Mobile App Development – Things That You Need to Know Now

The mobile app development has become a part of your business growth nowadays.

Whether you are in B2B, B2C, eCommerce or any other industry, having a mobile app has become a necessity to serve your customers better and better each day.

But, most of the app owners like you are unaware of certain things that can help you achieve more out of your mobile app investments.

Let’s get started immediately to understand what all surprising things can help you during your app development process of planning, strategizing, developing, marketing, and saving costs.

1. You can improve your brand’s global reach

Having a mobile app can help people know about your business at a global level.

As per a survey by Statista, we are expecting the total number of mobile app downloads across the entire world is going to reach 205.4 billion in the year 2018.

And, it is expected to reach 258.2 billion app downloads by the year 2022.

Also, Statista shared the number of apps available in the leading app stores that was recorded for the 1st Quarter of 2018:

Developing a mobile app itself is an investment to branding like we discussed.

A few business owners have this misconception that if you have a unique mobile app idea, then only you can come up with your own mobile app.

But, you would be surprised to know that mobile app can be developed to increase the brand awareness and add an extra pinch of customer experience.

Having a mobile app is going to give your brand, a voice louder in the crowd.

Let your existing customers know you care for them and attract your new customers through a mobile app, that too, globally.

2. Earning money is possible with mobile apps

You read that right.

You might be wondering that mostly the mobile apps are free and by the way, why would people pay for your app.

Well, having a paid mobile app is your decision. But, if you want to have a freemium mobile app, then there are various ways to earn money.

While watching a series on Netflix app or videos on YouTube app, have you ever been interrupted by various types of ads such as video ad or even a survey kind of a thing?

Ok, I know it’s a yes.

Also, when you are playing games on your mobile, you often get pop-ups with different kind of ads like- ads from different apps, ads for getting subscribed for newsletters or offers going on the app you are using and much more.

So, these are the sources of earning money from your freemium mobile app.

Let’s know what are the possible ways to earn money from your mobile app:

Various Types of Display Ads
Interstitial ads – This is a type of a display advertisement that is showcased at the users’ end covering the full screen at a particular time or whenever a user takes a particular action.
Banner ads – These ads are a rectangular shaped ads that are shown at the top or the bottom of the app.
In-app video ads – a video ad is shown to your app users whenever you want your users to see. For eg. you can place video ads when a user has to click some button or want to move to the next level
Native ads – Native ads are preferable where user experience is not hampered because they are placed in such a way that don’t seem like they are some kind of advertisements. Less revenue is expected with these ads.

Referral Paid Marketing
A type of marketing where you promote different brands on your mobile app.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – you earn when a user takes an action on your ad like filling a form or anything else
Cost Per Click (CPC) – you earn whenever a user clicks on the ads displayed
Cost Per View (CPV) – you earn on the number of ad views
Cost Per Install (CPI) – you earn on each installs happened on your ad displayed

Subscription
The subscription based revenue model is becoming the most accepted model by the app owners. Your app users can subscribe to some kind of a content on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.

Content can be news, tips, video materials, etc.

In-app purchases
In-app purchases has become one of the leading sources of revenue from the mobile apps because you can earn within your mobile app itself. You can make some features of your mobile app in the paid version. So, only the premium or PRO users can access them.

Merchandise
You can have products to sell on your mobile app. Those products can be of yours or of some other company.

And, many more
If you work around the app monetization strategy, you will find numerous methods to earn money from your app.

3. Effective marketing strategy works

Developing a mobile app serve the following purposes:

• Attracting new users
• Offering better customer experience
• Becoming a well-known brand across the globe
• Engaging with your existing customers

And, all these purposes cannot be fulfilled without a perfect and effective marketing strategy.

What do you need to consider creating an effective marketing strategy?

