5 Obstacles Startups Face in Mobile App Development
With time traveling into technology so fast, we see everything and every idea quickly growing towards automation and mobility. Businesses are forced to come up with refined strategies to own decisions and roll them out through a pertinent technological vent to their slice of offerings.
To that effect, you pick any industry and take any vertical, you will find the competition going digital – looking to serve the ever stringent and fast evolving needs of a savvy user.
Especially when we refer to startups – this trend looks to conquer the idea of service most compellingly. As they get to rely more on digital trends and advanced modes of communication in order to propose their pioneering mold of service – more believingly and fittingly. And to make that connect better with the user, it needs to be donned by a purposeful mobile app to effectively put the word of identity across.
Well, with that idea it becomes quite obvious for startups to reach out in the middle and crack those opportunities well. And for that, they need to go with mobile app development and get their piece of app done.
However, it is not as straight and easy as it may sound to you now. While going with the decision to get an app for your startup you face challenges – starting from the app discovery to its completion and even till promotions.
Precisely 5 different obstacles native to 5 different phases of app development lifecycle–presented here in the rising sequence:
Idea Discovery
Tapping the first layer of the idea and bringing it to a concrete shape requires a lot of brainstorming and conceptualization. And the main obstacle you face in the course of discovery is reaching on and syncing in the right app interface and elements to commit to a perfectly balanced product that effectively connects with your underlying idea. You go wrong here and everything goes wrong for your business. Here you need to work on various aspects of presentation and interaction – seeking optimum value parameters putting together best of user experience and communication before you move ahead with your development plan.
Development Approaches
Based on the nature and size of the startup that you are looking to leverage through a mobile solution, you need to decide on your development approach. The most followed of which are platform-specific native apps for iOS and Android; Hybrid mobile app development (combining native and web); Cross-platform app (combining iOS, Android, Windows, JavaScript and HTML5 in one). Well, to decide on which one to go with you need to go with proper cost and trend analysis, supported by detailed competitor data and market findings. When done with this decision you need to work out on compatibility options, considering the factors like Screen resolution, OS requirements, RAM – based on which you will be picking SDKs and plan for UI-UX, different integrations, and third-party services.
Planning Investment
The biggest challenge most of the startups face is with planning investments. Having enough capital initially to build and launch the app and keeping the project funded for ongoing refinements and enhancements are the issues that need to be addressed well right in the beginning. Besides arranging for a decent amount of money (from Banks, VCs or own savings), you need to break-define numbers and do a lot of homework on how to go about the outlay and how to process the investment so that you can plan timely release and returns. If you miss doing this correctly, you may just delay the process of ROI and disturb your product’s cost-benefit outline – to end up upsetting your venture severely.
Performance Check
This is certainly the last thing to miss if you are aiming to find your app some success. While developing the app for your startup you need to make sure that all prerequisites are addressed as per your base idea and you have a quality product with you in the end. Well, once you are done with this part you need to track and assert its performance. The performance of your app is measured through how user-friendly and device-friendly it is. For which you need to ascertain that the app is out with least bugs and minimum downtime and is least power draining.
Marketing and promotions
The time when your app is out in the market. Your high hopes with your treasured product are on the edge of its seat and sniffing opportunities. Well, converting that market potential into real customers and further into money takes real efforts of marketing. You need to get your promotional agenda rolling with a close focus on your target audiences. Try reaching them out with a complete PR & media plan and social & viral marketing. You may also try optimizing your app on App Store and push your brand across localized channels to gain the home-grown advantage. Try taking help from these tools - AppTamin, AppScend, MobileDevHQ – these might just reduce your efforts to half.
Well, most of the time we know what opportunities wait ahead when we are planning a venture. But, what we miss out on generally is what lies in between and what are the possible hurdles to be crossed to reach that glorious feat. Hope, these points would help you find your way to a smooth culmination going past all hurdles and obstacles with your attempt at mobile app development for your startup.