Mobile Application Development: Process and Tools

Living in the era of digital transformation, we no longer imagine our everyday lives without data and applications for comfortable being. Products and services now have many ways of distribution, and companies understand that smartphone applications would be one of the best ways of interacting with customers. According to Statista, more than $255 billion apps were downloaded in 2022 and this number will increase by at least 30% in 2023. 

In this article we’ll describe the general mobile application development process and tools or services used to ease the way or, vice versa, to add more functions depending on your business’ demands.

Mobile Application Development: Process and Tools

Why Invest In Mobile Software Development

  1. Increase Engagement Rates

Having smartphones as our best business and entertainment tools, we can basically arrange our whole life online nowadays. Having a website for your business, you are approaching your customer 5 steps closer, having a good and functional application for your business, you are approaching your customer 10 steps closer. 

  1. Staff Management 

Discussing different types of apps, we’d like to mention those for the inner team’s management. Big companies wishing to make the workflow as optimized and efficient as possible, develop such platforms. There it’s easy to set tasks, monitor the progress and results, have corporate communication and other features necessary for employee’s working processes. 

  1. Innovation Pioneering 

Unfortunately, mobile platforms for various services are not a wonder or something new, however, the industry is developing rapidly. Then how to express yourself and be worth paying attention to? This approach becomes really popular and pays back quickly when done professionally. Some companies invest money in the new generation apps with innovative features like AI or Machine Learning, Augmented Reality and other capabilities most competitors don’t have on their platforms. 

  1. Revenue Channels 
See also  What is the process of financial software development?

You have a fine business physically located somewhere, you sell online on your website, so why not sell online on your personally-tailored platform, developed with all the features helping customers to get acquainted with what you do and, therefore, buy what you offer? When mastered perfectly, a mobile platform can not only become one more, but the biggest revenue channel. 

Benefits of mobile app development

Mobile Application Development Process: Steps To Be Considered

Let’s say, you are settled with the idea of having a mobile platform for your business, what’s then? We offer a general basic plan of mobile application development steps to make. Thus, having the information of WHY and HOW to develop the application, you can proceed to the action.

Mobile Application Development Process: Steps To Be Considered

Step 1: Developing The Strategy 

To start this mini mobile application development guide, we set the strategy. However this step is a bit boring and we’ve already discussed why to invest in apps previously, we still need to foresee all the objectives that can pop up during the process. A well-planned strategy helps to cover all the doubts and buts and gradually come to results. Questions to consider:

  • How will my business and my customer benefit?
  • What is my platform’s purpose?
  • What audience am I interacting with during the process?
  • Will my platform be competitive enough to stand out?
  • What are the main difficulties related to the development process? 

Step 2: Thorough Planning 

At this stage of the mobile application development process we estimate costs, choose the team, set the requirements, define the timing, bottlenecks, minimum-viable-product launch, etc. A well-skilled mobile development team is hard to find, so we advise you to choose a mobile development vendor carefully. Experts can consult you about the technological stack to use during the process, probably it’s better to use some cross-platform approaches depending on your future app’s initial purpose and functionality. 

Step 3: Interface & Graphics

UI/UX design is an inseparable part of the process which is responsible for delivering an intuitively clear and attractive look to your service. Users should easily adopt all the features and effortlessly adapt to the graphics as well as be engaged and interact with all the user experience components. It should be instantly clear what benefits your potential clients would get or what they would lose not dealing with you. 

See also  Data Execution Prevention

On this step we design the info which will be displayed to users first, their personal data to be collected, create wireframes as low-fidelity mockups, arrange styling according to design standards and color themes, and, finally, get to the interactive prototype. 

Step 4: Initial Development 

Before getting to this step, you should have already defined the architecture, technological stack and milestones of your mobile application development process. Every development project goes through server technology, APIs and front-end development. 

The Back-End creation process is the core engine of your future platform’s functionality, sometimes developers use an existing back-end platform, however, in many cases they create it from scratch. 

API is basically how we interact with the back-end. It’s crucially important to come up with an interface with a well-managed architecture, several layers of encryption for fast and secure data exchanges.

Front-End is a combination of what the user sees and feels while interacting with an application. Unlike back-end developers, front-end ones make the app accessible and convenient to interact with from the “surface”.

Step 5: Quality Assurance 

Every software released needs to be thoroughly tested to make sure it will work stably, securely and comprehensively in the future. A team of software testers of different qualifications check the usability of the product by conducting tests to determine system errors and bugs. Testing process usually includes User-experience, Functional, Performance, Security and Platform testing.

Step 6: Support and Availability 

After your product is tested, you choose a platform to release it on. Thus, you submit an app and make it available to the audience. Make sure to check crash reports, feedback, and arrange a well-qualified client support within the application – this would really show the level of consideration you take about your mobile application development process, product and prospective customers. 

Mobile Development Tools 

Kobiton comes in handy during quality assurance processes, it is able to perform continuous testing and bug-checking in the functional, performance and visual aspects. Supports such technologies as Web, Native and Hybrid and integrates with Figma, Jira, Jenkins, and others. 

See also  Financial software development

Buddy is a great help in effortlessly testing your iOS or Android application services too. Supports such technologies as HTML, TypeScript, AngularJS, offers various analytics tools, and integrates with a great number of platforms including Azure, Slack, Datalog, and others. 

Appypie allows you to literally make an app or its prototype without a coding process. User experience analytics is available as well as tools that work with graphics and interface. Besides, some specific options like e-wallet, AR, GPS integration are also available. However, the service is pretty costly, but it’s a good find for those who want to develop apps but don’t have any coding skills.

TenserFlow is an open-source software library for AI, supporting Java, C++. With its help, you’ll be able to integrate artificial intelligence tools into your product and add ML-specific features as well. 

Conclusion 

There will be around $7 billion smartphone users in 2023, an impressive number, right? For those who do business and want to take advantage of smartphone users and make them potential customers, it’s a great opportunity to consider an application development company according to the business specificity and market demand. Make sure to choose a trusted vendor who’s able to assist with your IT initiative with the biggest support and minimal risks, and keep in mind this mobile application development guide. 

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