Today, you have mobile apps for almost everything. Right from clothing, cosmetics to groceries, you have got an exclusive app for online shopping. Mobile apps are pretty interactive and handy to use. Hence, more and more people are relying on mobile apps for their day-to-day shopping.
Name any famous brand; most probably, that will have a mobile app that you can download. From a business perspective, apps are excellent ways to attract customers and boost sales. It is because apps allow personalized interaction between brands and customers.
Even most of you may use at least 4 to 5 apps for your everyday needs. Hands down, apps have brought a revolutionary change in the shopping experience of the customers.
Also, with the increasing use of smartphones among customers, apps are mandatory for any business these days. Thus, the brands are moving towards apps to promote their products, improve brand reputation, and boost sales.
But as a beginner or as an upcoming entrepreneur, the entire app development process can be overwhelming for you. You may not figure out where to start and how to begin.
Therefore, we are here with the 9 simple steps that will help you get started with your app development.
9 Simple Steps to Create an App From Scratch
1. Sketch Your App Idea
Every app begins with a spark of ideas. To get a clear perspective, structure your thoughts. Get a pen and paper to start sketching your app idea. It need not have to be ground-breaking. Even a rough idea will do.
Sketching your app idea will enable you to learn whether your idea is tangible. You can define how your app works and what features you need before developing the app.
(Source: webfx)
List out the features and functions you would like to have in the app. You can even list them as essential features and not-so-essential features. That will come in handy when you build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of your app.
2. Do Market Research
Market research will help you learn the current market trends; Know your competitors, and understand your potential customers effectively. Thus, you can come up with a better product than your competitors and matching your customer’s expectations precisely.
Plus, focus on the app utility, the developmental software, and the designing tools present in the market. That will help you pace up your app development process.
Studying more about similar apps from your competitors will let you offer an extensive set of features to surpass your competitors. You can do so by checking the play store and app store for similar apps.
3. Create Mockups of Your App
A mockup is a rough sketch of your app’s layout, user interfaces (UIs), and flow. It is advisable to make mockups before you start building the app.
Mockups do not include:
- ● Fine-grained UI elements
- ● Exact positioning of UI elements
- ● Complex color schemes and effects
A mockup illustrates to you what an app looks like without distracting you with unwanted details. It explains the basic functionality of your app rather than the aesthetics.
You can represent mockups to clients before building the app. As you cannot describe the app in words, mockups are a great way of explaining your app to your clients.
Moreover, a mockup helps you fix any UI/UX problems early on. Thus, it guides you to travel towards your app development journey faster.
4. Create Graphic Design of Your App
It’s time to work on graphic design for your app, as your app idea is taking its shape. Your app design includes pixel-perfect visual details, graphic effects, image assets, animations, and motion design.
You can follow two approaches to make graphics of your app. Firstly, you can do it by yourself with a graphics template.
Secondly, you can hire a professional graphic designing agency. You can hire a professional graphic designing agency from GoodFirms, Upwork, or Fiverr if you are not confident about your graphic skills.
However, if you want to try it yourself, you can opt for a design template made for mobile apps. Thus, you can create your design using the building blocks of the template and then customize it.
Here are a few templates you can use for iOS apps development:
- ● NOW, TETHR and DO by InVision
- ● iOS iPhone GUI from Facebook
- ● Stark UI kit by Baianat
- ● Stitch by Lina Seleznyova
- ● Phoenix by Adrian Chiran
- ● Apply Pixels by Michael Flarup
The iOS kit from Facebook is highly beneficial as it includes pixel-perfect UI elements of iOS itself. You can use it to create detailed mockups with the default iOS UI.
However, beware of copyright and licensing when you are using other people’s original work. You cannot copy someone else’s work, but yes you clone their work with your creative ideas.
5. Build Your App Landing Page
Marketing your app is as important as building your app. How will people know that an app like yours exist? Thus, you need to create a landing page for your app, even before building your app.
As an app developer, you have to create a connection between your business and your prospects. A landing page on your website can do that perfectly and help you in converting your lead into a customer.
A landing page in your website must contain
- ● A precise headline at the top of the page.
- ● A quick introductory paragraph or an explainer video.
- ● An app screenshot or mockup.
- ● A call to action button.
- ● A breakdown of app features and benefits.
- ● A well-written story about the app owners in the about us section.
A landing page enables people to learn more about your app and its features even before its launch. Thus, you can attract potential customers way before launching your app.
You can make people subscribe to your newsletters by having an exclusive call to action button like subscribe, join now, etc on your landing page. With your prospect’s email in hand, you can stay connected with them, sending updates about your app and its features.
You can use tools like WordPress and Leadpages to build your webpages as they do not demand any knowledge of HTML.
6. Build the App with Kotlin/ Xcode/Swift
It’s time to build your app now. With almost all groundwork done for your app project, building an app becomes much effortless. You have created mockups, your app’s design, and even started marketing your app through your website.
