3 Considerations When Developing an App

Did you know that 42% of all companies today have a mobile app to extend their reach to their audience? It’s true. And, if you’re one of the many companies today looking to bring a new app to the market, we hope that this blog can provide an immense amount of benefit to you as you navigate this exciting new chapter.

Now that you’ve decided to move forward with bringing an app to the market, comes a big decision: Do you build the mobile app in-house? Or, do you hire a dedicated mobile app development service?

Unfortunately, so many companies set out to develop an app only to find they are understaffed on resources or, worse, they have to take critical developers off of key projects to develop the app. Often, as you might assume, this leads to mobile app development projects getting tabled while other more important projects take priority. Luckily, there are third-party app development firms that can help.

If you are considering developing a mobile application for your company, plenty of options are available. And as a trusted Los Angeles-based app development firm we felt it would be useful to explore the benefits of a mobile app development service and consider the choice of hiring outside help or keeping things in-house.

In the following piece, we’ll look at Three key considerations when bringing an app to market, whether you decide to forge that path in-house, or with a trusted app development firm.

Planning is Everything

This should go without saying, but planning is everything. Often, planning means many different things, however, when bringing a mobile app to the market. Whether it’s planning what methodology you’ll market your app, or the physical planning of how the different components of the app will stitch together, planning is the first critical step. 

One way to attack this stage is to gain key stakeholder buy-in within the company on everything that needs to be present in the application. For instance, if the app is going to be a financial banking app, you better be sure to get key technical and executive insight on what financial-related features are needed in this particular application before getting developers involved.

In this pre planning stage, it can be incredibly valuable to aggregate this data and keep a physical list of all of the features and components needed. Writing down all of the needed features will help aggregate a resource map. What’s a resource man you ask? A resource map identifies all of the resources and individuals required to complete a particular project. 

Once you’ve identified needed features and resources, you’ll be able to take a better look at your next step. Do you have the required internal resources to bring this app to the market on your needed timeline? If the nest steps seem concerning, working with a trusted app development service may be the best bet. 

Wireframes Are Your Friend

Once you’ve gathered key stakeholder buy-in, it’s time to take that pre planning stage to a more tangible stage, the wireframe. A wireframe is a design methodology where the unique screens of an application are designed in a mockup format. Services like Miro or LucidCharts are great tools to help your design team create physical representations of the mobile application. 

Through our years of experience, we’ver found this stage incredibly valuable to organizations for two very distinct reasons, continued buy-in and validated designs. See, when you develop a wireframe, it allows you to continue to gain input and buy-in from key members within your organization. It’s incredibly valuable to keep key stakeholders engaged throughout this development stage, because neglecting to do so can have serious ramifications down the road. 

Consider that some major design changes come out of the wireframe development stage and key stakeholders are not updated on these events? See the problem. Yes, so do we. We’ve seen this far too many times where the design considerations early on look incredibly different from the design status following the wirefrom stage. Keep everyone engage and avoid serious trouble down the road.

Test, Test, Test

If you’re not testing constantly, it’s time for a change in approach. Testing should be the number one thing that is kept constant in the development process. Whether that be testing the functionality and validity of the application itself, or testing how the application runs on different devices to ensure it works on various operating platforms such as phone, tablet, and different operating systems, testing is key.

Why is this so critical you ask? Well, we’ve seen many applications delivered by well esteemed organizations fail to exhibit the proper resolution on particular platforms, or even various common operating systems, making large populations of your marketbase feel that your app simply won’t work for them.

Interested in learning more about how to maximize your ROI On Mobile Apps, click here to read more.

Consider Dogtown Media

Dogtown Media understands how important your mobile application is to your business. We are more than just developers you hire. We are your partners, working in lockstep with you to create the best mobile application possible for your business that connects with your target audience. We get to know not just your project but your company and the people who make it a success. Take advantage of our free consultation to speak to our mobile application development experts.