How to Create an App

The app market is robust, to say the least. If you have any pain point in your life that can be solved by technology, you’re bound to find an app that tries to alleviate it.

High saturation, though, doesn’t mean high quality. There’s always room for more effective and efficient apps that address different niche markets. Even apps in larger spaces could use some competition.

There are plenty of ideas out there waiting to be discovered. What’s something that would add value to your or someone else’s life? If you know how to create an app, it will put you ahead of your competition and communicate that you’re a mobile-first company.

Emarketer estimates, “that US adults will spend, on average, more than 4 hours with mobile internet, with 88% of that time within apps. The app percentage continues to increase year over year.”

Mobile apps help boost brand recognition in many ways. According to the app development agency, Glance, “A great brand-centric e-commerce app not only makes it easy for your customers to shop but also provides another channel for building your brand.”

You’ll need to know how to develop an app that stands out and adds value to its users.

For example, in 2015, a company launched a personal safety app where friends could virtually walk you home at night. One app helps you keep score in multiplayer games that don’t have in-game trackers. Another app with over 13K ratings in the app store lets you identify and care for your plants by taking pictures of them. It’s “a new way of taking care of plants,” according to their App Store description. You can even track your plant’s growth and condition. Perfect for those with less than green thumbs.

Many new ideas are simply a combination of existing apps that are made better. Discover the pain point, niche or branding opportunity, and bring your idea to life.

Where to start when you want to build an app

Identify ideas and user needs

Start by examining your app idea. The truth is many ideas never make it to the market and several of the ones that do, fail. That is why the ideation process is crucial.

Your app idea is likely to be comparable to other apps already out there. That isn’t necessarily an issue. What you need to focus on is creating an app that adds value in a more significant way than your competitors do.

The initial stage of creative development is where your idea is refined and validated. You do not want to build an app under false assumptions. Examine industry trends and ask yourself: does my app solve the issue at hand in a tactical and user-friendly way?

How does your app impact a particular problem that users are struggling with? Almost any business within every niche can benefit from offering an app. This isn’t to say you should create an app for the sake of creating an app. Your goal is to develop something that’s value-driven and meaningful to your clients.

Make the idea tangible. Put pen to paper and sketch out your app’s main features.

Define your app’s goal and unique value proposition (UVP)

You need to define your unique value proposition (UVP). Business2community emphasizes that a UVP should explain how your product solves problems and benefits users. “Your UVP needs to convince customers to choose your product over other available options. Your UVP should be the first thing customers see when they visit your website or social media pages. When you’re analyzing the competition, look for their UVP to understand the value they’re offering with their product.”

Define your goal and who you want to reach. Who is the ideal customer profile (ICP)? According to Propeller, “Your ideal customer is specific to your goal and your offering, and your ICP represents the type of customer you want to focus on acquiring over a set time frame.”

Are you able to explain the vision for your app in one simple sentence?

Create a mobile app or web service that really works for your business and serves your customers.

Conduct competitive market research

When you’ve defined your idea and UVP, move on to competitive research. This is a way of uncovering your competition’s strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout the research process, it’s important that you realize what your app’s strengths and weaknesses are as well.

Code with Chris recommends competitive market research before diving into app development. Completing market research will inform your decisions when you start building the app. Chris says the key to market research is discovering how other apps are meeting the need you are looking to fill.

One way to strategically perform competitive market research is by creating an Excel spreadsheet where you note the following about competing apps:

App name – This one is self-explanatory. Identify the competing app’s name.

Feature set – Make note of core features of the competing app, features that are unique to each app and features you think are missing that should be incorporated.

Price/monetization scheme – Note the price point and subscription models. Do the competing apps use in-app purchases, ads, or a one-time download fee? If you can find customer feedback in the review section on how users are responding to the monetization scheme, this can help inform you how you will charge for your app.

Keywords – If other companies use the same keywords as your own, you’ll most likely be competing for your users’ attention. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to conduct keyword research. Think of long-tail keywords that might be easier to rank for than popular broad terms.

