Following a step-by-step guide such as this one will allow anyone to create a Mobile App these days. Did you know that the idea of the Uber App was sparked in 2008 on one winter night when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp couldn’t get a cab? They were getting late for an annual tech conference, and on their way home, the entrepreneurs went their separate ways. However, Camp wanted to take this idea ahead and ended up buying the domain name UberCab.com.
There are several lessons in this short story and it most certainly inspires the entrepreneurs of today. But let’s be honest, creating a Mobile App in 2020 is not anything new. In fact, according to Statista, there are about 2.9 million apps on Play Store in total, and more than 100,000 new Android apps are released on an average in the Google Play Store every month.
It may seem that all the markets are oversaturated, and that’s true to a great extent, but a guide would only help you streamline the steps to not only help you understand how to create an app but to also get reference experiences of other apps that will point in the direction you need to be moving into.
How Do I Create My Own App?
That’s exactly what we’re here to talk about. Here are 6 steps that you need to follow in order to understand how to create an app:-
Have a Concrete Idea
I know I know. Such a revolutionary suggestion that must be. But in all seriousness, think about what problem is your idea trying to solve. That question alone will bring up all the possibilities of how things can go right and wrong, and that’s exactly what you need.
If your business idea is not new, you might look at your competitors’ business models and research about their progress. That will give you enough idea about where they went wrong and how they solved those issues.
If your idea is new, then you have to brainstorm that with as many people in the room so as to fill up your blank canvass with all the great and terrible possibilities. As soon as you have that, you have something that holds a great deal of sustainability.
Conduct A Market Research
Depending on your idea, budget, scalability and current goal, you have to derive all the relevant objective facts about your target market. When you have a product, you can’t just hope for things to work out.
You can hire Market Research Experts and have them conduct a multivariate analysis to help you understand the percentage of people who would be interested in the product or service you’re selling pertaining to an area.
You can even go out and conduct the research on your own but the goal will always be to develop the archetype of people who’re interested in your service and are willing to pay the price that’s sustainable as per your business model. You may also read about how to do Market Research for your App.
What Features Is Your App Going to Have?
As soon as you have data that shows an untapped market, you’re good to go. However, choosing what features your App is going to have is the hardest part, unless you refer to the first step of this guide again.
I mentioned how you should brainstorm your idea with as many people as you can so as to fill up your blank canvass with all the great and terrible possibilities. Now that in itself is your guide to lay down a list of features that your App should and shouldn’t have.
Mainly, you’re going to have:-
- Core Features - Features that are the foundation of your App. You can decide those main features by looking at other Apps’ features in the same niche or industry.
- Unique Features - These are going to be the features that set your App apart from your competitors’. We’re talking about the features that are missing in your competitors’ Apps or yours are more convenient than theirs.
Create a Pricing Model
As soon as you’ve decided the name of your App and its features, you’re going to have to decide what pricing model it’s going to have. Will it have to be purchased right from the Play Store or is it going to have in-app purchases? How many different pricing models will it have and what features will be attributed to different pricing models?
All these questions need to be given several thoughts because in a free market, there are ruthless factors of demand and supply at play. In simple terms, what your consumer would be willing to pay should be the price of your App, or for various segments of the App, should be your price.
You can even choose to include Ads in your Application and can charge for removing those as well. That’s also how the majority of the Apps earn by the way. Just remember to not include so many ads that users report it as spam, in which case your App can be potentially removed from Play Store. Be mindful about Play Store’s guidelines.
Design the App
Every great idea starts with a pen and paper but we live in the age of efficiency and the design of your App takes a lot more than you think. A Mobile App Designer builds wireframes so as to create a visual representation of what clicks will lead to what pages, and how each of those pages will look like, in terms of layout, color schemes, etc.
Unless you’re a UI/UX Designer, that’s a heavy lifting that you can’t do by yourself. However, if you hire a UI/UX Designer, then you can communicate all those features down to the last detail, so as to create a technical scope document that will help the UI/UX designer to create the User Interface of your Mobile App.
You will have a professional who understands the language of design, and makes sure that the end user gets an exceptional experience. These wireframes will then be passed on to the Mobile App Developer who will code this into a functional prototype.
Create a Marketing Strategy
Knowing how to create an App isn’t any good if the end users don’t even know about it. Depending on the scale at which you’re trying to target, you have to allocate a significant budget to marketing so that it yields the most favourable results by reaching the exact archetype of your target market.
Marketing these days happens even before the launch of the App. For example, creating an email list of your target market and even relying on paid marketing are the broad strategies to go about it. In both cases, you’ll have to create a landing page where your target market can reach and learn more about the App.
Here are a few suggestions for you to market your product apart from creating a landing page and paid marketing strategies:-
- Create a Media Kit - A media kit is a package that contains some key information about your App including all your logo. It's easier for journalists to fetch information about your App who want to write about it. Simply create one and add a link to it from your app landing page. It’s free publicity.
- Document Your Journey - While you’re building your app, you can post about your progress on Social Media. What you’re really doing is building fans of your business who’ll be your consumers and propagators of your services in the future.
- App Store Optimization - To make sure your App pops up when someone searches for it, or something related to your service, you have to make sure that the keywords are incorporated in the title and description of your App Listing.
Wrapping Up
Now you understand how to create an App, but more importantly, you also understand the blindspots of creating an App. These steps are all it takes to make sure you’re moving in the right direction.
You can either choose to hire a Mobile App Developer, UI/UX Designer, Market Research Experts, and even Digital Marketing experts who are out there to fill those gaps. You may read about how to improve your mobile app ratings.