Mobile apps have revolutionised the way we live, from making it possible to conveniently order your favourite late-night craving, to easily facilitating your journey around a foreign country.
There’s also no denying that apps have exponentially boosted the capacity for businesses to engage directly with their customers, opening up countless new opportunities to convert these relationships into business and financial success.
There’s also no denying that apps have exponentially boosted the capacity for businesses to engage directly with their customers, opening up countless new opportunities to convert these relationships into business and financial success.
Businesses that develop their own mobile apps provide a better experience for their customers because purpose-built apps allow customers to directly engage with the business with ease and convenience. This enables the organisation to build stronger relationships with their users and ultimately gain their loyalty. After all, it is reported that Australians spend an average of 3 hours and 53 minutes using their mobile phones each day, with 788 million mobile apps downloaded in the past year. So, a mobile app for your business means creating new revenue streams and giving your business a competitive edge. Neglecting to use this invaluable tool means missed opportunities for customer conversion and growth.
On the back end, mobile apps also improve the employee experience. Employees can swiftly access work-specific information and data in real-time no matter where they are in the world. This kind of accessibility has become an essential part of every modern-day employee’s working experience. This not only saves time but also streamlines your workflow and boosts employee satisfaction. Check out how we developed an app that helps our client’s employees effortlessly navigate around their building, book meeting rooms and locate other employees, click here.
So, how do you build a successful app? We’re here to break down the app development process and give you a quick guide on what each step entails. Read on!
Analysis & Strategic Planning
First order of business is to define your app’s purpose and the users it will cater to. Once you’ve established the app’s goals and objectives, it's also important to do some research on your competitors. See what they are doing and how you can provide a better experience with your app. Identifying your core concept is crucial to ensuring that you end up with a great final product
This step involves holding discussions with the development team and analysing any and all obstacles that your custom app will help users to overcome. Whether it’s a consumer-facing app or an app to streamline your workflow, this phase must establish your app’s functionality and the best technologies to utilise. This includes deciding if you’ll build your app simply as a responsive extension of your website or specifically iOS, Android, or both mobile platforms.
UI/UX Design
Now that you have a well-defined strategy and roadmap, it’s time to design your app! The main goal for this stage of app development is to deliver a seamless experience for your users, all while maintaining a professionally branded and polished aesthetic. Think about how you would like them to feel and what they will learn about your business as they navigate through your app.
Your app’s success is hinged upon how intuitive, interactive, and user-friendly it is. The design stage is all about creating the best User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). To achieve this, collaboration and clear communication are the not-so-secret ingredients to formulating a sleek, unified design, with just the right amount of features to keep your users engaged, without overwhelming them.
Here at Lateral, we follow an agile approach in our development process. We put emphasis on what our clients have in mind and how we can execute this successfully with tech considerations in mind. Our app developers work closely with every client, providing their strategic expertise to ensure that your business’ newest tool achieves exemplary results that exceed expectations.
We work through design sessions with the client to map the key features and user journey resulting first in low-fidelity wireframes, these are basic wireframes that outline blueprints for web pages or app screens, presenting big ideas in a simple way. After we have this structure we move on to high-fidelity wireframes which have more detail and often includes design elements like colors, fonts, and images, essentially a mockup of the app.
We have found this visual approach to design much more effective in establishing a shared understanding with the client than other methods.
Development
To put it simply, this is the stage of the app development process where your app will be built. After this stage, you will be able to see your app ideas come to life. To commence this phase, you will need to define the technical architecture of your app and choose your tech stack.
On the back end, this will include the database and server-side objects that are needed to support your app’s functionality. Next is the Application Program Interface (API), which will determine how the back end and app will communicate with one another.
Then there’s the front end, which is essentially the app that your users will install and interact with on their mobile devices. An app’s interactive user experience is facilitated by real-time data exchange, via the network connection, back and forth between the app’s front end and back end.
The development stage usually takes three to six months to complete. The level of your app’s complexity will ultimately determine how much time it will take to complete the development process.
Application Testing
Now it’s time to test your shiny new app! Thorough testing enables you to ensure that your app is stable, usable and most importantly, secure. In order to provide that quality assurance, you must conduct several stages of testing that address the different aspects of your app.
USER EXPERIENCE TESTING
This crucial step confirms whether your app in reality is aligned with the user experience concept created by the app design team. Visual components will give the user their first impression of your app, so testing will consist of checking that all the fonts, brand colours, and style elements are aligned with your business’ branding throughout the app.
FUNCTIONAL TESTING
While we can’t predict the exact behaviour of every user, functional testing establishes that nearly every possible behaviour is proven to work and not lead to an error. This test also allows you to check out any bugs and iron out the entire journey for a smooth experience. The main purpose of this test is to ensure that your app’s features and functionality are working perfectly
PERFORMANCE TESTING
This test measures your app’s performance based on loading time and response time to user requests. It also checks how the app will handle any usage spikes by simulating the maximum number of concurrent users.
SECURITY TESTING
Lastly, security must be of utmost importance to every mobile app. Security is baked into everything we deliver. Any vulnerability that may be overlooked can be a hacker's way in. Lateral’s security audit thoroughly analyses the app’s level of security and any areas that need further improvement. Our security audits are conducted by experts with over 30 years of experience and a sharp eye for quality and vulnerability
Conclusion
And there you have it; these are the steps to build an app!
Behind every successful app development is a dedicated team of experts equipped with years of experience in providing robust, custom solutions to a variety of businesses across different industries.
Here at Lateral, innovation and technology are at the very core of our ethos. We’re passionate about developing perfectly tailored custom solutions to catapult every client to new frontiers of success.
Ready to turn your app idea into a reality? Get in touch with us today!
