If you’re just getting into app development, you’ll probably face a lot of naysayers. Folks will tell you there’s already too many apps, or that only a handful of top developers ever make anything truly successful, or that you can’t possibly build a great app with such a lack of funding. Don’t listen. Is the app market crowded and competitive? Yes! Are the scales tipped in favor of the established developers? Sort of. Is it impossible to build a great app without deep pockets backing you up? Not necessarily. Here are some tips to get you off on the right foot.
Take a Good, Hard Look at the Bad Apps Out There
If you can’t be the first app that does so-and-so, be the best app that does it.
You’ve likely heard how important it is to study all the great apps out there — those that are massively popular, feature-packed, easy to use, beautiful, and intuitive. That’s true. But you also need to study the losers out there. Get a pen and paper or create a spreadsheet and list exactly why those apps are really bad. Is the interface hard to navigate? Why? What needs to be changed? Be specific. This helps you avoid the mistakes that unsuccessful developers haven’t learned to correct.
Become a Master of Design
Attractive interfaces that work smoothly and navigate seamlessly are the stuff successful apps are made of. If you see yourself as wholly a developer, you need to either pick up some savvy design skills of your own or partner up with someone who does have good design skills. There are well-designed apps that aren’t successful, but there are no successful apps that are poorly designed.
Find an Untapped Niche Market
Even though most of the mainstream needs have been addressed with mobile apps, there are a lot of niches and subcategories that are still not saturated.
The mainstream apps like calculators, weather apps, sports apps, and messaging apps have been over-represented in all the app stores. The trick is to find a small niche market and address a gap or need there that hasn’t been covered by the existing apps.
Specialize in One Thing and Do That Exceptionally Well
Don’t try to build a Swiss Army Knife of apps. Pick one thing for the app to do (or at most, one specific group of tasks), and do that better than any other app development out there. If you can’t be the only one, you can still capture market share by being the absolute best one.
Don’t Rush the Testing Process
When you are nearing the end of your app development project and you can almost see the download counter rolling up, up, up, it’s really hard to stall your progress with boring testing, debugging, adding, omitting, and tweaking. However, it’s essential that you have a solid project to release the first time you distribute an app. Take your time in testing and making improvements based on test results. You’ll thank yourself later when the app gets four- and five-star ratings from your users!
Are you ready to get started on your first app development? Contact us at Glance to get started today!