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Making an App in the world where Apps are loaded with AI capabilities is not just an intelligent decision for any business to find their digital edge, it has become more of an essential than ever. Making an App with advanced capabilities like AI, AR/ VR, Automation is easier for bigger organizations since they always have resources and budget to hire their own team or an Mobile Application development company for a premium. But most of the First time App Entrepreneurs or startups wonder about what will be the best way to make an app or how to make an app from the scratch in limited budget and resources. Since any mobile app project involves a good amount of skilled efforts, energy, cost and time it becomes pretty obvious that a new startup entrepreneur gets worried about pros and cons of various methods of App development, hidden App developments cost, Maintaining the App and other nuances before actually jumping the gun.
Therefore, we’ve got you covered and here is this comprehensive guide on how to make an App from the scratch, and how to monetize your App, and why you should work with the best App Development companies to keep the complex things simpler.
A guide to make an App, with Examples
1. Define Your App Objectives
Yes, we all know that the ultimate goal of any business is to generate a million-dollar revenue and an App business is pretty much capable to achieve that and more, however we suggest take one step at a time. First of all, define what Major Problem that your app is going to solve, then define secondary problems too. Figure out what is not already in the market that your app can fill with i.e Do an App Gap Analysis. Brainstorm about the main objective your app is going to serve. Will the app enhance the experience of all your customers or will it be generating sales and purchases? Will this App offer a unique technology that makes users life easier, or the app is going to be an extension of your existing business? Once you’ve figured out the Gap, Opportunity, and Problem then you can make an App startup business around it.
Following are some of the common Goals for which you make an App –
To solve a problem through an App and make a business around it – like uber solved the Taxi booking problem, Airbnb solved the problem of accommodation, and like our very own HASfit(yes, we made it for our client and it has 6 million users now) solves the problem of giving quality home based no/ low equipment workouts.
To Extend your existing Digital Product (A SaaS product, or a Web based or Desktop Software) as an App – Like Google Ads App as an extension of their Big web based Google Ad console, or Linkedin has their own App. Such apps may or may not replicate all functionality of your existing tech product, but offers enough to keep users at ease.
To Enhance your existing brand for better customer relationship – Like My BMW Application for BMW brand, or a Mercedes App.
An App for facilitating Transactions like Ecommerce Apps– like Amazon Application or any other famous Ecommerce App, or any buy and sell app.
2. Do App Competition Research, Analyze, Validate App idea, build a strategy
Scenario #1 – Your App idea is absolutely unique and there is no existing App which remotely does what you want your App to offer.
Now this is a great App situation to be in. There is no App competitor, your App idea is unique so you’d think of going full force to build it, right? Well, not just like that! More important than not having a competitive App, is a viable business model that your App can support. In such a case where you’ve an App idea that doesn’t exist yet, you should be asking following questions –
– Will users pay for this app, and if yes then how (via subscription, via ads, via in app purchase)?
– How much scope of future improvement and enhancements is going to be there with your App idea? There must be a scope for scaling, enhancements to keep your users interested and engaged.
– There is no competition today, your App idea supports a viable business model too and that means you will soon have a competition! So what will be your plans once a competition takes birth?
Scenario #2 There are similar Apps out-there but you see a big opportunity to fill the gaps they’ve left.
This is a pretty common scenario, because there is an App for almost everything but so as with the automobile and they still launch new improved cars so you can still launch a new App, a better one than your competitors. A good thing in this scenario is that, you already have a market that is receptive to the App idea you’re contemplating to make.
There was myspace and orkut before facebook, there was google talk before whatsapp, there was bigbasket before zepto grocery delivery; and the list is just endless. This means, most of the successful Apps we use today had a big competition already and their App ideas were already implemented but they still made their way like a champ. You just need to take care of following points before starting to make the app:
– Check how efficiently and aesthetically you can incorporate the features and offerings that existing competition has left considering.
– Check if such new features and offerings are good enough to make your App a better alternative to the existing Apps.
