Application development

Steps in App Development: Everything Explained for You

The first query running in the minds of business owners who still do not own any app is "how to get an idea developed into an app?" Amidst all innovations and technological disruptions, what came and stayed are mobile app solutions. In the past years, the world saw an unprecedented rise in the use of mobile apps and that reinforced mobile app development for businesses, individuals, and startups. So, if you still have not made any app for your business, you should rush towards making one before it's late and you start seeing a decrease in sales.

If developing an app is tempting and at the same time intimidating for you, this article will help you. It provides a definitive guide on full-scale app development. Here is explained the step-by-step process of an application development right from an idea. They show the best path to follow for transforming a great app idea into a reality.

In-depth market research and analysis

Every new venture that involves huge investments should commence with solid market research and insightful analysis to prove that its idea will be fruitful for sales. An app's success depends on how many users it can acquire. For that, you need to research the market to find the traits of your target audience (like demographics, user personas, ethnicity), prevailing competition and know trends in the apps store (like which apps become the top-grossing, or top-rated).

Intricate planning

The second stage is about chalking out a detailed plan of the app including everything needed, i.e. features, trademark elements to CTAs and additional features. Planning must start by deciding the goals of the app and user actions required. Subsequently, the app consultants will work to map how everything will look in the app and translate the goals into different tasks.

Wireframing

The next step follows with the design of the app, starting from the icon to its every single page. It's never advised to jump straight into prototype designing. Instead, get a sketch of everything in a paper which is known as wireframing. Wireframe everything of the app, from its layout, onboarding pages, home screen, features/menu view, notification page to CTA buttons and logo in pen and paper. This will help the designers and developers involved in the next stage to know the functionality of the app better, arrange the UI components accordingly and start designing it delicately.

UI designing & Prototyping

After completing the wireframe, the app development proceeds with designing the interface, where the team of designers work on getting the feel and look of the app. They design the interface by analysing the app's entire wireframe, basic architecture, components and user interactions needed in it.

After the mockups of the design are ready, the team needs to get a plan for executing the development of the app with estimates of developers, costs and time. They subsequently need to prepare a clickable prototype with the help of any prototyping tool.

Development

Following the prototyping, the process of actual app development starts with the professionals having inherent programming skills. With a concrete plan for timeline, resources and costs needed, there are least chances of requiring any extra costs in the development. Also, during the process of development, a team monitors and evaluates every phase minutely to identify errors and help developers rectify them immediately. This enhances the speed of the delivery of the final product.

QA and Testing

After full and final development, the app is passed on for quality assessment (QA) to ensure it's completely free of bugs. The QA is conducted through two phases: one is preparatory and the other is functional requirements. While the first phase decides app's targeted devices and future QA needs, the latter phase evaluates all the core functions.

After QA, test documentation is prepared that defines the testing requirements and the number of test devices required. This phase helps in finding out bugs and fixing them before the release.

The development process completes here. But, that does not mean you're done. You need to get an ideal marketing team to plan the launch and promotion of the application all over the web and digital platforms. Besides that, you also need to ensure that the app will perform consistently and never run beyond its users' expectations with all-around support and maintenance services.

Rob Stephen is a techie, writer and iOS app developer at Vision & Solutions, the best iOS app development company in Australia that has successfully delivered 100+ innovative apps for businesses and startups in diverse categories. In his free time, he indulges in writing articles on app development, trends and technologies for others in the industry.