Want to develop mobile applications but don’t know how to get started? You’re in the right place! This article will give you an overview of mobile app development along with 10 best practices. These are secret tips that experienced app developers have been applying. Ready? Let’s dive in with Designveloper!
Understanding Mobile Development
In the first section, we’ll find out what mobile development is, which technologies are used to develop mobile apps, and how much they often cost.
What is Mobile Development?
Mobile development is a process of developing mobile applications that can run on mobile devices. These devices include mobile phones, tablet computers, and wearables.
Mobile development is growing at a very fast pace. One research study indicated that its global value will surpass $330 billion by the year 2025 and then continue to grow to even greater heights. This is an inevitable result of increasing mobile usage around the world (with nearly 4.7 billion users in 2025). Further, higher consumer spending on mobile apps (over $36 billion in 2024) is another reason propelling the growth of the global mobile development market.
2. What Languages Are Used to Develop Mobile Apps?
There are different programming languages and frameworks that developers employ to build mobile applications. Some of the most used are React Native, Flutter, and Swift. Besides, you may consider the following technologies:
Recommended reading: 17 Computer Programming Languages that You Should Learn
3. How Much Does a Mobile App Cost?
There is no single answer to the question: “How much does it cost to make an app for your business?”. The total cost for mobile development depends on many aspects, as shown below:
- Types of apps. Is it a mobile game or a social networking app?
- Platforms. Which platform will your app be available on?
- Design. Is it just a basic design or a customized one?
- The number of pages. How many pages does the app need?
- Features and infrastructure. The more complex features, the more money you need to invest in the app development process.
To help you better envision how these factors impact the overall cost, let’s take a quick look at three different types of mobile apps based on their complexity levels.
Note that you should use the table above as a reference to predict the potential costs of making a mobile app. Every app is different, and every specification you want your app to have will add up to the price.
Recommended reading: Top 18 Mobile App Design Tools
10 Best Mobile Development Practices
Now you’ve known what mobile development is. But how can you build a successful mobile application? Let’s take a look:
1. Break down tasks into small and manageable chunks
Dividing the project into small and easily manageable parts helps you be more organized and avoid being overwhelmed. In doing so, the first thing to do is to determine the key features and functionalities of a mobile app. They then can be further subdivided into sub-tasks that make up the overall feature. For instance, if the app has a user login functionality, the smaller tasks consist of creating the login interface, coding the login functionality, and checking the login functionality.
Also, when tasks are broken down, it’s easier to estimate time and resources required to complete the tasks. This is because smaller tasks are less stressful and easier to handle as compared to large ones. This approach also allows your whole team to monitor the progress and also the possibility of coming across some challenges early enough.
To manage and track all these tasks, our advice is to use tools like Trello or Jira. These tools enable the whole team, even including stakeholders, to visualize which tasks are assigned to whom, how the work is going, and when it should be done.
2. Do right from the beginning
Your mobile development project should be in the right manner from the beginning to create the initial impression of the whole process. But you may ask, “What do you mean by doing it right?” So here are some small tips for that:
First, conduct thorough research to know your audience and what they want. For instance, while using social media, Gen-Z users spend an average of 4.1 hours per month on non-gaming mobile applications. The data can help you decide on the features and look of your app.
Second, select the proper development method. Choose flexible approaches to be more efficient. Typically, agile practices like SCRUM or Kanban are useful in responding to change as it is always required. This approach is useful in the dynamic environment that is characteristic of mobile development.
Third, determine the correct technology stack. Use frameworks such as React Native or Flutter to develop apps for multiple platforms. These frameworks are time and cost effective since they enable developers to use the same code in different platforms.
Last but not least, consider security from the beginning. This ensures that customer and business data is well protected from any unauthorized individuals and cyberthreats.