You can conduct purpose-driven keyword research by testing user queries that you think are relevant to the issue your app aims to solve. Think back to your carefully defined UVP and formulate queries based on that. Check different variations of your keyword when you’re searching in Google. Investigate the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and note long-tail keywords that you can run through keyword tools to identify strength and ranking.

Here is an example of a query for keyword research based on exploring competing fitness apps:
This SERP gives you an idea of possible long-tail keywords that users are searching for when trying to find ways to get in shape.

App publisher – Find out who you’re up against. Is it a company, and if so, how large is the business and what type of budget might they have at their disposal? This could impact how you choose to angel your app’s marketing. If you’re trying to compete with a Goliath, it’s worth figuring out how your app will outshine your competitor’s features. To locate the publisher, open the App Store and click on the app you want to investigate. Scroll down to the “information” section and you’ll see the seller’s name or company. At the bottom, you’ll see a link to “developer website.”

Last updated – How well is the developer maintaining the app? If it’s seldom updated, there might be an opportunity for you to become a real competitor. Scroll to the “what’s new” section and click on “version history” on the right-hand side. You’ll be able to see all updates by the app developer.
Ratings and Reviews – Go through ratings and reviews and note positive and negative feedback. What are some of the user’s major likes and dislikes about the app? Download the app for yourself and navigate through to see how you’ll want to create an app that’s an improved version of what’s already out there.

To see which apps are popular around the world and how they rank, SimilarWeb offers a free tool where you can see how apps are ranking in the Apple App Store and Google play store.

Downloads – Tools like SensorTower give you an estimation of app downloads. Simply type in the app’s name and you’ll get an estimate of downloads, key metrics and keywords.
Learn how to classify your app

It’s important to establish where your app fits in the app world at large.

App development company DuckMa divides apps into six major categories:

1. Lifestyle mobile apps: fitness, dating, food, music, travel (example of apps: Uber, Spotify, Sweat)
2. Social media mobile apps: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat
3. Utility mobile apps: Reminders, calculator, flashlight, weather
4. Games/Entertainment mobile apps: Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Subway Surfer
5. Productivity mobile apps: Docs, Sheets, Wallet/Pay
6. News/Information outlets mobile apps: Buzzfeed, Smartnews, Yahoo News Digest, Reddit

Your app may fall into one of these categories and determining which one is a crucial step in your app development process.

Align your app with your brand

“Customers now expect an instantly accessible, easy-to-use mobile app to facilitate their needs,” according to Adjust.

If your aim is to create an app for your business, the objective should be to promote your brand and give your customers the best possible user experience. People are more likely to be loyal to an app that provides them with interesting engaging content.

The visuals of the app should mirror your business to ensure brand identity is intact. Branded apps can also help drive customer loyalty and user engagement long term. Consider what drives customer conversion and why your app is valuable to your consumers.

Branded apps don’t always have to be about monetization. A great example of this is the guitar brand Fender. Their free guitar tuning app is more focused on brand loyalty than making a profit on the actual app.
Gather early-stage feedback

Trial and error is a great way to develop an app that your customers are going to love.

Author Eric Ries, explores the term, Minimal Viable Product (MVP) in his book, The Lean Startup. The premise of MVP is that you create a product that is the most straightforward version of your app. This gives you a great opportunity to observe how customers interact with your product instead of just asking them hypothetical questions about it. The feedback you receive will be more helpful as you move forward with your app development.

Reinder de Vries on Learn App Making, advises that you’ll want the app to be as lean and mean as possible. “When you focus on what matters most, you speed up your app development process and make your app more resilient against setbacks.”

To effectively use MVP, you create a hypothesis of your customer need and how your app fulfills that need. The next step is to offer something to the users to understand if they’ll use your app to meet that need. Once you’ve gathered the information from this research, you’ll have a better understanding of what you need to work on, and which features to keep or discard.

Identify the overall goal and strategy of your app idea – what will the user be able to accomplish in the app? Glance states, “Having an app will also help to drive engagement and create more loyal customers in the long run.”

