Mobile app development has been going through something of a golden period in the last few years. The number of mobile apps is increasing exponentially, and so are the mobile phone users. Additionally, a more significant proportion of the population is having the access to the internet, which has further improved the chances of new mobile apps succeeding.
The number of platforms that offer users the capability to build mobile apps without any coding experience or knowledge has been growing by the year. As more and more people have begun opting to create mobile apps, the number of mobile apps in the market has also increased. It has scaled up the competition in every genre of apps since creating novel mobile apps has now transferred to everyone with an idea.
Given the above facts, mobile app development must be made more efficient to set yourself apart from the competition. Additionally, developers and companies must have the ability to speed up their mobile app development process to improve their time-to-market and release apps before competitors can.
How to Speed Up Mobile App Development in five ways?
1. MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
A Minimum Viable Product is defined as a product that provides only the main USP of your final product. App developers create the MVP to check whether the technology begging their main features is robust and whether the prospective users of the product find any use in this feature. The MVP is generally tested on many users before being improved further and released to the general public.
Here are the steps using which you can create a Minimum Viable Product.
- Firstly, try and figure out the problem you are solving and who your target customer is. For this purpose, you might need to conduct a complete market survey. Through this survey, you can attempt to understand what the pain points of your customers are. Based on these pain points, you can figure out a design for your product. In mobile app development, it is also essential for you to figure out the customer base that you will be selling this product to. It is crucial since the app’s design and feature set needs to be directed toward this customer cohort.
- Now, you must conduct a proper analysis of your competitors. If your competitors are using any open-source software, find out the intricacies and limitations of this software. Download all the apps that will directly be competing with you and determine the feature gaps that exist within them. Read the customers’ reviews on the app store for each of these apps and check the most common complaints that users have against these apps. This exercise will enable you to put up a much better product than your competitors. If you can fill the feature gaps and relieve your app of the complaints users have with others.
- Next, you must define the user flow of your MVP. In the minimum viable product, you must focus only on the main service that your app will be offering. For example, if your app is selling products of a particular genre, your overall flow must enable the user to find a product, add the product to the cart, and pay for the product. Try and make this user flow as lucid as you can. The more complex this flow gets, the lower the chance of users shifting to your app.
- Finally, you must list down all the features that you think are necessary for your app. There are probably several features that you want to market to people. In the survey of prospective users you conducted earlier, you might have gained some insight into which features are more important to people and which features are relatively less important. Once you have this information, you can prioritize the features that you will include in your MVP.
At the end of all this analysis, you need to build your app and test it. The first test is carried out virtually to check for bugs and any features that do not work. When the test results are successful, you can test your app on prospective users and analyze their reviews.
2. Go Agile
The agile mobile app development strategy is very similar to the most viable product strategy but includes some more iterations. In agile app development, the MVP is first published, and features are then continuously added based on the users’ responses. The following are the steps of every agile iteration.
- The first stage is the Planning Stage. During this stage, you can plan out the number of hours of resources required, the development platform you will use, the type of app you are aiming for, the genre that your app will belong to and other technicalities.
- Once you have planned your technological requirements, you can dive deep into the features required of your app. It can include a brief customer survey to determine the most important features for your prospective customers. These are the features that the app will then be built around.
- Now, you need to Design the App. The app’s design phase is the most integral since it goes from planning the app’s flow to the user interface. The app’s design is often a make-or-break feature for the customer and must be paid great heed to.
- Next is the Development Phase. Based on the technological, feature-based, and design decisions you had made earlier, you can now develop the app on your chosen platform. Make sure that your development process translates your requirements as closely as possible.
- In the Testing Phase that follows, you must thoroughly test the app for bugs and performance. This first sub-step can be automated testing, in which an algorithm attempts to find out whether there are any problems with the app. Next, you can do a small focus group test to determine problems that users might face.
- Finally, you draw up the application documentation, wait for approval, and release the app.
