Mistakes to Avoid When Developing Your App

Lack of Understanding What Your Users Really Need

Why do you need to develop a mobile application for your business? The answer is simple - you want to generate more revenue via it.

Nevertheless, if we look attentively at all the apps that appear on the Internet today, we will see that most of them are useless. Digital market is highly competitive, and if you do something in the wrong way, the mobile app will not work.

That happens because of many mistakes developers make while creating an app. You need to know them and try to avoid such solutions that will lead nowhere. There are a lot of mistakes that may prevent the success of the application. We have defined just 6 of them here. Let’s have a closer look at these mistakes to avoid when developing your app.

Understanding a target audience and its needs is a key. At the initial stage of development when you are trying to formulate an idea, everything looks bright and prospective. You believe that as soon as you start using the new app, your financial improvement will be dramatic.

However, when the application is ready, it doesn't feel like that anymore. No one uses it, or if some people do, they quit it after a while. It’s not the problem of a developer. It’s your mistake because you have not done enough research on what your potential users really need. That is why it is essential to consider UX thoroughly to know what causes apps to fail.

Understanding your target audience is a great plus in the UX design. Start with finding out who your future clients are, what they are looking for, how busy they are and what fields of industry they work in. You also need to know their age, social backgrounds, and knowledge of technology. As well, it is great if you understand their confidentiality needs and the ways they prefer to communicate with the world.

For example, if you have sent a message to someone by mistake and want to delete it but your messaging app allows the person you didn’t mean it for to see it, it’s a bad idea. There may be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding that will lead to more severe communication problems.

Therefore, you need to think about your possible users and their desires to make, for example, your iPhone app popular among them. Think about how valuable the solutions provided by your app are for clients, how well the app is adapted to the main market trends and can be customized to users’ needs, whether the characteristics of the app are user-friendly and well-executed, and how unique the application is. The latter is also very important to let your business stand out from the crowd. There are a lot of apps on the market that have been developed in accordance with the same principles and in approximately similar formats. Users do not pay much attention to them because they already have what they need from other companies.

Many Stakeholders Will Never Make an App More Effective

You can consider all the people who are interested in your app and can get some benefit from it to be stakeholders. They can work in your company or come from the outside. Or they even can be end users of the app or those who will be affected by its launch in the future.

You need the input from your stakeholder, anyway, to make your app function more sustainably and effectively. This input may tell you what kind of software your business needs, what features the mobile app should have, and what problems it is meant to solve.

Stakeholders’ participation in the process of the app development can be quite favorable both for the app and the entire company. If they are your colleagues or employees, they know from the inside how the company works and what else it needs to thrive. However, it is always a must to find a compromise among many people who are putting forward ideas or have their individual vision of what is actually needed.

That is why it is so important to think about who is going to offer the ideas for the web and how to generate the overall vision of the software that can work for everybody’s benefit.

However, don’t forget that your stakeholders come from different spheres, so they stand for something that will be best for them without considering the interests of other groups. Their interests may even conflict with those of others. If you know what each group wants from your app, it will be easier to find a compromise. The development stage also risks being divided into separate parts by different stakeholders instead of integrating all the needs, requirements, and the overall structure. Some of them will even demand to show them prototypes and provide a lot of comments on what is going wrong, in their opinion.

The crucial part of app development is decision making. Even if you think that having a lot of stakeholders around you, you may fail if you don’t know how to manage all the offers, suggestions, and comments efficiently. Remember that representatives of different groups will require their interests to be prioritized. If you are a manager or app developer, your task is to find the balance between all these expectations and follow the development standards without considering completely all the ideas. That means you need an effective strategy and clear project goals you would like to achieve.

That is why refer to the typical project management strategy where you can identify only those stakeholders who are especially important for your project. Set different levels of priority to all your stakeholders’ interests. Assign them special roles, for example, recommendation givers or feedback providers. Establish continuous and straightforward communication between them and with all the parties involved in the project.

