Mobile App Development Mistakes

Mobile users are now the well-informed and intelligent decision-makers when it comes to picking the right app.Millions of apps already flood the app stores with hundreds making the right buzz.It is just the matter of few minutes for mobile users to ditch your app in favor of a better quality one.Customer retention is a difficult job which becomes easier only if you offer an awesome user experience from the very first day.Developing an app is indeed a costly affair. Not focusing on the possible mistakes may turn your investments (in terms of money as well as time, efforts and credibility) futile.Learning from others’ mistakes and bad experiences should be your first preference if you have conceived the thought of having a mobile app. Let’s begin highlighting these mistakes.

Starting without Enough Research

Extended research is crucial to decide a number of important aspects related to mobile app development. Here are some of them:

Uniqueness: Do you know that the majority of apps die away for being just another app? In order to make it look and function uniquely, you must check the top-performing as well as the average and poor performing apps. It would decide the league your app would stand in.

Competition: Chances are that a number of your rivals already have apps tossed in the mobile marketplace. And, some of them might have been performing well. By deriving their unique selling points, you would be in a position to make your app better.

Audience: Recognizing the targeted audience is indeed the most important outcome of the research you would conduct. Apart from knowing their preferences, you would know the necessary demographics like age brackets, genders, professional backgrounds, personal interests and more. And this would help you develop an app exactly catering to the targets.

Making Wrong Platform Selections

Most of the businesses face the dilemmas like whether develop mobile apps for single or multiple platforms (the choices being iOS, Android, Windows and more). Another concern is whether invest in native, cross-platform or hybrid apps. There is huge probability of making mistakes in this direction. Here are some suggestions:

It is better to restrict the app for one or two of the most popular platforms (preferably iOS and Android) in the beginning. First, this would lower your initial investments. Once your app starts performing, you can extend it to other platforms too. Second, if bugs or other issues surface, it would be easier to fix them for the limited number of platforms.

If you target the US audience, it is recommended to choose iOS as the platform. However, for the global audiences, Android is definitely a better choice.

Hybrid apps may help you save development costs and reduce the time-to-market, while allowing you to target a wider base of audiences and utilizing the specific features of different mobile devices.

If hailing from a web development background, the developer you hire for app development may follow certain preconceived notions and fixed norms. The result may be a flawed user interface that may lend extremely bad impression on the users. Learn about the mistakes that you need to avoid in this regard:

Developing app along the lines of your existing website (that might be doing well). Remember the simple fact that everything from screen sizes and pixel resolutions to the environment of use change dramatically from web to mobile. Prefer creating a responsive app rather than downsizing the website or web app.

Rendering complicated UIs that are difficult to adapt to. Define and render each and every element, button and function clearly to make the app usage simplified.

Not taking care of the navigation. Note that your users are switching from web (with navigation limited to click, double-click and scroll) to mobile (with navigation extended further to swipe, tap and a lot more). So, give control in their hand.

Ignoring user interaction. App users love to be interacted with and you app must have all sorts of notifications, search tools and responsive messages for every action.

Throwing in too many features. Let it be a layered experience with app’s capabilities unfolding and increasing version after version and not all at once.

Forgetting Important Needs for Mobile Application Success

# Testing
One common mistake is to test the app just for a single mobile device. There are numerous devices (smartphones, tablets and the upcoming wearable techs) and your app must perform equally well on each of them. Another mistake is not considering beta testing. It would surely deprive you from acquiring the valuable outsiders’ perspective for your app.

# Analytics
Failing to integrate the app analytics tools in sync with its development may make you regret soon. Ensure that you are able to measure things like daily active users, average app usage time, retention rate and so on.

# Marketing
No app can sell itself. You must market it for your audiences and that should begin right on the first day of the development process.