Quick Summary:
Mobile apps are gaining popularity and have become the key reason for attracting more new customers in the last few years. It has become a mandatory part for businesses to survive in this digital era. In this blog, we’ll walk through the common mistakes developers make while developing the mobile apps that you need to keep in mind to make them avoid during the development phase and get your app build flawlessly.
With the invention of smartphones, mobile apps have simplified life of people largely. This has led to mobile apps industry emerging as the most lucrative one of all. Especially with a neck-to-neck competition between iOS and Android, you get to see new apps arriving on the scene daily.
The Statista Research Department states that revenue in mobile apps will increase in the next few years and it will reach 613 USD billion by the year 2025.
Both play stores account for more than 1 million apps each. In such a scenario, companies fight out each other to create apps firsthand than others. In such a case, it is evident to see lot of common unseen mistakes taking place.
Have you ever thought why some apps are just better than others are even though they are a lot similar in terms of application?
It is because some apps are just perfect in terms of functionalities and features, while others are trapped by common mistakes.
This differentiates the successful apps from the unsuccessful ones. After having a hands-on experience with both types of apps, I am listing down the common mistakes for you to avoid in your future projects.
1. Is the app meeting user expectations?
Attracting new visitors to your app each day is not an easy task. There is a different set of expectations associated with every single user.
As the famous saying goes “first impression is the last impression”, the first interaction of an app with the visitor is the most important stage that should be taken utmost care of.
Many users expect a welcome message followed by an app manual, while others go for a kill to figure out things on their own.
To reach preferences of every single user is an almost impossible task, and because of that, most of them miss early visitors with a poor homepage screen.
Users should not be made to fill long registration forms without letting them know how the app will be useful to them.
It is an extremely bad idea to keep long registration forms in the beginning with splash screens that are animated as well as various different elements blocking the relevant content.
Get routine sign in / sign up procedure in place asking for just name and email address. Also, try to integrate social media login so that users can login directly through their social media profiles.
2. Are you developing for too many platforms?
One of the biggest mistakes that brands commit is going after all the platforms at once. Obviously, they want to make the most of it by making their presence on every platform.
However, it’s not a wise decision considering the amount of efforts and money it takes. Moreover, you may not get the desired results.
You must identify which platform you want to go for. Each platform whether it be Android, iOS, or Windows has its own pros and cons.
Presently, Android has the most number of apps followed by iOS. You must also consider the target audience while choosing the platform. You must study all the other factors properly to find out which one suits your app the best.
3. Is the app displaying a systematic logical flow?
Show your users an organized logical path to follow to get the information out that is relevant. Random screens appearing from nowhere will not just confuse users but also let them abandon the app from in-between without accessing any further.
Users be guided in such a way that every single step seems to be important for them to fulfill, in order to extract the exact piece of information.
4. Does your app have too many features?
This is an error which everyone must get rid of. You must see that your app doesn’t consist of too many features. Mobile application users take no time in uninstalling the app once they find out that it has too many features which are futile.
So, to prevent this scenario, you must identify the main features that are necessary to keep the essence of the app.
Along with it identify another set of features which makes your app stand out. Remove rest of the features and your app will no longer be overburdened by features.
5. Is Your app having visual clues to help users?
An image always helps in better understanding rather than plain text. Hence, it becomes even more prominent to incorporate visual clues within your app. However, it is not necessary that visual clues cannot go wrong or they are always perfect.
Even visual clues have a tendency to look poor or not as per individual user perceptions. In such a scenario, the designer has to be more careful in providing generic appearance that goes with the expectations of all.
Hence, let us look at a few design principles that can be helpful in tackling this problem:.
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Go with the conventional forms of design rather than ones that look unique and impressive. The reason being simple.
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Most people do not like a mobile app undergoing significant changes. In fact, they are happier to use the traditional form instead.
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Regions and cultures influence metaphors. Using it in your app can help users emotionally connect with the app quite easily. However, not all metaphors be understood right away.
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Therefore, an extensive research needs to be done for shortlisting metaphors that can be easily grasped by anyone.
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There should be text accompanied with the visual clues. Many people can understand text in a much better way than graphics.
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Describing an action instead of placing an icon, works like wonder for most to interpret things with a great amount of ease.
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Nevertheless, since most others prefer graphics to text, it is preferable to use both in parallel complementing each other.
6. Are you releasing the updates on time?
Developers must consider their application as a work in progress. They must ensure that they are assessing the app’s performances and making necessary changes to it.
To obtain an application that is free of all the errors it’s important to release updates on time.
And achieving this is not difficult, just Hire android app developer who ensures to revamp and make necessary changes to the app to improve its performances
7. Is your app focusing on niche features rather than information overloading?
Novice developers often tend to fill in too many features rather than concentrating on few and getting expertise on those selected few.
However in reality, successful apps tend to have less features, but they do quite well in those limited features.
It is always advisable to focus on a few top-notch features instead of installing too many mediocre features that are not even much useful to the users. Reducing unnecessary functionalities and tasks will uplift your app drastically.
8. Is your app getting sufficient testing?
This one can be termed as a silly mistake; however, it’s very common. Testing your app before releasing is imperative. Daily more than thousand apps are released making the competition tough. On top of that the last thing you would want is your app to fail while launching.
You can avoid this by hiring Dedicated App Developers that would ensure adequate testing of your app on regular intervals, on different platforms, devices, and versions.
9. Is your app making use of intuitive icons or interactive graphical elements?
The standard components for graphical representation or even icons have not come up within a day or two. They have come into existence gradually with every passing year backed by extensive testing.
Since they have now become a global identity, ignoring them could be a big mistake. Users would like to see only those icons or elements that they are familiar with and with whom they can interact.
With unseen components, they are bound to put more energy to comprehend things that they are not interested to do.
Just as learning new language do not make a lot of sense, in a similar manner trying to interpret unconventional app language do not make sense.
If you want to prevent your hired developer from Android app development mistakes then the programming tutorial shared by Ivan Dimoski of Toptal will be worth reading.
10. Is there a proper marketing of your app?
The developer’s role is just not to build an app. Once it’s developed the developers need to do proper marketing. Now the question is how would you do that.
There many ways to promote your apps like promoting through niche blogs. Moreover, you can identify websites which cater to your target audience and promote the app there.
Summing up
The developer’s role is just not to build an app. Once it’s developed the developers need to do proper marketing. Now the question is how would you do that.
There many ways to promote your apps like promoting through niche blogs. Moreover, you can identify websites which cater to your target audience and promote the app there
