[web_stories title=”false” excerpt=”false” author=”false” date=”false” archive_link=”true” archive_link_label=”” circle_size=”150″ sharp_corners=”false” image_alignment=”left” number_of_columns=”1″ number_of_stories=”5″ order=”DESC” orderby=”post_title” view=”circles” /]Technology, in today’s times, has advanced rapidly. We may not have flying cars as of yet, but the drastic changes in the ease of access and innovation has catapulted the human race to great heights. The digital world is also ever changing with people investing a significant proportion of their time on smartphones and other devices. According to Statista, the current number of smartphone users in the world today is 6.648 billion, and this means 83.72% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. And on average, Americans alone check their phones 344 times per day. That’s once every 4 minutes!.
So given such data, if you are a mobile application and web developer, or someone who is keen to develop mobile apps, then you could be the next Zuckerberg given the limitless amount of end-users available. The race for the fastest innovation in developing mobile apps is on and there are a few things that every mobile application and web developer should keep in mind when developing mobile apps that are sustainable and success worthy. However, since not all businesses are of the same nature, these key pointers are generic and can really create an impact when developing mobile apps.
Target Audience
One thing that most of the mobile and web developers fail to realize is in identifying their target audience. Bringing the right product to the right person is the key to a successful business or in our case, a successful application. You wouldn’t consider the preferences or suggestions of your 89 year old grandma, when making a mobile application of an online RPG app. You need to visualize and anticipate the impact and likability of the targeted demographic your application is best suited to. If not, it may not be able to find its way to get streamlined to the masses. This is where market research comes in. Using the primary research methods would prove the best as first hand data would prove vital and most relevant when it comes to developing a bespoke mobile application.
This leads to the next pointer which is…
The Right Platform
When speaking about the right platform, a lot of variations and aspects come to any developer’s mind. In order to find the right platform, things could get easier if the first point is dealt with. Questions might arise, whether iOS, Android or WP seems to be the best option to develop mobile apps. This again, would depend upon the population targeted, as most of the population in the Americas prefer iPhone to Android, whereas, Europe and Asia has a liking towards Androids.
If you choose to develop a mobile app using the iOS platform, you should know that it is a closed platform as Apple has complete control over the programming language, and the apps it can publish thus keeping strict guidelines. You would have to go through strict compliance and be ever-ready constant transformations as well. Updating the application to the latest OS will be an important task from time to time.
If developing an application over Android, you would be choosing the best platform for developing mobile apps since the number of people currently using Android devices is uncountable. This means that your target audience will be huge. Plus, the OS is also flexible and can function on several gadgets like watches, Smartphones, TV boxes, etc.
If you go ahead a little further and wish to use a cross platform, you would have to work with the native plug-ins and HTML5 that play a key role in a cross platform functioning. Most senior developers consider this type of platform to be their go-to platform as it is one of the most cost and time effective one.
Whichever platform you choose, you would have to keep in view the costs and benefits of choosing a native platform.
UI/UX
UI design and UX design are two of the most often confused and conflated terms in web and app design. UI stands for User Interface, which is the graphical layout of an application. It consists of the buttons users click on, the text they read, the images, sliders, text entry fields, and all the rest of the items the user interacts with. This includes screen layout, transitions, interface animations and every single micro-interaction. Any sort of visual element, interaction, or animation must all be designed.
Whereas, UX stands for “user experience.” A user’s experience of the app is determined by how they interact with it. Is the experience smooth and intuitive or clunky and confusing? Does navigating the app feel logical or does it feel arbitrary? Does interacting with the app give people the sense that they’re efficiently accomplishing the tasks they set out to achieve or does it feel like a struggle? User experience is determined by how easy or difficult it is to interact with the user interface elements that the UI designers have created.
This simply contrasts over the look and the feel of using the application, the more attractive the application’s interface is, the more captivating it will be for the end users and they would spend more time using the application.
In order to use the UI/UX to the best of sorts, thorough research is important. Therefore, it is important to think like your audience before setting on towards creating the interface of your mobile application.
Conclusion
Every year, there are thousands of mobile applications developed but fail to make it through. And almost all of the underlying problems for such failures is a lack of proper planning and research. Therefore, if a mobile application or a web developer were to face success, they would need to follow the above key rules and maintain discipline to enforce these considerations when developing mobile applications. Needless to say, we have overcome great odds and have reached Everest peaks (pun intended), there’s still more to discover and more to invent. And hopefully we will be finding much more amazing and head-stuck-in-the-phone mobile applications and websites in the future.
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