Create your “elevator pitch”

Deconstruct your idea and practice that elevator pitch. You’ll want to make sure you know how to clearly convey your app’s purpose. When you’ve outlined your idea and crafted a concise pitch it’s time to gather feedback. Focus on receiving unfiltered, honest feedback from as many people as possible. Ask friends, neighbors, strangers on the internet and the barista at your favorite café.

How will your app make money? Choosing your monetization strategy

Think about how you will monetize the app.

If your app is focused on promoting your existing business with a mobile solution, app monetization isn’t the most important thing. Rather, your app’s function is to be a channel for distribution of services and products.

If you do not fall into this category, app monetization is important to discuss, because this is how your app is going to create revenue.

• Paid apps – Up-front, pay to download apps
• Subscriptions – Recurring monthly or annual subscription payments
• Freemium – Free-to-download with in-app purchases
• Paymium model – The user is required to pay for the download and can upgrade within the app with in-app purchases

(These monetization strategies are discussed in more detail in our blog on exploring how to find apps for sale.)

You also have to decide on a price point. According to Statista, “In March 2021, it was found that the average price of an iOS gaming app in the Apple App Store was 49 cents. The average price of apps and games was 0.82 U.S. dollars.”

They also note that, according to mobile app developers and publishers, the majority of apps are free to download.

App developers, Topflight, also describe in-depth the pros and cons of the different monetization strategies.

When deciding on a price point Startup VC Fred Wilson describes a way to calculate your price elasticity. “In its simplest terms, the lower the price of something the more demand there usually is for it. But every product and service has its own elasticity curve and it is important to understand what the price elasticity is of your product or service.”

Due to Apple’s iOS update developers who have built apps that rely heavily on customer data need to rethink their strategy. Moving forward with app development this update is significant as you’ll need the user’s consent to gather data and track them while they use your app. It’s certainly something software developers should keep in mind whenever creating a new app for the Apple App Store.

The process to create your app

Decide on a development approach

First, decide your development approach. There are four key approaches when building out an app:

Native app development – This is designed for one specific platform or system. You can’t use a native app made for a particular device, like iOS or Android, interchangeably. In other words, an iOS app will not work on any other device than an iPhone. These types of apps tend to be high-performing because they are optimized for a specific platform and access a range of APIs that puts no limits on app use.

According to Medium, “This comes at a cost with longer development time as apps need to be designed and developed for each platform, leading to higher development costs.”

React-Native app development – React-Native is written in JavaScript and converts this code into native iOS and Android modules. Medium states that “device functionality isn’t fully exposed to react-native so it will be worth researching to ensure that the required functionality, now and in the future is available.”

Hybrid app development – As the name suggests, is a mix of a native and a web app. This type of app supports both technologies. If a hybrid app doesn’t need support from a database, the app can work offline. However, it’s important to note that hybrid apps are sometimes lower performing than native or web-based apps.

Progressive web app development – Medium explains Progressive web applications as apps that, “use modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users, but it is not a mobile application in the strictest sense. Compared to the other two approaches, progressive web applications are faster to build, easy to maintain and they can extend across browsers (desktop, tablet and mobile) and be installed as applications onto mobile devices.”

When choosing an app development approach, you should consider cost, your business model and what your capabilities are (if you’re not outsourcing). Think about the pros and cons, and what your ultimate goals are.

(Learn more about app valuation and how to build, value and sell an app.)

Know the basics of Swift (for iOS) and/or Java (for Android)

Before you start the building process you should create a model of what your app is going to look like and how your users will navigate it. Create a mockup, a rough sketch, of your app’s layout, user interfaces (UIs) and flow. Tools like Balsamiq offers a mockup feature where you can create a rough draft of your app.

“A mockup should also describe the flow and interactions of your app. What happens when you tap on that button? How do you get from screen A to screen B? What is the navigation flow of your app?” Smartym, suggests thinking about specific features to implement while you’re in the app development stage. “A mobile app can be designed with a lot of fancy functions, based on advanced gestures as ‘tap’, ‘swipe’, ‘drag’, ‘pinch’, ‘hold’, and more. For example, using a ‘swipe’ an app can let users move to the next or previous step.”