Recommended reading: 3 Key Reason Make App Development Projects Fail
3. Focus on the user experience
User experience or UX is very important in mobile development. If UX is done properly, it can greatly attract and retain your users. In other words, a good UX design can increase conversion rates, improve customer satisfaction, and drive sales. So, the question here is: How can you build a good UX design? Here are several tips:
First, your mobile application must be easy to navigate. Imagine you access an app but don’t understand which key message it conveys nor find something important (e.g., company contact). What would you do this time? Most people often choose to leave the app and the same can apply to your mobile app if it has challenging navigation. Therefore, our advice is to use proper navigation types (like dropdown or hamburger) and only present the main features that show who you are and what you offer.
Second, focus on the app’s speed. 39% of users will abandon the content if the loading time is too long. Therefore, a good UX design should exclude the long loading of the app.
Third, the app should have appealing appearance. The customers’ satisfaction level determines the credibility of a website by 75% based on the app’s appearance. So, ensure your app’s aesthetics by choosing the right colors, fonts, high-quality pictures, and other visual elements that not only catch the eyes of users but also align with your brand.
Last but not least, pay attention to personalization. It was found that 54% of the users are comfortable with content that is targeted to their interests. This can be done using the user onboarding tools and recommendation systems which are more personalized. For instance, if your eCommerce app can recommend products to customers, it’ll increase their shopping experience, consequently improving your overall sales.
4. Keep the design in mind
Design is a very important aspect of mobile development. Here’s something to consider if you want to have a good design for your app:
- User-Centric Design: The design should be more user-oriented. Therefore, your design team has to understand users and what they want from your app. For instance, the target audience of a mental health app prefer neat navigation and clear fonts. So, designing the app this way can improve the usability of the site.
- Minimalism and Accessibility: Simplicity has become the order of the day. So your app should be easy to navigate and eliminate unnecessary items. Also, features such as voice commands and large text settings should be available for users with disabilities.
- Dark Mode and Personalization: Dark mode is not just a fashion; it helps to decrease eye strain and preserve battery charge. Another feature is the personalization of the application, which is also based on artificial intelligence. Personalization aims at creating a unique experience for every user, enhancing the users’ interaction and satisfaction.
- Security and Privacy: Security and privacy should also be taken into consideration while designing. It is crucial to ensure that user data is safe, and this is why the users are more likely to trust an app. Security measures have to be put in place and have to be strong.
FURTHER READING: |
1. Custom Mobile App Development Process: A Detailed Guide |
2. Mobile App Design Process: How does it change? |
5. Test, test, and test
Testing is a very important process in mobile development. It guarantees that your application runs efficiently on various devices and operating systems.
Real device testing is a must. It helps to find bugs that can be actually hidden in emulators. In other words, testing on real devices may expose performance problems when the device is under a different network. This ensures your app will have high speed data connection and low latency, regardless of its network.
Besides manual testing, automation reduces the amount of time and energy that one has to spend. It enables developers to execute tests quickly and more often. For example, test generation tools that use artificial intelligence can develop test cases based on the app’s features and users’ actions. This makes sure that there is no blind spot and the bugs are detected within the shortest time possible.
Another best practice is the continuous testing. It incorporates the testing of the app at each level of development. This approach enables one to identify challenges on time and also provide the users with the best experience.
6. Pay attention to security
As already mentioned, security is a very important aspect in mobile development. It should be put into consideration by developers to ensure that user data is not compromised.
One of the important security practices is the secure authentication. Lack of strong authentication can cause a system to be compromised. This risk can be managed by using better authentication measures including the use of MFA. For instance, Google Authenticator offers the second factor of security by generating TOTP, which is time-based one-time passwords.
Encryption is another security practice to consider in mobile development. This helps your data be intercepted and unable to be read. To ensure that the user data is not accessed by unauthorized persons, there is the use of encryption methods such as AES.
Security testing is also important. According to a survey, internet users of all age groups, especially from 25 to 34 years old, are becoming more aware of data privacy and taking actions to protect their data. Understanding this trend, more and more companies have implement vulnerability tests, penetration testing, and compliance testing to ensure their apps are compliance with data privacy regulations and secure from cyber attacks.
Also, you should update the app frequently as its current components can contain some vulnerabilities. Through updates and patches, you can prevent unexpected security threats.