– Check the usage analytics of those existing apps, are people liking them and spending time and money?
– Check their monetization methods, check their revenue and numbers and see how big the market is. Think of strategy where you can beat them with not just the features but also with pricing, offerings and content.
– Check if these Apps have left any geographies or demographics that you can cater to, and carve a niche for your own app in such locations and among such demographics.
3. Define your App’s USP or Unique Bragworthy Proposition
As mentioned in the competitive research point above, figuring out your App’s unique selling proposition and then secondary propositions is of utmost importance. The world is however moved on from USP (unique selling proposition) to UBP (Unique Bragworthy proposition) as described well by Cred’s Founder Mr. Kunal Shah, Cred is valued at apprx $ 6.4 billion as of mid 2022 is one of the biggest unicorns in India. So we can take his advice about UBP pretty seriously.
The concept of UBP in case of the Apps means you need to make your App product in such a way and position it in such a way that their users just not get benefitted out of it but feel “Smug” about being its users and that becomes your no. 1 App marketing tool. Not every new App product can be Bragworthy for the users, but atlesat one should try. After all, as Les Brown said and we quote – “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
4. Make Wireframes or Write user stories or Use-cases
A wireframe is the next step in the process of making an app. An App wireframe is the rough sketch of the mobile application you want to develop. A wireframe can be made on paper or also by using some very smart Mockups or Wireframes creating tools around that come with their mobile apps as well. We’ll talk about wireframing tools a little later, after describing an app specification document.
5. Technical Feasibility – Make App’s PoC if needed
Things get serious from here. A big round of Technical Feasibility Analysis is to be done here and I’ll tell you the reasons also.
– To make sure that all what the App wants to achieve is achievable through the existing technology and libraries or would you need to build the technology from the scratch. For example, if I were to make an App that can scan the numbers on your credit card then I can use an OCR library like tesseract or any other computer vision/ Optical character recognition library and that will save me to create a whole new technology just for one app. Similarly, if I have to make an app that can extract text from images, then I can leverage the same technology (OCR) for it. However, in case of Apps which offer you an altogether new technology (Like Prisma App), you may need to work on the background technology (in this case – image processing) yourself and that can blow out the scope of the work to a whole different level.
6. Make High Fidelity App Designs
Once your wireframes are finalized, the development looks all feasible, the technical architecture is selected now it is time to convert your wireframes into high fidelity screen designs that developers can use to incorporate into the project.
For high fidelity designs, you do need a professional designer who can use tools like Adobe Photoshop, or Sketch or Figma for making high fidelity screens. Agicent can definitely help you with App wireframes, App high fidelity designs, and of course App development.
7. Choose Front end and Backend Technologies
Now that you have the objective, goals, market research and framework ready, the next step to proceed forward is the the coding at both ends – Front end (The App side) and backend (the backend technology, admin panel, content management, database and APIs). There are plenty of ways to build an app but the most important call to take while building an app from the scratch is to finalize which technologies to use. This highly depends upon the App type, Budget, Future scalability, and timeline.
Here are some of the common technology choices for making an app:
Native App development: Native App Development means using the Native technology stack separately for iOS and Android. For iOS – Xcode with Swift or Objective C is native; while for android its Android studio with Kotlin or Java.
8. Choose your App Developer
When all of above is in place, you now have to launch your project and for that you need an App Development Team. There are some options to go about making your app as follows –
Hire an App Development Company – You can always hire a reputed App Development company like Agicent to make your App. App Companies like ours are usually equipped with the right development, design and testing teams and can quickly start working on the project and delivering that. You can either hire an App company on fixed price for fixed scope of work; or can opt for hourly model (Check out Remote App Developers )pricing.
Following are some of the major benefits of hiring an App Development Company –
– Rapid Development and Delivery: We are ready to start on any new project in a matter of days or maximum 1 week as we keep our app development teams ready for new projects.
– Expertise and Experience: We leverage our years of experience in the app development for your project’s benefit.
Source: https://www.agicent.com/blog/how-to-make-an-app/