Why You Need Mobile Apps Development ?

The need for a mobile application development process or mobile application for global business companies is very important in today’s digital era. Apps are capable of generating billions of dollars in revenue through app stores or in-app advertising. That is an important factor why companies choose to develop a mobile application.

Mobile app development is one of the processes that are outsourced globally by business firms. The problem is when they try to take advantage of application development, they don’t have the knowledge on how to make mobile applications. However, with the support of mobile application development companies who are innovative and enterprising in helping in the process of developing applications, of course this can increase competitive success and growth.

The following is a mobile application development process that is important to know, in order to provide maximum efficiency for your company.

Typically, the app development process consists of a six-phase workflow, which you will explore in depth through this article. You can also find out how the process of developing a mobile application is complete.

Mobile Application Development Strategy

Always define a strategy for your mobile application development process, this is to help develop a successful product. A large part of this can be invested in the overall application development process. Everyone certainly has different goals in developing applications, but maybe you have to follow the same things to get a special impact from the application.

The strategy-based factors needed to develop mobile applications are as follows:

• An objectives for app development
• Choosiness out who the app users are
• Do intensive research on competitors
• Set goals as the ideal mobile platform for the application 

The average cost to develop a mobile app is well over the $100,000 range and takes about four to six months to develop. This is why you need to build a strategy to have better focus and constant clarity in app ideas. So, you can dive deeper into the next phase of mobile app development without thinking twice.

Analysis and Planning for Mobile Application Development Process

mobile application design

Your application will start in this phase. In this phase, application use cases are defined and a detailed representation of their functional requirements.

A product schema is prepared to prioritize application requirements and place them as milestones in the mobile application development process.

If you have limited time, resources, or costs, then it’s best to determine and prioritize a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for early launch.

In the planning phase, you must also know the skills required according to your choice when developing an application. 

Making your app available on iOS and Android mobile platforms requires using a variety of different app development technologies. This means you will have to hire or hire an iOS and Android developer as well.

Put a unique name for your app after doing your research, so you don’t end up with a name that’s already in use!

UI/UX Design in Mobile Application Development Process

Your app design should have a polished look and make sure it provides a seamless and easy user experience.  

When your mobile app becomes the best and makes the app a hit and big among the users, it means that they are successfully adopting and benefiting from all its features.

The main goal of UI/UX design is to provide a great user experience that makes apps interactive, intuitive and user-friendly.

(i) Information Architecture & Workflow

In the early stages of developing a mobile application, it determines how the application uses various data, such as data displayed to the user, data collected, the user’s interaction with the product, and the user’s journey within the application.

Workflow diagrams help identify all feasible user interactions within the app and their navigation structure.

(ii) Outline drawing

Mainframes are like digital sketches designed by app designers for the process of developing a mobile app. It helps generate an application’s conceptual layout, also known as a low-fidelity mockup to define a visual structure for an application’s functional requirements.

Wire frames focus more on app aesthetics and the way mobile apps develop for the user experience than app color schemes and styles. This is a cost-effective and fast approach, so a mobile app must consider custom design across multiple devices to provide an intuitive, device-specific user experience.

(iii) Style Guide

Style guides are “living documents” in which application design guidelines are defined through the mobile app development process, from branding rules to navigation icons consisting of:

• the font to be used by the app’s text 
• Application color scheme
• Communicating the company brand through application design

Style guides help develop application strategies. If done early on, it will form a style guide to increase the efficiency of mobile app developers. At the same time, you can maintain the appearance of your app and its consistency by following the style guide. Check out the app design guide for Apple’s standards for iOS and Google’s apps for Android .

(iv) Mockup

This is the final design of your app and it is also known as high fidelity design in mobile app development scope. You can create a mock up by supplementing the app wire frame with a style guide. When finalizing the application design, the information architecture, workflow, and aesthetics will be modified later. You can use the most common tools, such as Adobe Photoshop to produce high-fidelity mock-ups in your mobile app development process.

(v) Prototypes

Mockups in app development are static designs that can present the functionality of your mobile app. It can be made into click-through prototypes using tools like In vision and Figma. Prototypes are important for simulating the user experience and application workflow expected of the finished product. While prototyping development may take time, the effort is certainly very important, as it can demonstrate the design and functionality of the app at an early stage. Prototypes often help in the mobile app development process to identify changes to the functionality suggested by the app.

In particular, when the functional side of the application is not well thought out, some companies choose to develop prototypes at the wireframing stage. They also do this to review the app’s proposed functionality.

Application Development

The most integral part of this phase is always planning. Before starting the actual process of developing a mobile app, make sure:

• technical architecture defined,
• You’ve chosen the technology stack, and
• developmental milestones are determined.

Three integral parts in developing mobile applications are back-end/server technology, API, and front-end.

(i) Technology Back-End/Server

All the functionality of the application comes from the development part of the application supported by the necessary database and server-side objects. Sometimes modifications to existing back-end platforms may also be made to support required mobile functionality.

(ii) API

The Application Programming Interface (API) is a mediator that ensures communication between the application and the back-end server/database in the mobile application development process.

(iii) Application Home Screen

For the most part, mobile applications consist of an interactive user experience using APIs and a back-end for data management. In certain situations, the application may be used for local data storage which allows the user to function without an internet connection.

Almost every web and database programming language can be used for the back-end in application development. The technology stack should be chosen for native apps as it is required for every mobile OS. You can create iOS apps using the Objective-C or Swift programming languages. The most common applications for Android are Java or Kotlin.

There are many programming languages ​​and technologies available for developing mobile applications. So, always choose the technology that suits your application.