For building the Android app, you will need Android Studio first. Then, you can design the interface of your app using XML and write all the logic using languages like Kotlin, Java, and C++.
According to Google, over 60% of professional developers use Kotlin to develop android apps. Hence, if you are a beginner, go with the trending flow (Kotlin).
You can build iOS apps with Xcode and Swift. The Xcode IDE includes a project manager, code editor, built-in documentation, debugging tools, and interface builder. With Xcode, You can build your iOS app rapidly.
Swift is an intuitive programming language that lets you build iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS apps precisely.
You can part app development into two categories:
- 1. Front-end: It is part of the app you can see. It includes layout, navigation, graphics, user interaction, animation, and data processing.
- 2. Back-end: It is the crucial part that lies behind the app. It includes databases, networking, data storage, and user management.
The data in the app, like photos, tweets, or social media posts, are uploaded to the cloud and stored in a database. The app keeps the local copies of those data and updates them whenever new data arrives.
You can integrate the front-end and back-end with your code. However, you have many tools to speed up your app development process. You don’t have to code everything on your own. You have got an open-source community and the proliferation of commercial development tools, where you can choose tools, libraries, and frameworks quickly.
Here are some of the popular tools for building iOS apps:
- ● Xcode, Interface Builder, Swift, and SwiftUI for iOS development.
- ● Balsamiq Mockups and Sketch for graphic design and UI/UX.
- ● CocoaPods and libraries like Alamofire, SwiftyJSON, and MBProgressHUD.
- ● Firebase, Parse Platform, Realm, and Core Data for storage and databases.
- ● Fastlane automates your app publishing workflow.
- ● PaintCode to turn your visually designed UI elements into working Swift code.
- ● The Apple developer documentation has insightful articles, tutorials, and documentation on every iOS component.
- ● TestFlight is the platform to beta test your app. You can even distribute your app to up to 10,000 devices.
Building an Android/iOS app can be a challenging skill to learn like any other skill. Kotlin, Swift, Xcode, and many other development tools are available in handy to make your app development job much easier.
7. Test Your Mobile App
Once the development is over, it is time to test your mobile application. Thus you can be assured of no bugs, and the user experience is intuitive. Though there are many kinds of testing available, we highly recommend Internal Test and the External Test.
Internal testing is nothing but testing your app by the development team, assuming you are the end-user. On the flip side, external testing is testing the app by the people who are not much familiar with your mobile application.
You can use tools like TestFairy, UserTesting, and Ubertesters to help with your external testing. Thus you can create a bug-free app that gives a rich user experience.
8. Launch Your Mobile App
As you have developed and tested your app, now it’s time to let the world know about it. Submit your app to the corresponding app store. Make sure you follow the guidelines strictly, either it is a Play Store or App Store.
Feel free to check those tonnes of free videos and tutorials available online to learn about the launch. Thus, you can improve your app store optimization score.
But, it is not as easy as it sounds. According to a recent study, Apple’s AppStore rejects around 40% of app submissions every year, whereas Play Store rejects at least 55% of app submissions. The reasons behind these rejections can be anything like crashes, bugs, privacy policies, software compatibility, and minimum usability.
So, now you have successfully launched the app abiding by all the norms of the app stores. But, the journey has only begun. You need to promote your app and let more and more people know about it.
9. Promote and Market Your App
Last but not least, promoting and marketing your app and taking it to the right audience is crucial for the success of your app. Though your app has great features and functions, you would need to market it to let people know about it.
To begin with, ask yourself these questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What problem does your app solve?
- How can you reach those audiences?
You can leverage multiple digital channels like social media platforms, websites, blogs, and any other online forums to promote your app. However, it is wise to learn about your target audiences and their preferences and promote accordingly.
Knowing about target audiences will let you create content that resonates with them, attracting more traffic to your web page. The more people know about the app, the more people are going to download it. So, publish high-quality blog posts about the app, leverage email marketing, post interactive videos and messages on social media.
Other than that, you can also indulge in influencer marketing to promote your app. Brands prefer influencer marketing more these days, as it opens up an entirely new audience for their products/services.
Nevertheless, do not forget to stay connected with the customers and ask for their feedback and reviews. That way, you can add new features and edit existing features to serve your customers better.
Final Thoughts
As many business owners think, app development need not be an overwhelming or time-consuming task anymore. We have broken the ice for you. We have simplified the app development process for you and have given you 9 simple steps you can leverage to build the app from scratch.
You can be a small business owner aspiring to build an exclusive mobile app for your business or an individual looking for ways to promote your business through apps; this blog has some excellent insights for you. You can use this step-by-step guide to build a mobile app all by yourself from scratch.
However, if you want to outsource the app development process so that you can continue with other crucial business tasks, you have stopped at the right place. Cypherox Technologies is a reputed and well-known software development company that works predominantly on mobile app development. Our experts have crafted multiple apps for both App Store and Play Store, serving various businesses. Feel free to reach us. Your dream app is just a click away.
