9 Mistakes You Should Avoid While Building Mobile Applications

There are thousands of mobile devices out there, with different screens, processors, software, and hardware. Regrettably, there are numerous ways your mobile app will fail on these devices. You should look at your Mobile Application Development process to ensure that you do not fail.

Why mobile applications fail is because you have that magical idea, but your implementation fails. The global mobile app market will reach $188.9 billion in revenues in 2020 as per a Statista report. It is all but natural you want to have a piece of that pie by building a mobile app. You’re not alone, Google Play has 2.6 million apps and Apple’s App Store has over 2.2 million apps.

Developing a mobile app involves focus and being adaptable because of many emerging trends that you have to pay attention to. One thing to be aware of is if your customers do not see the appeal in the app, it would not be worth the effort.

Then, how do I build my Mobile Application that has the appeal and becomes the next killer app? Well, read on to know which mistakes you should avoid when creating the next big thing.

Including Everything

Most brands want developers to include everything from their website on their mobile app. Mobile apps should be developed with streamlining in mind. You use an app to quickly do a task which takes longer on the website or the mobile browser. You have to identify the uses early in the app development phase.

Identifying users is not only going to cut it, you have to ascertain what users want in your mobile application. Making a mobile app of your website or product with features that are not going to be used is plain foolishness. Mobile Application Development involves implementing user feedback and providing customer satisfaction.

Identifying End-User Use Cases

While developing a mobile app, make sure you understand the use cases of your users. Are you explicitly catering to their needs, or just developing another app to engage with your users. Conduct surveys and understand their requirements, what features they want, how to engage them, and what will lead to regular use of your app.

When you develop a mobile app for your clients, you should identify your user’s uses. Most of the time, developers just replicate the website’s experience into the app. This is a big blunder as the mobile user experience is always different. The important point is to know how users are going to use your mobile app on smaller screen size and platform.

Inadequate & Insufficient Testing

Testing your mobile app before launching is important in Mobile Application Development. You have to have regular tests carried out. Regular testing allows you to correct most flaws in the beta stage itself. Regular testing takes up a whole lot effort and time. Most clients in an effort to launch quickly skip this step, and this ultimately leads to severe issues.

Over 6,000 Google Play apps are released daily. It is a very competitive market for releasing your app in that mix and making people download and use it. The quality of an app is critical because of its representation. Ensuring that the app is not unsatisfactory and has been extensively tested ensures positive brand development.

Each year, mobile app users steadily get improvements. This ensures product quality and consistency across the board. Previous quality levels that were believed to be acceptable are now unacceptable. This especially holds true for paid content or paid apps.

Instead of having your team do the testing, try to have a testing group outside of your development team. This allows for use case, user experience, usability, and unbiased testing. The costs of testing out the app are less if you are able to find users who are willing to test it.

Disregard for Marketing

By neglecting to do product promotion early results in nobody knowing about your app. You have to start thinking about publicity long before you launch the app publicly. You have to attract users and also work out the cost of this attraction. The number of mobile apps on Google Play and the App Store far exceeds 4 million combined.

You can also have to do pre-marketing as well. You should start with landing pages to get users acquainted with your app and its concept and other elements. This helps create buzz and mystery surrounding your brand leading to curiosity about your app. You need to build the buzz, curiosity, and mystery surrounding your app before launch to make it viral.

Multi-Platform Development

Android, Blackberry, iOS, or Windows: Which platform do you want to create your mobile app for?

It’s alluring to reach as many users as possible by creating your app on every available platform out there. The sad truth is nearly all apps are modified as users start using them. User usage give rise to feedback and the app undergoes significant changes. You should develop for one platform, launch it, gather feedback, improve and then move on to other platforms.

The mobile market has only two champions currently – Android and Apple. You have minuscule players in the mix – Blackberry OS and Windows Phone. There are countries where Blackberry OS or Windows Phone have captured market share. To target these countries, you would want to develop an Android app and a Windows Phone app as well.

Always consider target audience, monetization model, development costs, technical features, and future prospects while developing an app.

Just ‘Cause …

Imitation is the best compliment, but is also the best way to ruin your amazing mobile project. Before creating a mobile app, consider how it helps your brand/business/client and the purpose of the app. Things working well for your competitors won’t necessarily do the same for you.

By being deeply immersed, you cross from inspiration to plagiarism. Nevertheless, you should take separate components and remake them to suit your app’s needs. This holds true for trends also. Being new doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. Your app doesn’t necessarily have to be groundbreaking; it can be just convenient to start with.

Do not develop an app just because your competitor has one and is very popular on the mobile scene. It is not necessary what worked for them will work for you.

Not Using the Right Tools & Tech

Mobile Application Development involves the use of the latest tools that you have at your disposal. This necessarily shouldn’t meaning putting all your money to procure the latest designs or development tools. You should invest in the latest tech or tools that improve upon the development process.

You do not want to be seen as being in the Dark Ages. In other words, don’t hold yourself back by using Notepad for coding or Adobe CS2. You also have to update yourself to the latest techniques. It might be the best mobile killer app concept, but not using the latest tech and right tools will make it fail.

Impossible Deadlines

You do not want to set-up for failure by setting an impossible deadline. Don’t let your pride come in the way of a great app and set up an impossible deadline. It would be prudent to take time, plan, develop, gather feedback, implement it, and then launch a well-rounded product. It is best to be cautious even if the client pushes back to launch quickly.

On a side note, an example of an aggressive deadline disaster was the launch of the E.T. video game. It was done in a record five weeks, but became the worst game of all time. You might think you can develop a complete product in a short time, it’s better to give yourself some room.

No Clear Device Strategy

While developing mobile apps, developers apply the same design and work principles of a websites or web-based apps. Mobile apps are totally different from websites or web-based apps. Websites or web-based apps are designed for a larger screen size. Mobile users are always on the move and they also have smaller screen sizes. While developing your app you need to keep this in mind.

Mobile Application Development should be based on device range, operating systems, versions, updates, mobile carriers, battery and memory usage. Users could use apps while eating, doing sports, working, traveling, etc. One should keep these things in mind while developing a mobile app leading to a much more useful app.

Custom Integration

An apps’ User Interface (UI) is important, but functionality and integration are also required. There is no use of developing a mobile app if there is no functionality or the ability to integrate with other apps. UI is the first thing users see, but after that functionality and integration take center stage. The main of your app should be to not only look beautiful, but also to provide the necessary functionality.

One of the ways you can integrate with other apps and provide more functionality is by using APIs. APIs form an integral part of any development process and allows for software to request and provide information to-and-fro from other apps.

Remember, there’s only a limited set of functions an app can do on its own and for others it has to integrate with others. By not making use of APIs, you are setting-up your app to fail even before it launches.

Take aways

The above-mentioned mistakes are just some of the common ones and are not an all-encompassing list. Some of them are basic mistakes, and we suggest starting your Mobile Application Development with a comprehensive and detailed plan in place.

Importantly, always have a clear purpose and keep user needs at the forefront of your app development process. Be clear on the “who” and “why” to develop a truly viral mobile app.

Velan creates successful mobile apps by complying with very a rugged development and testing process. Contact us today to see how we can solve your mobile app development requirements.