How to Plan a Mobile App Project Checklist

 

The mobile app development industry is vast and continues to grow each year. In the last few years we saw the mobile app market maturing from smartphones and tablets to wearable devices. App analytics and mobile app marketing have also grown in prevalence in last few years. Before hiring any mobile app development company for your app project, you should consider the following checklist:

 

1: Setting up goals:

The first and foremost step before starting any development project is to have a clear set of goals in mind. You should have a clear picture of your app's core features and how you’re planning to setup app monetization. Defining clear goals at an early stage will help you achieve end results faster.

 

Related: How Mobile App Help to Raise Funds For Startups

 

2: Brainstorm your app by sketching:

Rough sketches of your app will give you an idea of what it will look like and how the pages will be linked to each other. These sketches are the early blueprints of your app and will let you consider and be aware of dead links or other flaws in user experience.

 

3: Market research:

Start searching the internet to see if an app similar to yours is already available or not. There are more than 1.6 million apps on Android and nearly 1.5 million apps available on the Apple store, so there might be a possibility that you will find several other apps similar to yours. Competition should not discourage you, however.  With the right product, strategy and marketing you can make your app stand out among several categories and beat your competition. Proper market research will let you know about the failures and successes of your competitors apps, which will help you to avoid the same mistakes that they might have made as you proceed with your own custom app development.

 

4: Know your user base:

You need to figure out who your target audience is as it will help you create an effective marketing strategy. Knowing exactly who your audience is will help you run targeted paid campaigns through social media.

 

5: Come up with wireframes:

Wireframes for your app consist of creating mockups/prototypes of your app. Several free wireframe tools are available through which you can create an app mockup. Having a wireframe ready for an app helps to understand the connection between each screen and how the user can navigate through your app. It also helps to get an accurate time and cost estimate.

 

6: Plan for the back-end your app:

If your app requires a back-end, ask your mobile app development company to do the planning for you. During this stage your developer will create databases, APIs and storage solutions for your app. Apps that don’t require a back-end can simply skip this stage.

 

7: Decide on what technologies to use:

Mobile app development can be done using any of the technologies like Objective-C, Java, Swift and Phone Gap. It’s better to consult with your development agency regarding the technology that suits your goals best.

 

8: Test your prototype:

Once the prototype is ready, ask your staff, colleagues, friends and family to test the app and give honest feedback. They can test every conceivable scenario of the app to see if there are any design flaws. The goal is to solidify your app idea before it goes into the development process.  Once you begin the design process, it's difficult and inefficient to backtrack and change things around. The clearer the prototype from the beginning, the better.

 

9: Think MVP:

Minimum Viable Product is an app entrepreneur's best friend. Don’t try and tackle the entire problem at once. Instead, come up with a stripped-down version of your app to check the market demand and validate your plan before investing in a full-fledged mobile product. Additionally, this incremental approach may allow you to enter into the market faster by cutting your development time and prices.

 

Tags: mobile app development company chicago, mobile app project checklist

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