Every great business starts with an innovative and unique idea. The quintessential value of a successful mobile app also is an idea. But as there are millions of ideas that are born to die as unrealized dreams, many would-be entrepreneurs from time to time come up with mobile app ideas that never see the light of the day. Well, having a great app idea is one thing and executing the idea into a successful app is another thing.
So, let’s ask the question, after we hit a great app idea, what steps we should take, what we need to do. To answer this we are here with a complete step by step guide about shaping an idea into a great successful app.
Have A Clear App Idea About How It Will Work
An app idea for most people is like a semi-realized dream with too many inconsistencies and incoherent elements. First of all, your app idea needs to be thought over and over again to give a clear picture of how it will work and what it takes to make the app successful. Here we as an experienced and leading mobile app development company offer some points to make the idea more practical with detailed consideration of every element.
- Make a complete description of the app idea with the detailed app structure.
- Figure out what your app will do and how it will benefit the users?
- How the app will look?
- Is the idea really relevant for the users? Will the target users will find the app useful and unique for their purpose?
- Can the app become must-have for some users?
By having answers to all the above-mentioned questions finally, you have a perfect app idea under your command. Your execution steps to turn the idea into an app will now flow from this.
Evaluate The Idea Against Market Demand
It is almost certain that any app idea that can be useful and relevant for a niche audience cannot be completely new like a new-found galaxy in space. With millions of apps already crowding the app marketplaces, your idea however unique it looks must conform to some niche or category. When the idea is shaped with all details we mentioned earlier, it is time to evaluate the marketability of the app against competitors or other apps of the same niche.
Is the app idea unique in solving a problem in an innovative manner for its audience? Where does it have more advantages compared to the best app in the same niche? Does the app offer a simpler and more interesting way to serve a purpose or solve a problem? These are the questions you need to ask at this stage.
Evaluate the Target Audience of your App
To come with an app idea and to sell the idea you first of all need to define the target audience for the app. You need to have a clear idea about the user who would like to use the app.
The target audience should be determined as per gender, age group, region, ethnicity, income group, profession, or similar categories. After identifying this demographic category of your audience, you need to get closer to the particular type of people who are most likely to find your app most useful. To get a good idea about your target audience, you can concentrate on the audience of your competitor apps or audience of similar websites and service providers.
Create A Picture of Your Business Model
Your app is actually a digital product that will fetch you revenue in a consistent manner. So, from the very beginning, you need to decide how the app will earn revenue and what will be your monetisation model.
Now that you have a gross idea about your target audience and how the app will offer them a value proposition, think about the ways you can make money from the app. There are several monetisation methods for apps including in-app ads, subscription fee, in-app purchase, sponsorship, utilising user data, partnering another app, etc. Now you need to hit the bullseye by carefully evaluating each method for your app. Based on your business niche, audience, competitors and market you need to select one monetization model that works best for your app.
Give Flesh to Your Idea
As of now, the ideation process and deciding about a few important things like audience, monetisation and competitors only required handling information and analysis. The actual development process hasn’t begun yet. Well, now you need to give flesh to your app idea by preparing a few sketches of the different app screens.
Sketching out the app screens with all visual details will help you figure out the actual look and feel of the app. An expert wireframe designer will do this best by designing each app screen separately based on user journey and interactions. The wireframing will give you something solid to figure out the app development budget, schedule and time. The wireframes will help you to approach the app developers with something materially relevant and viewable.
If you are working on a better budget, you can further shape these wireframes to interactive prototypes with actual UI/UX displayed graphically. This will provide you the ultimate shape and substance of the app with all UI/UX elements clearly defined. With such an interactive UI/UX, you can have no discord with the developer regarding the project.
Finding Partners or Co-founders
Let’s be honest about one thing. Starting a company with an app as the main product is not an easy proposition when you consider the overwhelming level of competition every new app faces in the app marketplaces. This is why, even if you have started with an idea and came this far by pursuing the possibilities through measured steps, it would always be better for you to take a few experts on board who can handle different aspects of a project like marketing, development, project management, etc.
When founding an ideal team Consider the following expertise to cover all tasks of your app business.
