Over the years mobile has evolved from an over driven toy to hyper operative tool. Technology is advancing day by day and people are more inclined towards smart phones, tablets or any other mobile devices. From small to large organizations mobile apps has brought about remarkable growth in the business operations and customer services. A company can now reach their customers easily through building their own business mobile apps or piggy-back on popular apps to tap into existing user-base.

Banks & Financial Institutions, Hotels & Restaurants, Ticketing Sites, Travel & Holiday Aggregators, etc. have found Mobile apps to be a great way to increase visibility & sales for their respective businesses. The gaming community has seen some big buy-outs or funding – Zynga (Farmville, Poker), Angry Birds, etc; ushering in a dynamic, creative community of social game developers. With more and more business using enterprise mobility solutions to complement their core business, the demand for apps will continue to grow. This means more opportunities for Mobile App Developers and cross platform experts to test their skills, creativity & innovativeness as they find their space in this thriving marketplace.

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Keys to Building a Successful Mobile App

1. Clear Objective Of The App

Your app idea should either be able to solve a key issue users/businesses are facing, or should be bringing something your potential market has never seen before. Your app should aim to provide a better solution than the existing apps in the market.

2. Simple But Attractive User Interface

User Interface plays the most important part in an app’s success. A good design helps a user learn how to use the app more quickly and makes it easy to use. Research has come to show that the easier an app is in terms of use, the more consumers will like it and hence improve its level of success.

Many developers plan to go with ad-based model only. This strategy can worsen user experience and affect app downloads and user retention. Instead of relying on ads, developers should design the app in such way that users will appreciate the value it adds for them, and motivate users to pay for premium features. Also, Ad-space should be incorporated into app design in such a way that these do not interfere with the information users want to access, thus providing a better user experience.

3. Choose The Right Platform For App Development

Whether its your first app or the 100th, choosing the right platform and technology is crucial for the success of your mobile app. In case of enterprises its more crucial because they will be mostly managing there apps internally. Right mobile app development platform should provide modules to support production management elements such as app version control, testing, performance analytics, lifecycle management and security.

Flexible platforms enable scalable mobile application development. Once a company moves beyond building five to ten apps, it looks for software tools to scale its development efforts. Platforms provide modules to support critical management elements such as testing, app version control, application catalogs, performance analytics, security and lifecycle management. Unlike the rigid platforms of yesteryear, today’s mobile development platforms are modular, offer standards-based interfaces and work with multiple front-end design methods.

4. Marketing

With every app category having thousands of apps, and over 2 million apps available on both stores cumulatively, it is becoming increasingly difficult for new apps to differentiate themselves and remain on user’s device with high usage. Therefore, it is of essence to invest both time and money to market your app.

Below mentioned are various modes for marketing your app :

(i) . App’s site – Your app needs to have its own landing page i.e. a small microsite. Before the launch, you should have a launch page for early birds sign up. This will bring a lots of traffic to our mobile apps.

(ii) . Promotional Videos - Your app should have an explainatory video which simply describes how your app works. If a well designed video seems expensive, you can create a simple video using screenshots and your voice over.

(iii). Blog and Social media - Using your social media account, start promoting your app and writing blogs for the same. This way, you will be able to intract with different type of users, which will eventually help you improve the product and services.

(iv) . Press – One of the traditional and effective ways of promoting a mobile app is by creating a pre-release buzz through press announcements. Get press to work for you. This helps create curiosity among mobile apps users and increases the number of downloads.

(v) . App recommendation – Try listing your app to as many recommendation and review sites as possible.

Conclusion

To conclude, I will simply say that the success of a mobile app is not driven by any one specific factor. All above described factors play a key role in building a successful app.