It is essential to have a process flow for app development that includes six distinct stages. We’ll take a deeper look at each of them in this piece. This development approach will ensure that your company’s mobile app development venture is a success, regardless of the size or complexity of your project.

Mobile app stores and in-app advertising are expected to produce $693 billion in income by2021, according to current estimates.

Despite the fact that many businesses are attempting to capitalize on this development, many are still unsure of how to create a successful app. But only a well-maintained mobile app development process can support these growth forecasts and help your company flourish in the competitive industry.

1. Develop a strategy

Determining your plan for turning your idea into an app is the first step in the mobile app development process. To some extent, your entire enterprise mobility strategy may incorporate some or all of this. For this reason, the mobility strategy must account for the unique needs of each app as it is being built.

During this stage, you’ll:

• Recognize the app’s users.
• Analyze the competition.
• Establish the app’s objectives and aims.
• Make a decision about the mobile platform on which your application will run.

Mobile apps typically cost between $150,000 and $200,000 to produce and might take anywhere from four to six months to do so on average. You’ll be able to see your app idea more clearly if you have a plan to implement it. Keeping this in mind will help advance your mobile app development process further.

2. Analytical and Strategic Thinking

This is the stage at which your app concept begins to take shape and develops into a full-fledged project. Use cases and specific functional requirements are the starting points for analysis and planning.

Once you’ve nailed down the needs for your app, put together a product plan. Prioritizing mobile app requirements and combining them into delivery milestones are all part of this process. Because of this, define your MVP and launch it as soon as to ensure you have the time, resources, and money to finish the project.

To begin the planning process, define the abilities you’ll need for your app development project. As an illustration, the development technology stacks used by the iOS and Android mobile platforms differ. iOS and Android app developers should work together if you want to produce a mobile app that works on both operating systems.

Has the name of your app been finalized? Within each app store, mobile app names, like domain names, must be unique. Make sure your app’s name isn’t already in use in each app store.

3. Designing the User Interface and User Experience (UI / UX)

In order to provide a smooth and easy user experience, an app’s design should be polished.

A mobile app’s success is defined by how successfully users accept and profit from all of the app’s capabilities. App UI/UX designers aim to create engaging, intuitive, and easy-to-use apps for mobile devices. For long-term engagement, your app must provide intuitive user experiences.

Workflows and Information Architecture

First and foremost, you must determine what information your app will display to users, what information it will collect, and how users will interact with the finished result.

As a result, it’s vital that your app’s information architecture take these guidelines into consideration while developing enterprise mobile solutions for employees on their smartphones or tablets. Workflow diagrams aid in the identification of every possible interaction a user may have with the app as well as the navigation structure of the app.

Wireframes

Designers of mobile applications frequently begin their work with rough ideas on paper. In the digital age, wireframes have taken the place of traditional sketches. They give visual structure to your app’s functional requirements and are also known as low-fidelity mockups.

The emphasis on aesthetics and user experience, rather than color schemes and styles, is more important with wireframes. Using wireframes to build app layouts and iterate through them during the design review process is a rapid and cost-effective method of doing so. When creating wireframes, it is important to consider how the design will be displayed on different devices. This ensures that your app works well on all devices including iPhones, iPads, and Android phones and tablets.

Style Manual

In a style guide, the design standards of an app are specified from your company’s branding regulations all the way down to the navigation icons. Style guides are “dynamic documents.”

Some examples of style guides are shown below:

• What font family will be used in the text of your application?
• When it comes to the design, what colors should we use?
• What will the app’s design say about your company?

An app’s design strategy is aided by style guides. Mobile app developers work more efficiently when a style guide is established early in the development process. Simultaneously, sticking to a style guide will assist your app to maintain a consistent appearance and feel. Designing your app should take into account the app design guidelines provided by Apple and Google.

Mockups

Mockups or high-fidelity designs are the most accurate visual representations of your app’s visual design. To generate mockups, you must apply your style guide to the wireframes of the app. Information architecture, workflow, and UI design will continue to evolve throughout the development process for your project. If you want to create realistic-looking mockups, Adobe Photoshop is your best bet.

A Working Prototype

With technologies like Invision and Figma, static mockups may be transformed into interactive prototypes that display your mobile app’s capabilities. For modeling the end-user experience and the app workflows, prototypes are invaluable. Prototyping takes time, but it’s well worth it because it allows you to test your app’s design and functioning at an early stage. A prototype can often assist discover changes to an app’s intended functionality that need to be made.

