It’s no more a secret that the world has gone mobile.   

Right from miniscule business apps to ecommerce apps, team communication apps, religious apps, fitness apps, and more – there is almost an app for everything you can think about. 

Mobile apps can be built as an extension to your already established business or can be used to create new business from scratch. So, regardless of whether you want to develop an app for your business or planning to build the next Uber, this guide is for anyone who wants to build a successful Mobile App. 

For the newbie, non-technical users and anyone who has endured a failed App Development in the past, this resource will walk you through the development process in a way that’s easy to understand. 

But First Thing First!

Mobile App Development – The Must-Know Amazing Stats  

With 6.3 billion smartphone users globally, there is no shadow of doubt about the industry thriving and curating it’s niche globally. 

Though stats are growing steadily, there is no sign of  this unprecedented rise slowing down especially in the UAE. Also, according to trusted sources, the Emirati population has taken to social media like fish to water, spending 2.75 hours daily on social media. 

There are some more statistics to keep in mind.

• There were 9.84 million internet users in the UAE in January 2021. 
• The internet penetration in the United Arab Emirates stood at 99% in January 2021. 
• The whopping number of internet users in the UAE marked an upsurge by 158 thousand between 2020 and 2021. 
• The mobile app revenue is all set to cross $693 billion in 2021. 

Undeniably, these stats are inspiring for anyone who wishes to create or develop a mobile app. But, before we jump to the conclusion, it’s crucial to understand the exact process for developing a mobile app. 

Although it sounds pretty fruitful to develop a mobile app to get a piece of the billion-dollar pie, the right decision needs thorough strategy and planning. According to the fact, your app will be in a bottleneck competition with over 1.5 million apps on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. 

Without any ado, let’s dive into Mobile App Development step-by-step.  

Mobile App Development – Your Comprehensive Guide 

 To be precise, mobile app development is classified into three categories:

• Pre-Development
• Development
• Post-Launch 

Pre- App Development

While it’s tantalizing to start with app development in Dubai right away, there are some crucial steps you need to take care of before you start. These steps are unskippable for the success of your mobile app, so don’t skip them over.

#Chapter 1.1 – Outline Your Objective 

It’s important for every mobile app development to start with clear outlined goals, like: 

• What are you planning to achieve?
• What problems will your app solve?

After all, your goals will ultimately establish your entire development process. And, if these are not clearly defined from the starting, it’s easy to get adrift along the way once you begin working on your app.

So, remember – Define Measurable Goals. 

Since, app development is virtually limitless, it might be interesting to add features, whistles, bells that are not mission-critical to your goals. So, it’s advisable to set goals related to the end-user, as well as goals related to your business.   

And, to ensure that you achieve your app development goals, you need to acknowledge the difference between an objective and a goal. Goals represent the final outcome while objectives are the steps taken to achieve those goals. 

Moreover, you can break those objectives into “SMART” ones:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

Notably, every goal should have a clear KPI (Key Performance Indicators). 

So, integrate pre-defined measurements to achieve success. KPIs work wonders when they are numerical. 

Chapter 1.2 – Do Market Research 

Once you have clear goals, you need to make sure that your app meets market needs. Initially, every app idea sounds excellent but needs to be validated before development starts.

The trusted Mobile app development company in Dubai makes sure to do market research before developing. Else, you could gush your time, efforts, resources and finances on an app that the market doesn’t need.

If you are developing an app for your already existing business, it’s recommended to ask your customers what they want. It’s easy to assume what your customers want, but the only way to make sure is by taking the time to learn more about them. 

Important is “Analyze The Market”

The foremost question is, “How will an app improve your customer journey”?

Simple, find your competition. Are there other businesses or apps offering the same thing? How can your app abreast the rest?

Your app should have a differentiation factor that separates you from the competition. This will be your competitive advantage.

Without crafting the subtle difference, customers would not have a reason to choose you over other players in the industry. So, how are you going to catch up with them?

If you are fortunate enough to have the first-mover advantage, how will your app be different from those developed after you?

Answering all these questions provides you with a clear vision of the market. 

Chapter 1.3 – Wireframing

If you are a newbie to the development space, you might be wondering what a wireframe is?

A wireframe is a crucial rough layout of the mobile app. Besides, it doesn’t have to be formal either. It’s easy to create a wireframe on a piece of paper, a whiteboard or can also use a digital wireframing tool. 

The objective of the wireframe is to illustrate the essential elements of the app and layout the schemes. It has nothing to do with the design elements in the wireframe. Remember, the focus of your wireframe should be on structure and flow. 

So, map out the user journey. Show what happens if they click on a specific button. What will the next page look like? What happens on screen when a user clicks option A vs option B?

Finally, a wireframe can also help get your team on the same page regarding your vision for how the app will function and work. 

Chapter 1.4 – Opt For The Development Approach 

As there are numerous ways to build an app, choosing the right development approach makes a significant difference. 

Before you start, you will need to determine which method is the best for your unique project requirements. After all, choosing the correct development approach is as important as choosing the best mobile app developer in Dubai. Also, selecting app development methods for your project is based on technical expertise, budget, app complexity and time to market.  

Chapter 1.5 – Look For Existing Solution

The final call you need to make in the pre-development process is researching the already present solutions. Before you waste valuable time and resources in building something from scratch, check to see if that solution is already available on the market. 