Also, in this stage of app development, consider the two major platforms for app distribution – Google Play Store and Apple App Store – and which one you’ll focus on, if not both.

“Each platform has its own unique characteristics. It’s a good idea to be clear about the platform you want to target. This is determined by the audience you are targeting. The best thing, however, is to launch your app on both platforms. Launching on both platforms, “lets you cater to a wider audience and eventually earn more,” states Appy Pie.

Building an iOS app

Swift is a programming language created by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. According to Apple, “Swift is a fast and efficient language that provides real-time feedback and can be seamlessly incorporated into the existing Objective-C code. So, developers can write safer, more reliable code, save time, and create even richer app experiences.”

Developers can incorporate Swift into their apps and can build apps entirely in Swift.

You can also use Xcode 12, which is a Mac app used to build iOS apps. Apple states that it has all the tools to create amazing apps and is available to download for free in the Mac App Store. Other features include “multiplatform app templates set up new projects to easily share code among iOS, iPadOS, and macOS using SwiftUI and the new lifecycle APIs.”

Xcode 12 also includes Swift 5.3 and SDKs for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, tvOS 14, watchOS 7, and macOS Big Sur.

Building an Android app

Java is one of the most popular programming languages for mobile development and is free to download. If you’re not an experienced developer, but want to understand more of the coding process there are several tutorials and resources to help you build your first Android app in Java

Free ways to create an app: Open-source mobile app development tools

There are also open-source development tools that you can explore to start building your mobile app:

• Appy Pie’s app builder
• Alpha Software’s free app builder
• Clutch – list of best app builders in 2021
• Guru 99’s 30 best mobile app development tools

Hiring a developer to build your app

If you do not have the technical expertise to develop your project, there are a surplus of options to hire capable developers. Companies like Koombea offer end-to-end application development and cover product strategy and planning, UX/UI design, native iOS & Android app development and backend server and architecture buildout. They also offer advice on key questions to ask an app developer before you hire them.

Chetu is another option that offers custom mobile app development services and solutions.

Design and test features

You’ll need to decide on specifics like app name, color scheme and app design. App builders like Appy Pie offer services where you can create your app when you’ve made your choices on the creative aspects of your app.

When you’re thinking of the specifics of your app you will need to decide the features. Finding the right features for your app is key to creating a successful app. No matter how brilliant your idea is, or how beautiful your app looks if it doesn’t have the right features to help your customers complete the actions you want them to take, there is not much of a point to it all, according to Appy Pie.

Finally, testing is a critical aspect of how to develop an app. When you build your own app, you need to spend some time diligently testing it.

“When an untested app goes live and is infested with bugs it suffers through countless crashes which may have been avoided altogether,” warns Appy Pie.

How to get your app into the Apple App Store and Google Play Store

Apple App Store

To submit your app for Apple’s approval you’ll need to enroll in their Developer program. Your app will have to abide by Apple’s App Review and Human Interface Guidelines. It’s worth looking into these guidelines early in your app development process to make sure your app complies with Apple’s standards.

Apple also recommends you familiarize yourself with the App Store Review Guidelines and Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

You should also note that your app needs to comply with Apple’s design requirements; Human Interface Guidelines.

Google Play Store

To get your app into the Google Play Store you’ll create a Google Play developer account. After you’ve created your account, you can create apps and set them up using Play Console.

Google recommends using Google Play’s publishing format, the Android App Bundle when building your app. Starting August 2021, new apps will be required to publish with the Android App Bundle on Google Play.

The key component to your app’s success

Creating an app is no simple task. There is an array of decisions to reflect on.

The most impactful, and the most challenging, component will be discovering that creative idea.

When it comes to learning to develop an app the possibilities are infinite. Your main strength will be your ability to adjust to the market and stay open-minded throughout the process.

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