Mobile applications are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4% from 2022 to 2030.
Many companies have set off to take advantage of this factor, but they might not know how to develop a secure and scalable mobile app.
The key to having an application that leads to success and helps your business generate revenue is to hire a company that follows a precise mobile app development process.
An effective mobile app development process consists of six phases. Today in this blog, we will be taking a closer look at these phases.
Irrespective of the type and size of your application, following these six phases to the letter, will make your mobile app development process a success.
Six phases that will make your mobile app development a success
Step 1: Strategising
The first step in the mobile app development process is to create a strategy. This strategy will help us evolve a simple idea into a well-functioning application.
Now, one thing to understand is that the goal of an app may differ from company to company. Hence, there is an application-specific impact to this strategy that must be addressed.
You must also take care of the following factors:
Identifying the application users
Doing thorough market research and analysis of the competition
Identifying and establishing the goals and objectives of the application
Selecting a platform for the application (iOS or Android or Both)
Step 2: Analysing and Planning
This is when your application idea turns into an actual project. The analyzing and planning phase of app development helps us capture the app’s core functionalities and the requirements we need to fulfill those functionalities.
Once we have identified these requirements, it is wise to prepare a roadmap. In this roadmap, we segregate the conditions as per priority and group them into categories and delivery milestones.
The MVP (minimum-viable-product) of your project must be decided after considering these pointers:
Time
Resources
Budget
This phase also demands identifying the skills you need for your application development initiative. For instance, iOS and Android use different tech stacks and development platforms. If you are willing to construct an application that functions on both these platforms, your team must include developers that are experienced in both.
Step 3: UI/UX Design
A good app design = a seamless and perfect user experience.
The success of an application is measured by watching how the users are adapting to it. The primary purpose of mobile app UI / UX design & development is to create excellent user experiences making your application interactive, intuitive, and user-friendly.
Along with a polished UI design that will help with early adoption, your application should also have intuitive user experiences to keep the users engaged.
UI/UX Design includes:
Information architecture and workflow: This step of the mobile app design process includes determining the data that your mobile app will display to the users, the data it will collect, the user interactions, and the user journeys within the application.
Wireframes: Wireframes are like digital sketches of your application. These layouts give visual structures to your application.
Style guides: Style guides document the app’s standard branding rules.
Mockups: Mockups (high-fidelity designs) are the final renders of your app’s design.
Prototype: Once the mockups are done, they are turned into clickable prototypes using Figma and Invision.
Step 4: Development
Thorough planning is integral to the app development process. Before the actual development begins, take care of these things:
Defining the technical architecture of the application
Picking a suitable technology stack
Defining the milestones for development
A mobile app development project consists of three sub-phases:
Back End
The backend includes collecting database and server-side objects necessary for supporting functions of the mobile application.
API
Application Programming Interface (API) defines communication between the app and a back-end server/database.
Front End
The front end is the final native app that the user will use.
Step 5: App Testing
An integral part of the development process is mobile app testing.
Testing the application thoroughly before the launch can help you make your application secure, stable, and usable.
Like how use cases are used to drive mobile app development, test cases are used to conduct mobile app testing.
Test cases involve performing test steps, recording testing results to ensure software quality evaluation, and tracking fixes for retesting.
A good practice is to involve your QA team in all the Analysis and Design stages. Getting familiar with the design will help them create better test cases.
To ensure proper testing and better results, your application must undergo the following tests:
User Experience Testing
Functional Testing
Performance Testing
Security Testing
Device and Platform Testing
Step 6: Deploying The App
Now it is time to launch your application in the market. To do so, you need to submit your app to the Android app store or Apple app store (or both). For this action, you will need a developer account.
During submission of the app, keep the following things ready:
App’s name
Description
The category belongs to (gaming, healthcare, educational, etc.)
Keywords
Launch icon
After submission, your application will go through a review process. Depending on the type and quality of the application, the process may take somewhere between a couple of days to a couple of weeks.
Conclusion
The mobile app development process does not completely end here. There is always constant support, maintenance, and upgrades that your application will keep demanding.