There’s no shortage of mobile applications on app stores these days. As a result, the competition between businesses of all kinds is as intense as ever. The multiple benefits that a high-quality business app can deliver prompts companies to devote considerable resources towards its development.
For instance, a mobile app can solve various administrative and workload management issues when your employees are on the go. With it, you can streamline office procedures and enable your people to be proactive with their tasks. Of course, a business can only reap such rewards when the app that they’ve built is efficient, responsive, user-friendly, and effective in dealing with the problems it is meant to solve!
Surprisingly, users tend to abandon almost 90% of mobile apps after using them just once. In fact, a study by technological research and consulting firm Gartner reveals that just a couple of mobile apps out of a whopping 10,000 turn out to be successful.
So, is it a case of companies not putting enough thought, effort, and research into their app-building processes? These numbers have certainly left business owners scratching their heads as they try to figure out the right formula for developing a super-successful mobile app.
Creating a Successful Business App
It goes without saying that building an efficient, user-friendly, and successful business app requires plenty of foresight. For starters, your development team needs to be on point with its market research. Being able to understand why so many other apps haven’t been successful and what mistakes by the developers led to their failure is crucial.
A lot can go wrong when you’re trying to build a competitive mobile application. There might be errors in its design, structure, framework, development approach and execution, testing, or marketing. Hence, it’s essential for businesses and their app development teams that they don’t let their energy, hard work, and time go to waste because of simple mistakes that could easily have been avoided with a bit more care.
In this article, we’ll talk about the app development process in detail. There are important do’s and don’ts of the procedure that can help your team stay on track. Read on to learn more about them.
5 DO’s of Building a Successful Business App
Conduct Thorough Research & Be Clear About Your Purpose
Inadequate research and a lack of clarity about the purpose of an app are among the biggest reasons for its failure. A surprisingly high number of businesses don’t do the basics right in this regard. They’re so eager to get the end-product out that the research process is either completed haphazardly or just ignored altogether.
Don’t make this mistake. It’s crucial that you know what you want to achieve with your business app. Nowadays, creating a phone application is the “in thing.” However, you’ll need a bit more than that to develop a popular and successful product. Simply going the business app development route because others are doing so is a recipe for failure.
You need to understand why your venture needs a mobile app. Find out how it can serve your needs and what benefits can it provide to your business. Don’t just start following trends blindly. Discuss the issues and challenges within your business in detail with the top management as well as the developers. Doing so will help you figure out if and why you need a mobile app.
Once you’re clear about this part, your research will automatically be more targeted. You’ll gather information from the right sources and analyze data from relevant market segments. High-quality research would point you in the right direction with regard to your audience and what they’re looking for in a mobile app. Synchronization with your target market should be the goal.
Think About User Needs
Keep in mind that every user of smartphones and other portable digital devices isn’t a tech wizard. It’s sometimes hard for developers to resist the temptation of putting hi-tech features into an app. This tends to make things complicated for the basic user or anyone who isn’t an IT geek.
Don’t forget that user-friendliness is a key component of every successful business app. You need to make your mobile application intuitive, attractive, and engaging enough for the basic user. In short, if your enterprise mobile application doesn’t make things easier for the user, not many of them would bother with it after their initial encounter.
Focus on Eye-Catching Theme & Design
Attractive design and engaging theme are essential elements in any mobile app. To make the user experience memorable, your app needs to have an interesting theme along with eye-catching colors and visuals.
So, pick your color combos carefully. Do some research to find out what works and what doesn’t. In general, unlit and unnecessarily bright shades tend to give the app a gloomy look. Moreover, keep the design consistent from one page/section to the next. Make sure that the images are all high quality while keeping the style minimalistic and the typography strong!
Have a Coherent App Marketing Strategy In Place
Even though mobile is becoming an ever greater concern for businesses, many of them are still struggling to deal with it effectively. One common mistake concerns the marketing aspect. Plenty of organizations fail to devise an effective marketing strategy, which can seriously affect their product’s standing in the industry even if the features, user-friendliness, service quality, and everything else are top-notch.
Hence, you need a comprehensive marketing plan that covers things like purpose, reach, traffic, conversions, etc. Ideas on how to retain older customers and acquire new ones must also be a part of this blueprint. A thorough plan is usually a combination of marketing techniques and mediums such as PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing, social media marketing, public relations, email campaigns, etc.
Prioritize Security
Simply restricting access by making your application unavailable on an open-app network isn’t enough. Your proprietary data and enterprise systems might still be vulnerable to a security breach. Therefore, you’re better off not taking any chances, especially where important corporate info is on the line. Pay due attention to maintaining the security of your business app and make it as strong as any other feature of the product.
5 DON’Ts of Building a Successful Business App
Don’t Add Unnecessary Complexities & Features
Many apps fail because the developers couldn’t resist utilizing all their skills and creating a hi-tech app that’s too complicated for the average user. Whether your team is building something for your own business or a client, it’s important to keep them focused on developing an application for everyone. This usually means catering to the needs of the most basic user.
Don’t Blindly Imitate Other Platforms
One of the worst things you can do when creating a mobile app is to copy or slightly repurpose the structure, style, and framework of another entity. Imitating the theme, style, design, or framework of another business will set you up for failure from the beginning. So, let your creative juices flow and create a unique OS look and feel. Otherwise, your business app won’t even find a respectable place on the stage!
Don’t Go for Too Many Gestures
An app that provides a good user interface and engaging user experience is high on standardization. Customers like seeing regular symbols and gestures for common functions that are easily recognizable. Therefore, you should make it a point to utilize standard gestures, especially for shortcuts.
However, don’t go overboard and load your application up with them. Subtlety is key and less is more. Find the right balance of gestures if you want your product to do well.
Don’t Underestimate Or Ignore Your Customers’ Needs
It’s naïve to start building a mobile app before being fully aware of customer needs. More importantly, you need to understand what problems they need solved. Once you do that, there will be a clear plan and vision for your business app. In this way, everyone would know who it’s for and what issues it’s supposed to solve.
Don’t Rush the Release
Rushing the app release is another common mistake. It’s normal to be excited about your upcoming product and be eager about releasing it as quickly as possible. However, try not to compromise your app’s chances of success by rushing the launch/opening and skipping essential steps.
At times, developers get so excited about their creation that the team ends up launching the app without testing it. Missing such a vital stage is likely to send all your investment and effort down the drain. It is imperative that you take all the time you need to complete the testing and ensure that the application is bug-free and speed-optimized. Don’t leave anything out during the testing phase. Check and double-check everything before giving the go-ahead for the final release.
Final Verdict
The popularity of mobile apps among businesses is continuously growing and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. With so many entities floating their offerings into the market, the competition is intense while user expectations are also becoming more and more stringent. To that end, the do’s and don’ts of building a successful business app mentioned in this piece can help you meet your customers’ demands to the letter. Make sure you adopt these tips and execute them well!