Developing mobile software can be a tremendous help for your business. And successful software development needs careful consideration of the following things. Pay special attention to every one of them, and you’ll see your software development project find a better path to success.
What Are Your Goals?
Before you take any step forward, you need to align your goals with your team. Know what you want to accomplish, when you want to do it, and what metrics you’ll use to measure success. You must also ensure you’re providing a solution to your customers’ pain points, and not just developing the software for self-serving purposes.
After all, mobile software development is meant to provide solutions -- not products.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
After determining your goals, you have to know your target audience. Is the software usable by the general audience? Or are you targeting a certain demographic? Understanding your target audience also means knowing their needs. Try to answer the following questions:
- What are your target users’ pain points?
- What are their goals and requirements?
- What technologies are they currently using that your software may improve upon or replace?
Gaining an understanding of your users’ needs means you’ll be able to deliver the software they need in ways that satisfy them best.
How much is Your Budget?
Your budget is where you’ll see many restrictions and challenges. So, you must carefully allocate and plan it. You can develop mobile software with a decent amount of money, but you may also easily bleed cash depending on the complexity and functionality of the software.
How Will You Approach the UI and UX Design?
UI refers to the user interface, while UX is the user experience. And these two factors can either make or break the success of your software. A great UI is nothing if the UX is poor. The same is true for great UX with bad UIs. Users do not like software that’s not user-friendly or visually appealing. In other words, make the software easy to use and effective.
What are Your Competitors Doing?
Competitor analysis is always good, no matter what business you are in.
There are 23 million software developers in the world. And that means you have 23 million reasons to check your competition.
Here’s how you can perform a quick competitor analysis:
- Pick 10 apps from your competitors that you want to analyze
- Try similar apps from other developers that you also want to develop
- Analyze the app as a user
- Check for missing features or features that you can enhance
Find ways to provide solutions that others are not providing by finding gaps and offering bridges. And you can only do that when you know what your competitor provides.
Which Mobile Platform?
The Mobile software development project will not work if you don’t assess the platform you’ll use. You have two options: iOS and Android. Developers build apps on these platforms using different languages. While choosing only one of the two is not quite usual, it’s also not unheard of. On the flip side, it’s possible to use only one language to develop mobile software that runs on both platforms. Cross-platform frameworks help do this. Examples are Ionic, Xamarin, and others.
What is Your Minimum Viable Product?
Developing a minimum viable product lets you avoid tackling the entire project all at once. A minimum viable product is a basic but functional app that is released as a foundation. After release, developers take advantage of upgrade paths to provide regular updates.
This lets you enter the market more quickly. You can then refine the software as needed. At the same time, you can use the basic product to check how your target audience perceives the software. Then, you can use the feedback to further guide you in the development process.
Mobile Analytics
Last but not least, check how things are working through analytics. Even though mobile analytics is still in its early stages, it has nevertheless become a crucial part of tech innovation.
You will need a tool to implement this. And when you do, it should be relevant to your goals.
It must help you qualify and quantify the performance of the software. Then, and only then, will you be able to see the bigger picture and properly enhance the software going forward.