Finally, ensure that API integration is secure. APIs are mostly the first line of access to the data. By keeping connections between the app and the server secure, you can prevent data leakage. Also, the use of SSL/TLS protocols can protect data transfer.
Recommended reading: 28 Amazing tools for Mobile App Design Software Tools
7. Plan for updates
Updates are important to keep the app useful and secure. Planning app updates often involves setting some time to address issues that may have been left out in the previous versions, enhancing the performance of the application, and incorporating new features. This approach helps to retain the users and prevent them from abandoning the application.
In addition, updates should reflect the current trends in mobile development. By 2025, such trends as AI-powered chatbots are emerging. Incorporating these technologies into updates can greatly improve the app and the experience of the users.
8. Check application compatibility
When it comes to app compatibility, developers have to ensure that their applications run well on different devices and operating systems. This will prevents users from getting frustrated and leaving negative comments about the application.
One of the best ways to ensure app compatibility is through cross-platform development. This approach enables the apps to be compatible with different operating systems like iOS and Android. Further, it’s economical in terms of time and costs. To build such applications, you need to use frameworks like Flutter and React Native. Google Pay and Facebook are some of the apps that have been developed using these frameworks.
We also recommend you to use BrowserStack or Sauce Labs to test your apps on different devices. These tools offer the actual testing environment in real time, and this helps to check compatibility of the software in different platforms.
9. Monitor analytics
Monitoring analytics is an integral practice in mobile development. It helps you know how users are using the application and how the application is performing.
Accordingly, you should employ such tools as Google Analytics and Firebase to help understand the users’ activity and their further loyalty. For instance, Firebase provides real-time information about users’ engagement. This data is useful in decision making to enhance the app.
Further, it’s possible to track analytics and notice the problem in the early stages. For example, if a feature is not doing well, then you can easily rectify it. This is such a proactive approach that guarantees the users a better experience. Especially with the support of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, your development team can implement predictive analytics to forecast possible issues with mobile development (like functionality or usability). This not only saves much time and money for your team to detect and fix potential problems, but also ensures seamless user experience on the app.
In addition, analytics assist in evaluating the effectiveness of marketing strategies. By analyzing user acquisition and conversion rates, you can improve on current strategies to communicate better with your customers and hence better returns on investments.
10. Follow the app store development guidelines
If you plan to deploy a mobile application to app stores, consider following their specific guidelines. Apple and Google have certain guidelines to ensure that the apps are of good quality and are secure.
Apple has always been very particular with its App Store review. This year alone, Apple rejected more than 40% of the apps that developers tried to submit to the App Store because they violated the guidelines. Developers need to read the App Store Review Guidelines to know what not to do. For instance, apps should be designed to offer the best experience to the users and should meet certain design requirements.
Google Play Store also has strict polices in place. In 2023, Google took down 1.43 million apps for policy violations. It is therefore important for developers to read through the Google Play Developer Policy to avoid violation of the policy. Apps must not include false information and must not infringe on the privacy of the users.
Conclusion
This article has given you a comprehensive overview of the top 10 mobile app development best practices for successful projects. Following these best practices helps you keep the mobile apps relevant and competitive. It is also important that your business should always get updated about the current trends and have to enhance their apps constantly. As the mobile development environment is constantly changing, becoming aware of which trends or techs are emerging helps satisfy your user’s demand and obtain sustainable growth.
Are you looking for a trusted, experienced mobile developer? Designveloper has been one of the pioneers in this field. We have worked on more than one hundred projects and have completed more than half a million hours of mobile development. Some of the projects that our team has been involved in include the healthcare platform referred to as ODC and the document platform known as Lumin.
We also integrate new technologies and trends (like AI, cross-platform development, or compatibility with 5G) into our custom-built solutions to keep our clients ahead of the competition. Also at Designveloper, we follow the mobile development practices mentioned in this article and many more to ensure that mobile apps are not only effective, but also easy to use and safe. With all these things, we pride ourselves in quality and innovation making us a standout company in the industry.
So, do you want to share your idea with us? Get in touch now and discuss further!
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