iPhone App Development: 10 Things to Plan Before Delving Into It

Whether it’s a mobile app for counting your calories and tracking your diet or one that helps you keep an eye on your pet when you are miles away from your home, application development ideas are unending. Mobile apps are no longer fun little distractions; they actively help to simplify our otherwise hectic and busy lives. Do you have an idea for making lives easier through an app? Then, the Apple iPhone store is the best place to start with.

Now, let’s recall all those times when we were utterly dissatisfied with an application or two and deleted them in disgust. One of the major reasons was that they were not performing as we expected them to. It is possible that we gave it a low rating on the App Store and/or tell a friend/colleague how bad it is.

To avoid user dissatisfaction, the iPhone App Store has introduced strict regulatory standards in place.

These guidelines ensure the quality standard is maintained across the iPhone ecosystem. Embarking on the iPhone app development journey may initially appear to be a path of uncertainty. But, by following the ten tips mentioned below, you can come up with a stunning application for your target audience.

#1 Define Your Goal

A great idea is the starting point for every new project. But before taking a step, find a differentiator for your app. In order to make iPhone application development worth the investment, it must deliver a service which no other app has ever offered. To know what the differentiator of your app is going to be, clearly define the mission and purpose of building your desired app. Consider answering the following questions:

• What is your app’s core appeal?

• How will it help your target users?

• Can it make their lives better?

Defining a goal for your iPhone mobile app development project is going to help you reach it faster.

#2 Start Sketching

You have a goal in your mind, but how to begin with the iPhone mobile app development process without going wrong in between? Start sketching. With sketches, you can lay the foundation for your app’s interface. The idea behind this is to conceptualize the primary features, approximate layout and the structure of your iPhone app visually. Rough sketches will also help your team members understand your mission and simultaneously serve as a reference for the next phases of the iPhone apps development service.

#3 Research

In this age, your mobile app has to invariably serve a partially fulfilled or unfulfilled consumer need. You simply cannot afford to piggyback on the success of similar apps anymore. To be on the safe side, you’ll have to do your research.

Exhaustive research enables you to identify the following:

1. Find out if there are other iPhone apps on the market which have the same goals

2. Look out for design inspiration

3. Read more on the technical requirements for your iPhone app

4. Think of strategies to monetize and market your app

With more than 2 million apps on the iPhone store, building something that has never been done before is almost impossible. Do not get discouraged by this fact and instead, focus on your project and user acquisition. Here’s a tip for you: study the features of your competitor’s app and learn from their mistakes.

#4 Create a Wireframe and Storyboard

Do not underestimate the power of wireframing in creating a prototype or mockup of your mobile app. It’s high time you make it mandatory for your iPhone project. With online prototyping tools, such as HokuApps, you can take your iPhone apps development service a notch higher. These tools allow users to drag and drop their representative graphics and placeholders into place as well as add button functionality so that users can click-through the app while in the review mode.

While creating a wireframe for your app, also create a storyboard. The idea is to build a roadmap that will help understand the connection between each screen and how your users can navigate seamlessly through your iPhone app.

#5 Define the Back-End of Your App

Your wireframes and storyboard form the back-end structure of your iPhone app. Now, take some time out and make sketches/workflows of your APIs, servers, and data structure. This will be helpful for your team of iPhone app developers and other individuals involved in the project. They will have a self-explanatory diagram to study when they begin working on your iPhone mobile app development project. Incorporate changes in your wireframes and storyboard per technical limitations (if any) and as the project continues to undergo iterations.

#6 Test Your Prototype

Revert to your wireframes and ask family, friends, colleagues, and experts to review your app’s prototype. Let them access the wireframe and ask them to give your mobile app a test run. Ask them to provide honest feedback so that you can identify the dead-end links and flaws. Supervise how they’re using your app, observe how the UI/UX experience goes. The idea is to decide on your app’s concept before it hits the design stage as it is more difficult to make iterations during that phase.

#7 Decide How Much to Include

The tendency of most application developers to include everything listed on the website can prove detrimental to their app development projects. Mobile apps are built to streamline user experience and help accomplish tasks that might have taken longer on a website or mobile browser. Decide how much to include in your app before you embark on your app development journey. If you fail to accurately identify how much to include in your app, you are likely to face major challenges in the future.

#8 Don’t Ignore Negative Feedback

Don’t dismiss any feedback you receive, especially the negative ones. You may receive some paragraph-long, one-star reviews too, but remember that these are also essential. Users who give such feedback are the ones who actually care, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the effort and time to write one. In reality, you can never please everyone with your app, but you can pay attention to valuable insight provided by some user reviews that might reflect the opinions of a thousand others who feel the same way about your app but won’t ever take the effort to type it out.

#9 Consider Hidden Costs

Most app developers and iPhone app development companies tend to overlook the hidden costs associated with their mobile application development venture. It is mandatory to factor in costs of ads and content development that drive app downloads. In addition, the ongoing costs of handling an active user base through executing updates to devices and operating systems must be accounted for. Hidden costs expand into severe losses later. However, few companies like HokuApps offer affordable and fixed prices, thus providing a transparent process to the customer.

#10 Visualize Marketing Strategies

With over 2 million apps in the iPhone app store, it is exceptionally crowded in today’s smartphone-driven market. Unless you visualize and implement marketing strategies, the risk of not being able to grab the interest of your target users will loom large. A carefully crafted marketing model must include the best features of your app and specifically, the benefits it offers to potential users. Start outlining a pre-launch marketing strategy as soon as the iPhone apps development service begins. Keep in mind that you cannot relax with an impeccable pre-launch marketing strategy. You should meticulously create a post-launch marketing strategy too. Given that user feedback will differ from what is expected, keep your marketing tactics flexible.