Design Vs. Time to Market for Mobile App Developers

If startup culture had a mantra, it would probably be “always be shipping.” Market validation is key to fast-moving industries like iPhone app development, and startups that enter the market early with a cutting-edge idea often gain critical user traction — even if the initial launch is less than polished.

On the flip side, the startup ecosystem is littered with half-formed iPhone apps that could have been successful with a little more incubation time. How can early-stage Los Angeles iPhone app developers find a healthy balance between design and shipping early?

While the answer depends heavily on the competition and user expectations within your particular niche, app industry case studies tend to illustrate the power of stripping down the feature set rather than stripping down the design quality. If your idea is new and useful enough that users will suffer through a sub-par experience, by all means launch early — but most startups have at least a few competitors, making a polished experience much more critical.

While the eventual goal may be to build a large, multi-feature product, most startups opt to start small with a fine-tuned minimum viable product that entices users with your core value proposition. Rather than building one feature-heavy product all at once, startups following this strategy build a series of increasingly useful minimum viable products.

Imagine you’re building a house; building a cottage and upgrading incrementally is better for the “user” than building a halfway-functional mansion and patching it up over time. The lesson here for iPhone app developers is that every stage of your product should have utility for the end user.

But what if your iPhone app idea is difficult to strip down? In the case of banking app developers like Simple, the core value proposition (make banking easy) can be difficult to boil down to a minimal feature set. In cases like these, startups can compromise by using the tried-and-true beta signup landing page to gauge user interest, only moving forward with app development if signups validate the expense of a large app.

Whatever the approach to streamlining the initial launch, iPhone app developers that find a healthy balance between design and time to market stand to secure a strong foothold against less thought-out competitors.