• Find out your target audience
• Find out the places where your target audience is spending most of their time
• Create a documented strategy on how you will serve all the above purposes
• Document how much time will it take to generate good app downloads
• Make sure your marketing strategy has an appropriate ROI attached

For eg. we published 13 ways to promote your app on social media where there are 13 social media websites you can use them effectively to boost your mobile app downloads.

Now, you know the 13 social media networks to promote your mobile app. So, what you can do is find out-

• How will you promote your mobile app on these social media websites?
• How much time would you allocate in promoting on social media sites?
• How much app downloads do you expect out of your investment?

Based on the above answers, create a documented strategy and stick to it for the time period, you’ve finalized.

4. Constant updates boosts the number of reviews

Most of the app owners complain that it is not easy to get reviews. That’s right.

And, you literally hop from one article to another to find out how to increase the mobile app reviews.
But, do you know what are the reasons that your app is not able to generate reviews?

• Maybe, you are not asking the customer reviews during their app visit
• If you are asking for app reviews, then it is not strategically the perfect time and place to ask for
• If you are asking for app reviews, you are not focusing on how would you ask for the reviews
• If you are asking for app reviews, you don’t know what would trigger your app users to write a review for you

Among all the above reasons, a tricky one is- you are not asking the app reviews at the right time, right place.

Designing the improved customer experience on your mobile app makes this easy for you.

So, apart from utilizing the various apps to increase the app reviews, you need to update your app multiple times on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.

Once, you update your app, the features that are updated and the bugs that are resolved, you need to ask at that moment to understand whether now your customers are enjoying these upgraded features or experiences of resolving bugs.

5. On-demand mobile apps can gain you funding

You know what? Most of the startups are now working on on-demand apps.

And, what is an on-demand app? And, why would people use those apps? Here is everything you need to learn about the on-demand app.

People want to ease their most important tasks by saving their huge amount of time. And, here on-demand mobile apps come into the picture.

And, most of the startups have gained funding with the help of their on-demand app ideas.

But, why should you think about developing an on-demand app?

So, if you are looking to become a successful business owner, you need to consider a unique yet highly important problem solving app for the people.

6. It is developed within 4-5 months

Surprised?

But, you need to accept this.

The mobile app development is an important decision of your business. And hence, you need to look for the following things-

1. What platforms would you prefer for your mobile app?
2. How to find the best app development company?
3. How much time would the company take to help your app up and running?

Once, you finalize the 1st two steps, you need to jump on to find out the companies don’t take more than 4-5 months.

So, understand how long does it take to develop a mobile application-

1. Requirement analysis takes 1-2 weeks
2. Competitive analysis takes 1 week
3. Industry research takes 1 week
4. Decision on app name takes 0.5 to 1 week
5. Working on wireframes take 1-2 weeks
6. App designing takes 2 weeks
7. App development takes 4-8 weeks
8. App testing takes 1-2 weeks
9. App quality assurance takes 1-2 weeks
10. Create a promotional website takes 1-2 weeks

So, the approximate time the company should take to develop your mobile app should not exceed at least 5 months- you need to consider the unforeseen situations may arise.

7. Development cost is not always high

Yes, this is absolutely correct.

Most of the business owners have this misconception that app development takes a lot of money. But, that is not the case always.

It always depends on what do you want to offer to your customers and that too, how.

Most of the time, you believe what app development companies are asking for because you don’t know how you can reduce the development costs.

So, here are a few ways you can do so-

• Like we discussed above in the app development timelines, designing comes first. So, always consider that you design it first and then build it.
• Don’t go overboard to add features unnecessarily. You need to finalize what all features are necessary for your customers and all other unimportant should be avoided. You should consider having an MVP approach where the app users are served with less features initially without affecting their experience.
• The cross-platform development can save a huge costs because you can develop apps in multiple platforms at one-go without investing in all of them differently.

So, you need to figure out based on the above things that whether the company charging you for your app development needs cost cutting or not.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is an investment to your branding, customer experience, and overall business. Hence, you need to know various things that you may not know. So, I am sure you might have surprised to find these exciting things about mobile app development.