If you communicate online, you can use such efficient business communication channels and tools as Trello or Slack. Let them understand what the role of their input is and how important it is for the project. In this way, you will be able to avoid conflicts of interests. Nevertheless, when you see that such a conflict arises, review all the stakeholders’ interests via the prism of your project’s goal. You will see that some of them should never be prioritized.

Mismanaging the Budget

You may also come across financial losses. So, what are the risks of developing a mobile app for your budget? Poor management of the app budget is a common mistake. App development always requires significant investments. That is why you need to consider the capacity of your budget and how the app developing process can be ensured by it. You do not have to break your budget, though, and if you follow these tips, you will never do.

The first thing you have to do before the development process starts is to make a detailed description of the budget. Do accurate research because the relevance and success of this project development can depend on it. First, you need to understand your target audience and compile the list of app features and essential design elements. Create an approximate monetization strategy, too.

You should also think about the costs that may be unexpectedly needed. You may compose a very detailed budget but then come across unexpected circumstances or obstacles. That is why putting aside some costs for unpredicted miscellaneous expenses is pretty wise.

Try to stick properly to the budget. You will neve create an ideal budget, of course, but if you spend extra costs on something that is not necessary at the moment, you may face financial problems in the future.

Remember that app development is a very complicated process that may need a lot of costs. There is no financial solution for all the moments in the developing process that can be predicted beforehand. However, if you consider your expenses properly, you will always be on the safe side.

Improper Communication with Developers

You need to communicate properly with developers to receive the app that will meet all your expectations. First, you should ensure that the developer understands the overall ideas of the app. Explain it in detail without leaving out anything. You can also provide detailed documentation with visuals if it is available. Include the app’s synopsis describing its functions in the pack. Then, think about a wireframe for the app and the feature list. A professional developer will need all these things for the start.

It is also essential that you should establish the initial communication in the way that suits you. The developer will give you feedback and make up the preliminary quote if the communication is set up properly. During this first communication, you will also be able to understand how well the developer can render their own ideas and whether they will work for you.

There are no specifically established rules and recommendations on how to maintain the communication process with your developer. However, you should arrange it properly from the very beginning to save you a lot of issues within the development process.

Mimicking Your Website or Desktop App

Apart from all that, what mistakes should you avoid in mobile app design? If your business already has a website and a desktop app, and you like how they work for your needs. Nevertheless, you have to be very careful not to replicate this app while creating one for mobiles. Everything is very simple to explain - desktop and mobile apps work in a different way. They also have different requirements for UX.

Many believe that a mobile app should be a mini-version of their desktop tool. It is not correct because their functionality and design cannot be the same for the reasons of smooth performance. People tend to use their mobiles and PCs differently. That influences the choice of design, color schemes and themes. That is why UX is always a priority.

The performance of your mobile app should be optimal in specific conditions, for example, on the go. It has to be convenient for consumers and do not take them a lot of time to operate when they are restricted by space and the environment.

Developing an App for Too Many Platforms at Once

You may have noticed that many well-known brands have multiple apps for different platforms. However, you do not need to follow this trend. If you are just a beginner in business, don’t develop too many apps because you will never know how it all will be going on. So, what are the biggest challenges faced by mobile app developers? The need to develop apps for different types of devices is one of the most severe of them.

You may be tempted by the idea to get as many clients to your business as possible. Though, avoid going for too many platforms simultaneously. The first disadvantage of such an approach is financial losses. For example, if you want two apps for iOS and Android, that will be very costly. These projects will be handled separately, so the budget will be overloaded with expenses. That is why it makes sense to begin with one platform and see how users behave on it. You may need to make some changes or modifications to improve the UX to make the app more convenient.

That all means that you have to start gradually with one mobile app for one platform and then expand it to some other devices. The process should be well-considered and calculated. In this way, you will gain more customers, save your resources, and increase profit.

Final Thoughts

Remember that the process of developing a mobile app for your business is a very long and effort-consuming project. Be careful about not making common mistakes. Though, you may not avoid other ones that are specific for your business.

The most common issues may appear from misunderstanding of customers and their needs, involving too many people in the process, and poor communication between the clients and developers. We believe that you will be able to avoid these mistakes after reading this article, and your ultimate project will be successful.