When an app’s functional requirements aren’t thoroughly thought out, some organizations choose to do prototypes during the wireframing stage. The app’s proposed functionality must be reviewed with a focus group, or it must be completely re-written.

4. Development of Mobile Applications

This stage of mobile app development is still heavily reliant on planning before diving in. The following must be completed before beginning any actual development/programming work:

• specify the technical framework
• select a stack of technologies,
• Specify the milestones for the project’s development

For the most part, a mobile app project consists of three key components: back-end/server technology; an application programming interface; and the front-end of the mobile app.

Server and Back-End Technology

Objects required to support the mobile app’s functionality are included in this section, including database objects and server-side objects. Depending on your existing back-end platform, you may need to make some changes to accommodate the mobile capabilities you seek.

Application Programming Interface (API)

Using an API, the app and the server/database can communicate.

Front-End Development for Mobile Applications

End-users will use the front-end, which is a native mobile app. An API and a back-end for handling data are typically found in mobile apps, however, this isn’t always true. Sometimes, an app will use local data storage if internet connectivity is required, but this is not always the case.

For the backend, you can use practically any web programming language and database. There is a technological stack for each mobile operating system platform that must be chosen when developing native mobile apps. The Objective-C or Swift programming languages are used to create iOS applications. Java and Kotlin are the primary programming languages used to create Android applications.

Programming languages and technology stacks for mobile app development are numerous; the trick is determining which stack works best for your mobile app.

When there are fresh versions of mobile platforms available, mobile technology advances significantly more quickly. A company’s ability to quickly adapt to new platforms and devices is critical when developing mobile apps on tight deadlines and limited budgets. If getting a product to market quickly is important, consider using an agile development method. This strategy allows for regular software updates that include fully functional versions of the product. The agile development plan’s definition of development milestones aids in the iterative development of your mobile application.

Once a development milestone has been reached, it is handed off to the app testing team for final approval.

5. Testing

When quality assurance (QA) testing is carried out during the mobile app development process, applications become more stable, usable, and safe as a result. To make sure your app is thoroughly tested for quality assurance (QA), you must first build test cases that cover all areas of testing an app.

Like use cases, test cases drive mobile app testing. In software testing, test cases are used to guide the execution of tests, document the testing results, and track changes to the product before retesting. Involving your QA team in the Analysis and Design stages is a best practice technique. It will be easier to create reliable test cases if you are aware of your app’s functional requirements and objectives.

A quality mobility solution can be delivered by undergoing the following app testing procedures.

6. Deployment & Technical Support

If you want to release a native mobile app, you must first submit it to the app stores, which are the Apple App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. Nevertheless, before you can release your mobile app, you must have a developer account with the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Before an app can be published on the app store, it needs to have the following metadata ready:

• The name of your app
• Description
• Specify a category
• Tags
• Icon for launching
• Screenshots from the App Store

The review process for iOS apps begins once they are submitted to the Apple App Store and can last anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending on the quality of your app and how closely you adhere to Apple’s iOS development requirements.  Apple requires a test user account as part of the release process if your software requires users to sign in.

When you submit an Android app to the market, it is immediately available without going through a review procedure.

As soon as your app is accessible in the app stores, use mobile analytics services to measure usage and KPIs to determine the performance of your app. Always keep an eye out for crash reports and other concerns that users have brought to your attention.

Ask for feedback and suggestions from your customers. Encourage them to give it to your company. End-user support and frequent software patches with enhancements are critical to retaining users. Because mobile apps can’t be instantly updated like web apps, consumers won’t be able to get new versions of their apps as soon as they’re ready for download. You also have to keep up with the new mobile devices and operating system platforms and often update your app when using native mobile apps.

Conclusion

Even after the first launch, app development is an ongoing process that will continue as you collect user feedback and introduce new features. Aelius Venture is a well-known mobile app development firm. Companies in industries as diverse as finance, healthcare, construction, retail, consumer products, logistics, industrial engineering, and entertainment have used Aelius Venture’s mobile app development services over the years. For all of the mobile apps that we develop, we use the same procedure. If you follow this enterprise mobile app development approach, your app will be a success upon release.

Mobile App Development Process

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