Mobile App Development 6 Best Practices
Smartphones have become an essential part of everyday life for billions of people around the world. We use it to set our morning alarm for work or school, to communicate with friends and family anywhere in the world on Whatsapp, makes it easy to stream music, movies, TV shows, photos, reading news, YouTube videos, check our emails, and as of course to take our daily selfies. There are more than three billion smartphone users worldwide, with the number of smartphone users worldwide forecasted to exceed 3.8 billion users in 2021. Today, Smartphone users are growing by leaps and bounds, so what do you think makes smartphones so crucial? The answer is apps. People have increasingly started relying on apps as they have made their lives easier, more convenient, safer, and more enjoyable. There are 2.87 million apps available for download on the Google Play Store and marketers predict that Smartphone users spend 50% of their time in mobile apps. With so many apps being downloaded, Today's average mobile app user is picky and ready to shift focus to other apps if they find any part of the app undesirable or slow to get the hang of. And, with so many options available to satisfy mobile app users whenever they please, they don't even think of a second while disposing of your app.
So, why is it that so many apps fail to make a mark in the market? During the most recent survey period, it was found that 80-90 percent of mobile apps launched in the app stores are abandoned just after single-use. Are you concerned about the possibility of Apps being deleted without even giving a single thought? So, the idea is to create a mobile app for your business with intuitive simplicity without it becoming repetitive and boring. In this article, we have discussed some basic mobile app design best practices, and avoiding common UX design mistakes you must avoid during mobile app development.
Disappointing First Impression
It's no surprise that first impression is very crucial - it just takes 2.6 seconds for eyes to settle on how your apps look. If anything goes wrong or appears confusing or boring, then potential users end up uninstalling the apps from their phones. More and more applications these days are focussing on a simple, intuitive, and responsive interface. In today's fast-paced world, consumers need solutions that work seamlessly and quickly. Anything too complicated and users will decide that their time is better spent elsewhere. When it comes to showcasing your features, think of it in a clear mind while designing apps. For example, if you have multiple icons with different functions, you should build a simple and intuitive user experience, and make their functions clear. Ask and answer the following questions: Do the navigation and the features provided by your apps can do more simply? If yes, then redesign.
Overlooking cross-platform strategy
For your app to be successful on all these devices, you must develop a cross-platform strategy. Whether developing a mobile web app, native, or hybrid application, it's not feasible to build your app only for a single platform. Today, with the advancement in the cross-platform mobile development approach, There is a plethora of Mobile App development tools with which developers can simultaneously build apps for both Android and iOS. PhoneGap is one such tool - a standards-based, open-source development framework that developers can use for building cross-platform mobile apps. Many other tools are available, such as Apache Cordova, React Native, flutter, Appcelerator, etc supporting cross-platform mobile development.
Designing an App Without Research
Avoid entering the design process without performing enough research to serve your app's purpose. Every business and app development process has goals and objectives, conveying its vision to potential users. For the designer and their team, the app's purpose, the nature of the business, target audience, competition, and unique selling proposition should be justified. If the purpose is clear, each piece of the app is crafted, and ready to serve your target audience.
Don't Copy Competitors
Creating an App? Know Your Competition First. To beat your competition you first need to know who they are, what they do, and how you can differentiate yourself from the competition to gain an edge. Learn by looking at those competitors, but don't copy them. Let's give you a quick example to prove the above point. Hailo was a mobile app that lets people hail a licensed taxi via smartphone, confined to yellow colours. With $100 million in funding, still, it was slowly clobbered by Uber because of its flawed business model and research.
Stop Annoying Your App Users with Push Notifications
On average, recent studies show that users received around 80 notifications per day. As you can see from the data, 40% of people just don't want push notifications as they don't find them useful. The fact is no one wants to get too many rings and blips and squawks from unuseful notifications in apps. If the push notifications annoy the user, then they might simply end up uninstalling your app. So, when we are creating apps, we need to hold this tightly in our minds so that don't send random news via push notification. Instead, notify them of things that matter.
Avoiding Feedback
UX designers should be flexible. The importance of obtaining user feedback in mobile apps is to design and develop the app UI according to their preferences. Remember, your users are the very first judge of the functionality of the app. At the end of the day, only they can review it, and consider it useful or not. The right feedback mechanism may help you improve your product, and bring you one step closer to achieve developing a product your users wanted in a simple yet effective manner. There is a reason why all the great apps are successful today as they have worked on half of the concerns and where the users want improvement.
So when you know what might go wrong, Avoid these basic UX design mistakes when developing an app. A successful app adds the X-factor to the growth and success of your business. Be careful at executing each step to ensure that your overall mobile app quality, and compatibility. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes but learning from them as learning experiences. As being a part of a highly competitive work environment, always remember that there is no room for errors.