How To Create An App

How To Create An App

How To Create An App

How To Create An App: Creating mobile apps is a very viable way to generate wealth in this fast-paced and ever-evolving world of ICT.

If you’re not a developer, you’re probably looking at this money-making idea and feeling a bit stuck. We understand. Fortunately, though, you can hire someone with programming skills to build an app for you. Sites like Toptal will connect you with plenty of app developers who are open to working with entrepreneurs to turn their vision into reality.

All you have to do is come up with a unique app idea, identify the audience you want to target and create a brand image for your product. The programmer you hire will take care of things on the development front.

When it comes to making money on your app, your best bet will be to add it to Google Play and the App Store. And while it may seem counterintuitive, having a free app can help you make more than a paid app. With a free app, you can add ads or premium features to help you make money. Since the free app will attract a higher volume of people, it’ll be easier for you to upsell them.

It’s no secret that the world has gone mobile. We’re living in an era where our smartphones are within arm’s reach at all times, day or night. What’s everyone doing on those devices? Using mobile apps. The potential use cases for mobile apps are seemingly endless.

From small business apps to eCommerce apps, fitness apps, internal employee communication apps, religious apps, and more—there’s an app for anything you can imagine. Apps can be developed as an extension of your existing business or used to create new business from scratch. Whether you want to develop an app for your business or build the next Uber, this guide is for anyone who wants to create a mobile app.

What’s the Best Way to Build an App?

Generally speaking, there is no single app development method that’s best for everyone. It all depends on your needs, budget, app type, industry, and lots of other factors.

If you’re building a gaming app or something along those lines, native development will be your best option. If you’re making an app as a hobby or just doing it for personal use, you can probably get away with a cookie-cutter app.

How Long Does it Take to Build a Mobile App?

The time it takes to build an app is based on a wide range of factors. The type of app you’re making, the complexity of its features, and the development method are three of the most critical elements in estimating your timeline.

Some apps can be built in a few months, while others can take years. Generally speaking, the majority of mobile apps can be developed in about 6-12 months.

How Much Does it Cost to Make an App?

You can build an app for $2,000, $20,000, $200,000, or upwards of $2 million. The cost to create a mobile app is based on multiple factors. The type of app you’re building, the features you’re implementing, and the development method will have the most significant impact on the price.

An app development platform is cheaper than low-level coding. Experienced developers in the US might charge $150 per hour, whereas a first-time developer working overseas might cost $30 per hour. The cost will rise as you continue adding features, functionality, and complexity to the app.

Is it Better to Build iOS Apps or Android Apps?

The quick answer—it’s best to build an app for both platforms. If you create an app for one and not the other, you’re neglecting a significant part of the population.

How to Create an App:

While it’s tempting to start building right away, there are certain steps you need to take before development begins. These steps are critical to the success of your app, so don’t skip over them.

1. Coming Up With an Idea For Your App:
Before you get started, you need to make sure you have a viable app idea. When you think about the millions of apps on the market, this step could feel a bit intimidating. But you don’t actually need the idea to be 100% original. Lots of great apps are variations of existing ideas.

Whatever the idea might be, you must ensure that your app is actually solving a problem. Then you need to make sure that someone else isn’t already doing what you want. If they are, you’ll have to come up with differentiators that separate your idea from the competition.

It’s also worth noting that not every idea needs to be an invention or new concept. Lots of apps are just an extension of an existing business. If you have an eCommerce website, you can create an app that improves the way your customers shop from mobile devices. If you have a barbershop or nail salon, you can create an app that enhances client bookings, appointment management, and deposits.

2. Define Your Goals:
The app development process must start with clearly defined goals. What are you setting out to achieve? What problems are you trying to solve?

Your goals will ultimately establish your entire development process. If these aren’t clearly defined from the beginning, it’s easy to get lost along the way once you start developing your own app. Don’t just set any goals—set measurable goals. Since app development is virtually limitless, it might be enticing to add features, bells, and whistles that aren’t mission-critical to your goal.

3. Conduct Market Research:

Once you’ve established your goals, you need to make sure that there’s a market need for your app. Every app idea sounds good in theory, but you need to validate your idea before you proceed.

Creating an app without market research could result in a valuable waste of your time, money, and resources.

– Create surveys
– Conduct interviews
– Run a focus group
– Research your competition
– Figure out how to create an app that improves the customer experience

If your app is an extension of your existing business, you can use your current customers as a resource for this research. If the app is for a completely new idea, you’ll need to connect with prospective users that fit your target audience.

4. Decide Your App Features:

Think about your app’s core functionality. That’s where the features should be focused. Lots of people are tempted to add extra and unnecessary features to an app. But some features take away from your app’s primary purpose. Each feature add-on also adds to the cost and development timeline.

Examples of popular app features include:

– Push notifications
– Community wall
– GPS capabilities
– Surveys and questionnaires
– Video, image, and audio hubs
– Booking Capabilities
– Calendar integrations
– Ecommerce carts
– Menu ordering system
– Customer loyalty
– User directory

Simplicity is the most important aspect of these early development stages. If your app’s primary function doesn’t require the user’s exact location, you can skip the GPS feature.

5. Create a Wireframe:

A wireframe is essentially a rough layout of your mobile app. It doesn’t have to be too formal either, and you don’t need to worry about your app’s graphic design just yet. You can create a wireframe on a piece of paper, a whiteboard, napkin, or use a digital wireframing tool.

