It seems like there is an app for just about everything nowadays, and anyone can make an app. Building an app is exciting and offers the promise of financial reward as well as solving a problem.
However, when developing an app for business rather than entertainment purposes, your goals and creative process must be slightly different. It is natural to want to start writing code right away and figure out the rest later.
If you are a startup, you cannot take months to have a developed roadmap before creating an app. However, you can still have a good plan and clear goals.
The following are seven things you should know before developing a business app:
1. Your Target Audience
The first thing you should know before developing your app is your target audience. The last thing you want is to create an app that no one but your mom will use.
When you ask most developers, conducting market research and finding your target users before developing your app can be tedious. However, it would be best if you did it because it is paramount to creating a worthwhile application.
You need to know who your target users are to help solve their problems and fulfill their needs. Knowing your target audience will provide you with a solid foundation for creating your application.
2. Primary Goal of Your App
Another thing you have to know before developing your app is its primary goal. After uncovering your app’s target users, you should ask the question, ‘what is the one thing that will make users have to use the app?’ The answer to that question should tell you what the primary goal of the app is.
Knowing the primary goal of your app, you can clearly define the process through which it will help users solve their problems. You will then determine the features of the app based on the above problem-solving process. You can decide which elements of the app you must include and which ones are bonus features.
Once you have your app’s primary goal, problem-solving process, and main features, you can create a minimum viable product (MVP). The purpose of the MVP is to test if your product is valid or not. It would help if you built an MVP to accommodate user feedback which will help you improve the app.
3. Inhouse vs. Outsourcing
When you are creating an application for your business, you essentially have two options. You can either create the app in-house or outsource the app’s creation to another firm.
You should know which way you will go before developing the app or at least have an idea. There are merits to both in house development and outsourcing the app’s development. It will be up to you to decide which is the best option for your business. For example, a fintech app development company could offer specialized expertise in financial transactions and security features.
Knowing whether you want to develop the app in-house or outsource development will help avoid lags during the creation process. Time and money will be the two most important factors influencing your decision in this regard.
4. Ways to Earn
Before you begin the arduous process of building an app, you have to figure out ways you can earn from your creation. The inability to monetize an app is one of the primary reasons for the failure of most apps.
An app is one of the main ways through which you can make money online. There are many ways that you can make money from your app. You can have your users pay for the app, or if it is a free app, you can make money from advertisements. You can also have an in-app purchase strategy for the application.
Regardless of the strategy you use to monetize your app, it would be best to decide on it before developing your app. Therefore, you can test it when presenting it to users and receive feedback on whether the strategies work.
5. User Story
A user story refers to what a user can do with an app. User stories are a fantastic tool for an app developer to capture the app’s functionality from the end user’s perspective, which can be challenging for developers.
A user story has three essential components: the user type, the user’s intention, and their value from the app or a specific feature in the app.
If your business is developing an application, you should care about the user story for various reasons, including clarifying software functionality, making product prioritization better, and making the app easier to understand and remember. User stories also make it easier to express the app’s business value.
6. Cost of App Development
Before you start developing your app, you should estimate what the app will cost. It will help your business develop an adequate budget for the app which can have a great range.
There are a plethora of factors that affect the cost of developing an app, with the main one being whether you are developing the app in-house or outsourcing its development. The app’s design, features, and integration capacity to websites and other apps influence the cost of app development.
When you outsource app development, you should know that most companies will charge you an hourly rate. You should also include factors such as updates, marketing, and maintenance in your budget
7. Platform
Last but not least, you should know which platform you will use to develop your app before you start developing the app. Choosing the right platform for your application might be the most crucial choice you have to make as a developer.
The choice of platform will more than influence the developer; it will also affect the scope and flexibility of the application. It will mostly develop an app through a platform that guarantees the most versatility and functionality.
The coding for the app will be vastly important, but you will build it on the foundation that is the app’s platform.
In conclusion, developing an application for your business is vital to success today. There will be many factors to consider, and the seven above are only a fraction of what you need to know before you start development. However, the seven points should give you a solid foundation for building a fantastic app for your business.