- Visionary: If you are the first one to come up with an app idea, you give your company a vision to work upon.
- Hustler: He is the person responsible for nurturing and cultivating relationships within and outside the company to give the company a solid foundation of human capital and business connections.
- Hacker: He is the person to take care of development, design and technology stack.
- Hound: He is responsible to find data-driven insights about the user behavior and to figure out how the app can address user preferences better.
All these four different personalities taking care of their responsibilities can make a great founder team for a successful app business.
Getting Estimates from Developers
Now, when you have the complete wireframe and feature list for the intended app in hand, it is high time to consider the options to hire android app developer capable of building the app within your budget. Here are a few things to consider when approaching developers for the project.
- Consider approaching local development companies for the project for developing a high-quality app within a very competitive budget. Consider vendors with experience in similar projects.
- Only when you have a cost estimate from the local vendors, shortlist a few top-notch international vendors with proven expertise in building a similar app.
- Shortlist 5 or 6 vendors based upon portfolio, experience, track record, budget and customer opinion.
- In this respect, you must remember that a good development company before committing a budget will ask a lot of things about the app project and will provide several helpful suggestions to develop the idea better.
Meet Investors, Present The Idea & Get Investment
Now that you have a realist budget for the app, it is time to prepare with the fund. Always try to be realistic and down to the basics about app development budget. If the app is more or less like a basic one with few features, the budget should hardly go upward than $10k to $50k. Moreover, within the whole budget for the app, you should always leave a room of 10% for app marketing.
Now, if you cannot manage the entire fund for your app development but do not want to leave executing the idea to its fruition, try to get some investors for your app. Here are some common and widely known resources to get funding for your app idea.
- AngelList
- Crunchbase
- Gust
- IndieGogo
- Kickstarter
Remember, no investor today is ready to put his money on a blank app idea. Your app idea must be substantiated with something solid like the interactive prototype, a clear document about the value proposition, intended user experience, effective monetisation methods and the success opportunities with the app.
UI First – Get The UI/UX Development Right
Now, when your funding is ready and you have selected the development company, it is time to get on the actual job of design and development. First of all, you need to perfect your earlier wireframes with more details that can help you view each app screen in detail along with functions and flow of the user actions. The hired development company will help you finalise the design with new wireframes based upon your earlier design idea.
Now, as and when the wireframe is created, the designers assigned to your project will create the visual design of the app. The visual design of the app will have all the colors, themes, fonts and visual elements relevant to the application idea. This step will provide a near-perfect idea of how the app will look and feel like.
The App Development and Testing
Now, all preparations and designs completed, an Android or iPhone app development company or cross-platform developers will start building the app. The development project should have milestones to listen to your feedback. The developers should give you a view of the app in progress every week and get your feedback. When the app is built, you should always make queries on different aspects to the developers and suggest changes wherever needed.
When the development is in progress, for Evaluation you can involve your friends, colleagues and other people as well. In case you have some new features in mind, always discuss them with the developers and get estimates about cost, time and incremental development challenges for introducing these features. If it fits the bill, just go for it, otherwise, just keep them till the next app update.
Roll Out A Pre-Launch Campaign
When your app is undergoing development you need to start reaching out to your target audience to create a buzz about the upcoming app. Just give your audience the first look and feel of the app by sharing initial screenshots, some spectacles of how the app will benefit them in life and some information about the brand.
When you have a launch date for the app, just make sure the launch becomes a big event by reaching out far and wide with the pre-launch campaign. Engage as many people as possible across all relevant social channels, the website for the app and word of mouth marketing.
Launch the App and Market It
When the app is finally launched in the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store, you should make a big launch event to spread the news far and wide. Now, after the launch connect some industry influencers who will spread the news across social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. If you can afford, hiring an app marketing agency or PR company will further help you in this regard.
Conclusion
Finally, your app idea is out as a marketable, useful and relevant app product. But it is not even half of the work is done, when you consider a mobile app as a continuously evolving product. Well, an app needs to be nurtured and maintained continuously with new feature and design upgrades, solving performance glitches and app marketing. So, with the app launch, you have just started a business and there’s a pretty long road ahead of it.