The purpose of the wireframe is to simply illustrate the app’s features and lay out the schemes. This tool isn’t meant to be a one-to-one relationship of how the final app will actually look. Instead, the focus of your wireframe should be on structure and flow.

6. Choose Your Development Method:

There are lots of different ways to build an app. Before you start to create an app, you’ll need to determine which method is the best for your unique situation. The best option for me might not be the best option for you. Choosing the right method is based on factors like your budget, technical skill level, app type, and time to market.

7. Research Existing Solutions:

The final step you need to take in the pre-development process is researching existing solutions. Before you waste valuable time and resources figuring out how to build an app and other components from scratch, it’s always a great idea to check to see if that solution is already available on the market.

In terms of app development, there are services to accomplish standard functionalities that every app needs. We are referring to solutions for things like infrastructure, hosting, design, analytics, and push notifications.

8. Technical Specification:

Take the wireframes that you created during the pre-development process and use them to create a “tech spec.” These are the inner workings behind the scenes of your app that nobody sees. Sometimes, it makes sense to logistically change things around because it will save you lots of time and money.

9. Set Measurable Milestones:

Setting milestones will help keep you and your team on track during the app-making process. Without benchmarks, you’ll have no way to track your progress. The idea here is to separate your massive development project into smaller chunks. It’s much easier to chip away at lots of smaller projects than to look at one huge project from start to finish.

Each small app project should be completed within a specified timeframe. Depending on the complexity of the task, this could range anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. You can measure your progress against this timeline of milestones to ensure that you and your development team are hitting deadlines.

10. Create an MVP:

As you start building the app, you should always be developing an MVP—a minimum viable product. The app idea behind an MVP is that it forces you to think about your app’s most essential features. This is an important aspect of the app project on the path to creating a successful app.

What does your app actually need to function? Build those features first, then worry about everything else.

App development is virtually limitless. It’s easy to get distracted during the building process and lose sight of your goals. A month or two into the project, it’s easy to say “let’s add this feature” or “wouldn’t it be cool if the app could do this?”

Those notions will only add time and money to your project. They can even take away from the core functionality of your app.

11. Quality Assurance:

Once your MVP is finished, and you have a working app, you need to test it before deployment. The app must be tested on actual mobile platforms. There are many different ways your app can be used, so the quality assurance person will have to check on everything.

Between iPhones, iPads, Android devices, PWA, smartphones, tablets, and more, you have your work cut out. Make sure the app works online, offline, and so on. Devices with different software versions or screen sizes might have issues that aren’t found elsewhere.

So don’t just test the app once on your phone and assume that it’s working correctly. As a first-time app builder, you might question the QA process. Do you really need to pay someone to test your app? Shouldn’t an app developer be able to create an app without any bugs in the code?

12. Deploy:

It’s time to get your app live and into the hands of actual users. Your primary focus right now needs to be uptime and visibility. Make sure that the application is fully functional for the end-user. You don’t want your servers to crash or something like that.

To get your app to market, you need to submit it to the different app stores. There are various requirements for Google Play Store apps and Apple App Store apps. So you must understand all of the different submission guidelines before you go through this process.

The process of deploying your app will vary depending on the development method you choose, which we discussed earlier in the pre-development section of this guide.

Post Launch
So you’ve learned how to build an app; that’s great! But the mobile app development process isn’t over once the app has been deployed. There’s still plenty of work to be done after you’ve launched.

Make sure that you plan accordingly for the post-launch steps, and don’t blow your entire budget during development.

Marketing Your App
Your app is a business; treat it accordingly. Would you launch a new business without any promotion? Obviously not.

You could have the best app on the planet, but your efforts won’t matter if nobody knows about it. Your app must be marketed appropriately to get some eyeballs on it and pique user interest.

Start by driving visitors to your website and app. Visitors become app installs. App installs become paid members.

Make sure you have a digital presence on as many marketing platforms as possible. Prioritize the channels where your user base spends the most time. Promote your app on social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you’re targeting a younger generation, you can even promote the app on Snapchat and TikTok.
Create video promotions and app demonstrations. Upload those videos to YouTube. You can always repurpose those videos on other distribution channels.

Ask For User Feedback
Always get feedback from your users.

Prior to your first launch, you probably did some research or asked some friends for their opinions. However, most of this was based on your own intuition. But once you’ve deployed it for the first time, you’ll have real customers using the app. Ask them what they think about it. As much as you hate hearing this, at the end of the day, your opinion doesn’t matter—it’s all about your customers and users.

Don’t be shy—customers like being asked about their thoughts. People who don’t want to weigh in won’t care if you ask. They’ll just ignore you. It’s not like they’re going to be annoyed.

How Do You Make Money With an App?

There are lots of different ways to make money with an app.

For starters, you can use a mobile app to generate more revenue for your business. Mobile commerce sales, customer loyalty programs, and referral programs are all excellent ways to make money.

You can also make money by charging app users a one-time fee to download your app. App purchases for things like coins or content upgrades are both common ways to profit from your app. Alternatively, charging app users for a subscription on a monthly or annual basis is a great way to generate recurring revenue. Another way to monetize your app is by selling advertising space. It’s the same concept as running ads on your website.

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