In terms of app development, there are services to meet the standard functionalities that every app needs. I’m referring to feature sets like hosting, infrastructure, design, analytics and push notifications.  

Why host an app on your own if you can just rent servers from an already existing solution? 

Remember, it’s always pocket-friendly to buy something pre-built instead of creating it on your own from scratch. You can make changes to the existing one as well. Only develop what you need from scratch; for everything else, leverage reusable tools that are already there. 

This approach will save your time, money and get your app to the market faster, making your life easier. 

Now, The Development Time

Here begins the legwork! 

By now, you must have validated your app idea, done with all essential research, and have a basic understanding of how the app should function. 

Let’s start with technicalities! 

Chapter 2.1 – Technical Specification

Put your wireframes to create a “tech specification”. 

The technical specification process offers you an added insight into the inner working of your app. The app developers need to pay attention to the wireframes and assess the technical challenges – not just the visual ones. 

Eventually, your technology space can find alternative escapes to achieve your goals. And, these alternatives can save you months of work and thousands of dollars if you figure it out now. 

At the very least, clutch the information, and then you have the opportunity to weigh your options. Besides, you can always say that the user experience is more important than shaving off some of the cost and building more efficiently. But, technology specification remains an important part. 

Chapter 2.2 – Outlining Measurable Milestone 

Outlining milestones help keep you and your team on track during the development processes. Without milestones, you will have no way to track your progress. 

The objective here is to funnel your mammoth development project into small milestones. It’s much easier for mobile app developers in UAE or across to chip away at many smaller projects than to look at one massive project from conceptualization to completion. 

The best way to optimize this process is by learning a project development system. Scrum development or agile development are both prevalent project management methodologies amongst software developers. 

Finally, this will provide you with a better understanding of when you can go to market with your app. 

Chapter 2.3 – Craft An MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

At the development time, you should constantly be developing an MVP. 

The idea behind developing an MVP is that it forces you to think about the app’s most essential features. 

What does your app need to function? Work on those imperative features first; the rest can be done later. 

In a nutshell, an MVP is essentially the bare bones of your app. However, it has enough of the core features to complete the most uncomplicated functionalities and use cases. 

Chapter 2.4 – Unparalleled Quality Assurance

After MVP, you have a working app, but you need to test it before deployment. The app must be tried on existing mobile platforms. 

As there are several ways an app can be used, the quality assurance person needs to check it on everything. 

Once your MVP is finished and you have a working app, you need to test it before deployment. So, don’t undermine the QA process. Remember, the app doesn’t need to be perfect the time you launch it. But, you want to eliminate all the bugs and errors. 

Chapter 2.5 – Deployment

The final stage of the development process is deployment. After that, it’s time to get your app live and put it into the hands of actual users. 

Your focus needs to be uptime and visibility. So, make sure that the app is entirely functional for the end-user. Besides, the last thing you will want for your server is to crash or something like that. But, with many software options and tools available in the market, you can use it to ensure the app is healthy and the software is responsive. 

To get your app market, you need to submit it to different app stores like – Apple Store and Google Play Store. Also, the mobile app developers in Dubai understand all the various submission guidelines before they launch the app in the respective stores. 

Post-Release – The Success Of Your App

The mobile app development process isn’t complete once the app has been developed. Instead, there’s much work to be done after your app launch. 

So, make sure you plan accordingly for the post-launch steps, and don’t spend your complete budget during development. 

Chapter 3.1 – Market Your App

Probably you have the best app, but your efforts won’t matter if nobody knows about it. Thus, it’s crucial to market your app accurately to get some eyeballs on it. 

So, start by driving visitors to your website and app. And, eventually, visitors become users, and users turn into paid members.

Besides, make sure you have a digital presence on as many marketing platforms as possible. Prioritize the channels where the user base invests most of the time. Even promote your app on social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. If your target audience is millennials, you can opt for Snapchat and Tiktok. 

Chapter 3.2 – Improvements 

No app is perfect. 

Even the most successful and popular apps are constantly coming up with updates. The new updates of your app should be based on user feedback. So, put the app through quality assurance before the launch. 

That’s not all! 

It would be best if you kept an eye on something else for updating an app – it’s known as regression testing. 

So, if a small change is made to the app, you need to go back and re-do the QA process. This is the only way to ensure that regression hasn’t occurred and crafted a new app failure point. 

All in all, don’t underestimate the importance of rolling out new versions of your app. 

Chapter 3.3 – Maintenance & Support 

Maintenance is an imperative element of the app.

This is why you must retain your development team. 

In addition to your app’s new versions rolling out, mobile device operating systems come out with updates as well. You need to ensure that your app is compatible with the latest versions of Android and Apple. 

With your app scaling high, you should eventually plan for customer support. 

These are elements of mobile app development that you are always going to be dealing with. So, ensure you plan and budget accordingly. 

The Parting Thought… 

In general, there is no size fit’s all policy in the mobile app development space. It all funnels to your budget, app type, needs, industry and ideation, playing an important role. But, the foremost aspect is hiring the right app development company to develop a product that has a perfect market fit. 

Hopefully, this blog will get you the right approach to bridge your potential clients base and app. 
Without any penny-pinching thoughts, sky-rocket on your app development with the free expert discussion that seamlessly caters to your unique yet industry-oriented needs.