How To Make Or Create An App | The Appineers
Making and Creating an App
You know how to create an app and how great apps can be, but you may be wondering how you can go about the process of creating and making an app, The good news is that you can make your app dreams come true. All you need to know is how you can go about the process of making an app. The goal here is to take you step by step through the process so that you know the best approach so that you can make and create your own app.
Put Your Ideas on Paper
The first stage of making and creating an app or how to create an app, is to make sure that you get your ideas out on paper. You don’t really need to do anything earth-shattering or innovative. You just need to have an idea. Take a piece of paper and then start off by sketching out what your idea is with a paper and pen. The reason why this is an important first step is because you want to make the idea more tangible. You can write down notes, defining what your app is, how it works, and any features that you hope to include.
While you are doing this, it’s recommended that you separate the list of features into two different groups: Required Features and Want to Have Features. Required Features is a list that includes all of the features that your app absolutely must-have to function properly. The Want to Have Features are the ones that may be great to have, but you don’t necessarily need them for your app to function as you want/need it to.
Making the app, it’s important that the app is as lean as you can possibly make it while still making sure it has the power to function as you intend. This makes an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which is essentially the simplest version of an app. Through focusing on the features that are most important to your app, you can make the development process go faster and help you better prepare against any potential setbacks that can come up.
As you go through this process, there are some questions that you should be asking yourself:
What features aren’t absolutely necessary and can be omitted if needed?
Which feature(s) make this app unique or innovative, which makes it stand out?
Are there features that could make the app feel bloated and slow?
Of course you want to make an app with all of these great features, but it’s important to prioritize the ones that are going to really make your app stand out as something incredible. You need to be able to make sure that the app does one thing really well and the other apps should complement that.
Prototype Design
Once you get your ideas on paper, you can start to fine-tune the idea. This part just builds upon what you did when you put your ideas on paper. To do this, you need to begin looking at your audience. You start by doing market research, then move onto defining your concept. (We’ll look into market research more in the next section.) When you are in the early stages, setting goals can help guide you through the process so that you can make exactly the app that you want to make. To start, ask yourself a few questions:
Who is your target audience? You need to make sure that your app is specifically designed with them in mind to add value that will make them love your app.
Which features would this audience want most and ensure that they will be engaged with your app?
Are there other apps doing the same thing as you?
Who is your competition? What are their reviews? What do they do right and what can be improved upon?
Are you going to monetize your app?
Understanding your goals is important to this process and how to create an app
Now you can move onto creating a mockup design of your app. You can start out by sketching out the wireframe of the app, which helps you to focus on the key components of your app’s interface. This is really important to do before you start getting into the various styles and design elements that you want to include. This can make it a lot easier for you to identify where you should place the important components of your app in order to make it more accessible for your users. This will also help you get a good idea what you want the interface to look like and make changes easier as you go through the process.
Finally, during this part of the process, you want to focus on both UI (User Interface design) and UX (User Experience). UI is important because the way that your app both looks and feels can have a significant impact on how successful your app is. Ideally, the UI will be simple and uniform, but interacts well with your customers. When working on the UX, you need to look at your app from the eyes of your customer. How they see your app is how they will see your brand, so it’s crucial that you have a positive impact here.
In order to have a successful app, it should be designed in such a way that it requires as little effort as possible for your audience to use. The general rule to follow is the 3-click rule, which refers to the idea that it shouldn’t take more than 3 clicks for someone to find information. This is an important rule to follow because it does have an impact on how much people enjoy using your app. This isn’t a rule that needs to be followed strictly, but it’s a good idea to remember that you want to make sure that it is very easy for people to get the information on the app that they need.
Market Research
As previously mentioned, performing market research is essential to the success of your app. All too often, app developers skip this step in order to save money and time. However, this is so important because it can save you money down the line since you’re doing the research before putting your product out. Through market research, you can learn whether or not your app idea is even a viable one. Otherwise, people won’t get your app.
How do you find out if your app is viable? These are some questions for you to start with:
What is the competition in the marketplace and other similar/alternative apps?
What are your potential customers looking for? What needs and wants do they need met by your app?
Should my app be paid or free? How much should the app cost if paid? What’s the right business model to have?
Through effective market research early on in this process, you are going to be able to save money on the process since you can prevent yourself from making many mistakes early on in the process. Effective marketing research can both help you see if customers are looking for an app like yours as well as what mistakes your competition is doing with their alternative app to yours.
One of the most important things that you can learn about doing market research is the demand for your app. It also offers insights into the perspective of your potential customers directly. Getting out there and talking to real people can give you the best insights, rather than just using analytics and your own judgement.
Before doing market research, you should really narrow down who your target market is. From there, you can ask questions like:
What is your target market like?
How does your app offer the solution that your customers are looking for?
How is your target market currently solving the problems that they are having?
What changes should be made to your app?
Market research can save you time and money in the long run because you can see what your target market wants and needs as well as how you can best offer them the solutions they are looking for.
Developing Your App
Now that you have a solid direction of where to go with your app or you have known how to create an app, you need to start the process of actually creating it. You do have a couple of options as to how you can develop your app. First of all, you can try developing the app yourself. If you have the knowledge and expertise that is required to do this, then this can be a great option for you since it can save you some money and you can really get the app you want. The problem is that you need to have the coding and programming skills that are required to make an app, otherwise you won’t be very successful doing this yourself.
Another option that you have is to have a freelancer or an agency develop the app for you. There are plenty of options for these workers available, you just need to find the right one for your specific needs. You should only trust a reputable agency or freelancer, one that has an extensive portfolio, testimonials, and customer reviews so that you can get a good idea about who the person is that you are going to hire. The biggest downside with this option is that this is easily the most expensive approach. But, it’s an approach that will ensure that you get the app that you want without having to settle for anything less.
A last option that you can consider is using an app builder. You can think of this as you would with a website builder, like the popular site builder WordPress. You can change how your app looks and how it functions without requiring the programming and coding skills required for app development. This is a great way to save you money while also giving you the help that you need if you don’t necessarily have any expertise in coding. The downside with this option is that you need to be sure that your app can be built using an app builder. If you are looking to create a simple app, this could be fine. However, if you are developing a more complex one, you will need to consider another option.
You need to carefully consider these different options to see which one will work best for your needs.
Test Your App
You’ve gone through the process of developing your app, so now what? It’s important that you test your app before you send it out to the public. If you release an untested app, this can lead to some problems that will leave customers with a negative impression of your app and your brand. In addition to in-house alpha testers, you can recruit some beta testers as well to improve your app and help you identify issues that may have been overlooked. These issues that need to be looked for include:
App speed
If there are any crashes that occur
No areas of the app are hidden (unless they are supposed to be)
How it performs in poor connectivity situations.
Navigating the app is intuitive and efficient
App developers tend to take care of this process for you, but if you are doing it yourself you need to be sure that the testing gets completed.
Publish App and Beyond
If your app has gone through this entire process and did well in testing, now you can move onto making sure that your app gets published. Publishing an app isn’t always an easy process, but you can easily find the best approaches to publish your app to whichever platform helps you reach your customers best.
Your job isn’t done after the app has been completed and published. You still need to be sure that you continue to maintain and update your app. Adding new features and making sure that there are no security vulnerabilities. It’s a good idea to update the app at least every 3 to 4 months.
Conclusion
Making and creating an app isn’t an easy process, but it’s worthwhile if you have a great app idea or just want an app to raise your brand awareness. The basic steps here can help you through the process of making an app.