In a mobile-first user-centric journey made by businesses, it is essential that your business does not delay the launch of your very first mobile app. With users spending more time on apps, it is critical for you to develop an UI/UX that takes the user’s app behavior into consideration. Apart from that, you will need to phase your entire mobile app development, for agile and flexible development process. However, the most important of them all is to avoid making a few mistakes while planning your journey, or mapping your plan into reality.
Here we will discuss a few mistakes that you might make during app development, and how best to avoid them.
1. NEGLECTING MARKET RESEARCH
With an increase in competition in this space, market research has become even more important. The customer has been spoilt for choices, with the wide range of offerings and app solutions. Failing to work on market research will make you just another app on the play store, which means you are neither downloaded nor do you reach the top charts. If you have an app idea, you should ideally start with research to understand the apps that are available and the gaps that are present. The results will help you define an apt solution for your business, which will attract attention.
2. IGNORING THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Many of you release the Beta version, check on a few bugs that have been initiated along with it, and then test to release the final version. How many of you actually incorporate the customer feedback given to you at this point? You pay heavily with lowered conversions, when you ignore the customer feedback. They will tell you exactly what’s missing in your application, and how you can make it better. Hear out the feedback, think through the suggestions, and incorporate the ones that you feel will actually improve your app’s usage and usability. It is important to have customers on-board, if you want to generate revenue.
3. LITTLE TO NO EFFORT IN ASO
Heard of App Store Optimization? Most people ignore the fact that it is a continually evolving process. Most businesses that have developed an app believe the app store optimization is a one-time process, and does not involve any more efforts that that. However, it is wrong! You will need to work on the new keywords, keep a tab on different ways to optimize by studying the competition and your own industry, which requires both time and resources. Make sure you have set aside people and money for ASO.
4. NO PRE-LAUNCH PROMOTIONS
A few apps can easily build their customer base before the actual launch. However, most businesses tend to ignore this part, and then have to wait for a whole year before they have enough customers on-board. This leads to wastage of marketing resources and even wastage of money. In many cases, your competitors are already leading the market, while you are still in the customer acquisition phase. Don’t make this mistake! Instead, start working on marketing the product while in the development phase. Get people on-board. This way you would have real people to test your product before the final launch. Focus on a broader range of marketing capabilities to get more people to your app.
5. FAILING WITH THE UI
Oh yes! Most businesses getting their app developed fail in this segment. The biggest mistake is to develop a UI that you believe is usable. You don’t take into consideration what the user wants, have not studied their app behavior or, have not really put in efforts to know how they hold their devices. You don’t even know why they spend so much time using a particular app. Ignoring all these aspects will get you a UI that is definitely usable, because you have studied the particulars of UI but, not a user-friendly one as you don’t know your users. Instead of working on the UI, work on the experience and the users needs to get the UI right. Involve the users, and lay your UI strategy around them. That’s what user centric means after all.
6. NO MARKETING STRATEGY
This is another mistake that you can make- having no marketing strategy or having a poorly defined marketing strategy. Marketing is an important aspect of getting your app to the customers; however, most of you pay little to no attention to this aspect, thus leading to failure of the app. A pre-launch strategy combined with launch phase strategy and post launch strategy is a must for the app. You need to draw the customers towards you in each of the phases mentioned and there should be a roadmap that the marketers can follow.
7. IRREGULARITY IN THE UPDATES
You get to see a new OS version or an update in the OS or phone every few months. Your app should be compatible with these new updates made, in order to keep the customer loyal to your app. However, most businesses fail to update their apps regularly, which means these apps don’t work with most Operating Systems or the newer phones. There are no patches set for the bugs that are still present in the apps. This mistake of not updating the apps regularly needs to stop. Else, you will no longer have any place on the App Store charts. Make your app flexible and scalable to incorporate the changes made in devices and OS.
CONCLUSION
Avoid these 7 mistakes we have stated here, and you are sure to get a good customer base and a solid app released to the market. It is important to invest time and money in testing the app regularly, even after the release of the app, to make sure it is working properly and does not have any issues adapting to newer devices and environment.
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