Do keep in mind that a single cycle is never enough to develop the complete app. Every time you put some features out in public, you will receive reviews. Based on these reviews, the agile cycle needs to be followed again and again repeatedly.
3. Basic and Simple Wireframes
A wireframe is as simple a concept as it sounds. It is the basic blueprint or schematic of the app that you are looking to create. A wireframe provides you with an idea regarding the steps you need to create the perfect mobile app. Wireframes also speed up your mobile app development process by laying out a clear plan and giving you a target that you need to achieve.
- To create a mobile app wireframe, you first need to focus on the features you are keen on delivering. Even before you have begun to develop the first blueprint, review the app genre, you will be developing the app for and the major demands of consumers in that genre. The app that you will be creating will be built around these demands.
- Next, you can start focusing on the user experience. It is where the user flow and the design first come into the picture. Determine your app’s main motive and design the easiest way for a user to fulfil that motive.
- You should now start to create your design on paper. You can look at your main competitors’ UX templates and try to determine what makes these templates work. Aim to understand what design features your genre’s users tend to favour and incorporate them within your app.
- There are various ways that you can build your wireframe. While sketching an app screen like a storyboard is a more traditional method, you can also use online portals to create app wireframes. These portals have fantastic tools that help you recreate your user interface to the most accurate extent possible.
- After creating the wireframe, you need to prototype your app. It means checking whether all the primary user interface options of your wireframe are working. You can walk through different user flows and check whether each of them leads to the intended outcome.
- Once you have ascertained that your app is working, you can present your idea and begin working on its back-end aspects.
4. Outsourcing
Outsourcing is one of the most common methods mobile app developers use to speed up their app development process – especially if the app creators have no app development or coding expertise themselves. However, there are several considerations to be made when you are choosing an app development partner.
- Most importantly, you need to check the expertise that different app developers or app development companies show through their previous work. You then need to determine whether this expertise is in line with the motives of your app.
- Even if the mobile app developers have a favourable set of apps previously created, you should check with other similar companies about the market reputation of these app developers. Check whether they are professional and punctual and whether their products generally require significant reworks.
- You can also hold consultations with various app development companies and try to find out their response to your needs. Choose the app development company that understands your needs best. Previous experience generally helps companies determine what you want, and inexperienced players can have difficulty getting to the crux of your issue.
- Even before you start approaching app development partners, you should decide on a budget that you will be spending on app development. Outsourcing app development can come with significant costs depending on the type of app developer you are looking at and the app developer’s location.
5. Automated Testing
Automated testing can be effective in reducing the time-to-market of your mobile applications. Through automated testing, you can assess your mobile app efficiently and in significantly less time. There are several advantages to automated testing.
- Automated testing allows for a much faster feedback cycle for your app by virtue of experiencing no human intervention. The whole app development team saves testing time and can utilize this time in preparing documentation and paperwork. It helps you in releasing your app much faster than through conventional testing.
- Additionally, automated testing saves you business expenses. Regardless of how expensive your automated testing subscription or infrastructure is, it will likely not be as expensive as hiring a whole testing team. Moreover, automated testing does not have specific hours of work and can continuously provide results relevant to you.
- The coverage of use cases provided by automated testing is also much more comprehensive. If you are automating the testing process yourself, you can introduce several new use cases that are more important to you. Otherwise, all use cases are tested to ensure that the chances of failure are minimal.
- As compared to a human testing team, automated testing will also provide much deeper insights into your app’s robustness through advanced analytics. It also offers more features and the ability to customize testing as per your needs and requirements.
Conclusion
In the highly competitive mobile app development market we are presented with today, getting your app before users faster is more important than ever. The above hacks can be extremely useful in ensuring the same and a more robust and comprehensive app for your user.
Therefore, for such quality mobile app development Supersourcing can be the best assistance to you. Share your business idea along with brief details and in a day you are going to witness a number of agency options to build the app. The agencies are experts in their respective domains and deliver the best quality product and customer service.