Rapid technological progress brings new versions of mobile platforms. In addition, every few months new mobile gadgets become available. Agility is critical to mobile app development in timeframes and budgets when platforms and devices are constantly changing. Use agile development methods when time to market is a priority. This method allows for regular updating of the software with its full functionality. The definition of development milestones is part of a rapid development strategy that helps in your mobile app iteration.

When each app development milestone is completed, it will be transferred for validation to the app testing team.

mobile application testing

Thorough software quality assurance (QA) testing in developing mobile apps ensures reliable, usable, and secure apps.

You must first develop test cases that cover all the components of your app’s testing to ensure a complete QA process for your app.

Just as use cases drive the mobile app development process, what drives mobile app testing are test cases. Test cases include test steps, software quality evaluation which will record findings, and retesting which is done by tracking improvements.

The QA team should be involved in the Analysis and Design phase of application development as a best practice method.

(i) User Experience Testing

An important stage in mobile app testing and app development is ensuring the finished app is consistent with the user experience created by the app design team. Apps will provide users with a first-hand view of their visuals, workflow, and interactivity. Make sure to use consistent fonts, styles, color schemes, data padding, icon designs, and navigation in apps. Also make sure the app adheres to native design guidelines for a good impact on user adoption during the mobile app development process.

(ii) Functional Testing

It is very important to ensure the success of mobile app features with their accuracy factor. The behavior and usage situation of each end user is also not easy to predict.

So, to cover as many test situations as possible, application functionality should be tested by as many users as possible. If two separate users try the same function but receive different results, you mean there’s a problem. The two users could, for example, fill out identical forms, but they could both provide different data, causing crashes.

Functional testing in the mobile app development process is designed to verify that users can use the features and functionality of the app without any issues. This can be further divided into system testing which ensures the entire working of the application and unit testing which ensures the correct operation of the individual functions of the application.

If you are building mobile platform apps for iOS and Android, a comparison between the features of the two versions of the mobile app should be included in the functional test.

(iii) Performance Testing

You can measure application performance through several quantitative criteria:

Even if your app meets basic performance standards, you’ll be testing your app, API, and backend to load and simulate the maximum number of simultaneous users. Even with the spikes used, the application must be able to manage the load and do so effectively.

(iv) Security Testing

For enterprise mobile application development, security has the greatest significance. Any weakness can lead to a hack. Many companies employ external organizations for rigorous security testing. QA and development teams can take a few easy steps to protect software.

If the user must be logged in, the login sessions on the device and backend must be monitored.

The system should terminate the user’s session if the user is idle for a long time (usually ten minutes or less on mobile apps). When developing a mobile application, you must guarantee that you are using a trusted service if the application stores user credentials on the device for easy reconnection with them. For example, On the iOS app development platform, for example, the Keychain function can be used to store user account data in certain apps.

In order to verify that there is no data leak, the data entry forms within your mobile application must be thoroughly validated.

(v) Device and Platform Testing

New mobile devices ship with new hardware, software and designs every 12 months on average. Even every few months, the mobile operating system is also updated.

Several mobile device manufacturers including Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola use Android but personalize it in their mobile devices (because Android is open source) with the app development process. Devices come in all sizes and shapes.

Contrast this with Apple, a much more regulated environment, as the hardware and OS are under their control. However, there are several iPhone & iPad (Apple iOS) devices in the market.

Testing differs substantially from testing on web applications during the mobile application development process. Testing your web application in a Windows environment, using only the Chrome browser may seem easy. However, mobile apps should be tested for the smooth running of all users who use multiple mobile devices or device emulators.

The complexity of testing mobile applications on multiple mobile applications, the ongoing cost of maintenance, and the complexity of mobile device management are the main reasons why businesses choose to develop their mobile business applications on a single mobile platform (and often provide mobile devices to their users). Most companies initially develop mobile apps on Apple’s iOS mobile platform and only build Android apps when necessary.

Testing is critical to the future success of apps and forms a key part of the overall mobile app development process. A comprehensive mobile testing approach is required to provide quality mobile applications.

There are many methods in which application development methods can be distributed to testers during the testing process. Testflight is deployed for iOS apps and for Android apps via email or Over The Air (OTA) updates.

Implementation & Support

app store

You must submit original apps before they are released to the Apple App Store for iOS apps and Google Play for Android apps. However, before launching the app, you must have a developer account as part of the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

App release in the app store involves preparing metadata such as:

• Application Title
• Information
• Category
• Keywords
• launch icon

Screenshot from the app store

Once uploaded to Apple’s app store, iOS apps go through a review process which can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the quality of the apps and how closely they comply with Apple’s iOS guidelines for developing mobile apps. You must provide Apple with a test user account as part of the release process when the app requires the user to connect or log in.

There is no review procedure with Android apps and after a few hours of delivery, they are available on app stores.

Following app capabilities in the App Store, check app usage using mobile analytics tools and analyze app success through key performance indicators (KPIs). Check crash reports or other user-reported issues frequently in the mobile app development process.

Encourage users to offer feedback and app proposals to companies to improve them. Users are offered fast support and application software is often supplemented with important updates that keep users engaged. Unlike web-based applications, where patch releases are immediately accessible to users, mobile app upgrades must go through the same submission and review procedures. You should also keep up to date with technological advances by developing native mobile apps and upgrading apps for new mobile devices and OS platforms on a regular basis.

The mobile application development process is an ongoing process that will improve the application based on feedback from users and additional features after the first launch. Leading app development companies can supply businesses from any vertical or sector with quality apps. They can make sure to follow the above approach to make the application successful.