Most users expect their apps to work without an internet connection. Offline sync can be complicated, particularly if you want to sustain a “two-way sync”. That is, directing fluctuations from the phone to the cloud as well as moving changes from other users employing the offline sync.

SIMPLICITY IS KEY

Most mobile apps end up being very ambitious. You can cater to the entire market! You need to specify requirements and build your app with a certain faction in mind. Don’t try to take the entire market by storm by overcrowding your app with features that some users might find confusing or unnecessary. It’s best to ascertain a minimally feasible product and initiate from there, baby steps is how you get to potentially great mobile apps. Doffing functionality down in the initial stages is not a bad thing but, reducing it to nothing while working on the “look” is a bad idea. With specific, minimal, functionality, customer-facing mobile apps you are able to hit the market more quickly. The next step is to come back refine and reiterate. For most common internal apps, this permits you to test your app in the real world. You can gather valuable insights from your apps user response.

KEEP YOURSELF UPDATED TO THE TRENDS

Before you even hit the drawing board with your app idea research the market for similar apps and conduct a research correlating the other mobile apps features and end-user feedback. Try to find what can YOU add or provide that will make your app shine. At the end of the day market trends what’s popular and what is currently tickling the average user’s fancy are the regular parameters for any mobile app’s success rate in the app store. So install and use apps which have comparable functionality to your idea and put yourself in the shoes of your consumer and see what bothers you and could trouble other users. If you can fill the void that other apps leave behind you can sell and get a better response from your users.

DON’T LIMIT YOUR PLATFORM

There a lot of apps out there which leave a user questioning, “Where is the android version?” you can’t ship a product in to the market that just caters to iOS users, get a grip on the market, after that get the android version up and running. If we allow statistics to come into play we see the worldwide users to be tilting towards the android side with android users at 53.1% and iOS users at a 41.6% of the total smartphone users around the globe. In the mobile app industry you simply cannot ignore or estrange more than half your potential user base. You need to hit both app stores at the same time from the release of the product. This does however make things a little more complicated because now you need to find a cross-platform development tool. You don’t want the hassle of writing two sets of code, the risk of a mix up or you losing one thing or the other are too high. Not to mention the creation of two sets of codes will throw you over budget. Software that allows you to exchange codes across platforms is a blessing for your finances.

ADDRESS SCREEN DENSITIES AND SIZE

Even if mobiles have the same screen size, your app may appear totally different how your projections supposed it to. If we factor in screen density, then this is an understandable defect. How many pixels are being displayed on the mobile screen does not rely on the size of a screen. Take for example an old laptop screen and compare it to a brand-new one, you will see that every icon on-screen seems a bit smaller. This is an indicator of more fitting space on the screen and better screen density. A mobile app developer faces a similar issue when adjusting to various screen densities and sizes.

USER FOCUS GROUPS

This is one of the smarter strategies that help web apps developers conduct very specific research. Not all users rate an app in the app store. With a controlled focus group you can get serious feedback. Before a final market release it is always better to test your app with a focus group and find out whether there any grave issues that you missed. Most developers don’t bother the excessive hit and trials and tend to get factual data from the market results but with an initial product market response can either be rejection or acceptance that doesn’t tell you in depth issues like a focus group does.

Don’t rush the initial product and remember research never hurt any web developer.

CRASH REPORTS

Once a product is launched and it hits the app store and is a success and no apparent hitches are seen, don’t rejoice just yet. More often than not, no matter how confident a developer is about their app, you could have missed an occasional bug or two. This obviously means that the app is not running smoothly and users are facing continuous crashes on their devices. If we consider the transitory quality of user habits, it’s rare to find a crash report from a user. People never bother to report such things until a truly vexed user decides to rip the app apart in the app store comments section. If your app is good then a user will simply re launch it and ignore the crash completely. A problem you have no idea about can’t be fixed.

However there are tools available that allow you to incorporate a few extra lines of code within the app and this will enable your app to automatically report a crash. This is done via a cloud. You will obtain a warning and debugging data to track the problems.

This may not affect the amount of time needed to construct the app however it does affect the budget and you must factor it as a possible cost. Errors, bugs, alterations should all be a part of the rough estimate you make in the initial stages so that you don’t get surprised by unexpected costs.

SET A REALISTIC BUDGET

When you venture in the field of mobile development you must factor in the reality that here you can’t have an exact figure. What you can make is an estimation that covers

Multiple releases (launching version 1.0 then 2.0 etc.)
Any redesign costs
Debugging or crash issues
Maintenance
Multiple platform releases (ios and android)

Key hashtags:

#apps #app #mobile