1. Complete Roadmap to the Mobile App Development Process
Every day, there are more mobile apps hitting the marketplace. There are more mobile devices than people today, which explains why mobile app revenue is expected to reach $233 billion by 2026. So, with that kind of forecast, it is not surprising that more business initiatives are investigating mobile app development. Some companies want to create the next big consumer app, similar to TikTok or Zoom, and tap into a ton of users and revenue. Other companies want to make enterprise apps for inside the business, to improve operations, cut costs, and become more efficient overall.
2. Consumer Mobile Apps vs. Enterprise Mobile Apps
Before diving into the development process, you should take a moment to understand the key differences between consumer apps and enterprise solutions. You need a mobile app to reach millions of users or a mobile app to enable your teams internally, it is incredibly helpful to understand the app development process. In this article, we will aim to leverage our hands-on experience to walk you through the process of developing consumer and enterprise mobile applications.
3. Seven Essential Stages of the Mobile App Development Process
The mobile app development journey may differ slightly depending on the needs of the project, most successful apps experience the following seven primary phases. .
- 1. Strategic Planning
- 2. Research and Planning
- 3. UI/UX Design
- 4. App Development
- 5. Mobile App Testing
- 6. Deployment
- 7. Long-term Support and Prrformance
3.1 Strategic Planning
Developing a strategy is the first crucial step in building a mobile app.This is when you start to shape what your app will become by defining its purpose, objectives, features, and business model
3.1.1 Define Objectives
If you’re building a consumer app or working on an internal app for an organization, you should first define objectives.
Ask yourself:
Ask yourself:
- • What problem does the app solve?
- • Who will be the end-user of this app?
- •What ultimate goal do I want to reach?
- Even if you have a good idea, it is still valuable to write down objectives, fully taking away all ambiguity, so you can keep the entire development process on track to achieve your objectives.
3.1.2 Research the Competition
The next priority is competitive research. Take time to review similar apps in the marketplace.
Ask yourself questions like:
Ask yourself questions like:
- • Is there an app that serves a similar purpose?
- • How is that app doing in terms of number of downloads and reviews?
- • What can we learn from what they did or didn’t do?
3.1.3 Choose the Right Platform
At this point, you are going to decide upon the platform you want to build your app for. Do you want to develop an app for Android, iOS, or one that works seamlessly on both? We will get into the details later about each of these platforms, but you’ll want to start thinking about which platform aligns with your objectives, your target audience, and your financial resources.
3.1.4 Select a Monetization Model
When building a consumer app, selecting a suitable monetization model is crucial.
Some popular models include:
Some popular models include:
- • In-app advertising
- • In-app purchases
- Subscriptions
- • Affiliate marketing
- • Paid download
3.2 Research and Planning
Once you have developed your app strategy, have conducted your early research, the next phase is to move into phase three, or your analysis and planning phase. This stage is where your idea starts to take on a more tangible aspect and sets the foundation for design and development.
3.2.1 Define Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
First, write down the specific actions your app will need to complete, and these will become your functional requirements. For example, if you are building a finance app, the functional requirements might include user account creation, credit card management, making payments, and the ability to generate a statement. Writing down the functional requirements will go a long way in clarifying what features you will need to build. Secondly, how do they now view non-functional requirements? These don’t define what the app does, but rather how it performs. Factors like speed, scalability, security, and usability fall into this category—and they’re essential for delivering a high-quality user experience.
3.2.2 Create the Product Roadmap
At this stage, it’s time to build your product roadmap, a key milestone in shaping your app’s success. A product roadmap is essentially a strategic plan for the development of your app and when to introduce features. Your goal is to make sure your MVP is ready to launch. In this stage, you will want to prioritize the essential features of your app and think about what other features you can add later. This approach ensures you focus on key MVP functionalities, with flexibility for future updates.
3.2.3 Choosing a Technology Stack
The last part of this phase is to choose a technology stack that you are going to need for your project. This includes the programming languages and frameworks, as well as the tools, you will need to build the app. For an iOS app , you will probably need to hire developers who are proficient in Swift or Objective-C. For an Android app, you will need developers with experience using Kotlin or Java. If you are building a cross-platform app, then maybe a technology like Flutter, React Native, or Xamarin is a better solution. Making sure you have the technology stack and team to support this stack will help make the transition to the development phase successful.
3.3 UI/UX Design
Strong design is a key contributor to the success of any mobile app. If the design is cluttered and confusing, chances are people will abandon it for a better-designed app. So, the best way to have an app that people will use frequently is to have a user interface and experience that is fluid, easy to learn, and fun to use.Let break down some of the elements of the UI/UX design process:
3.3.1 Information Architecture & Workflows
The design process of your app starts with establishing its information architecture—defining what data the app will deliver to users, how that data is organized, and the ways users will interact with it.Once the architecture is established, you can now create workflow diagrams. Workflow diagrams are visual representations that clarify each possible user interaction, allow you to see the app navigation in a simple piece of content, and ensure you, as the designer, are creating a logical journey for the user.
3.3.2 Wireframe
Wireframes are digital plans of what the layout and functionality of your app will look like. Their primary concern is the app user interface and structural arrangement.This will advance the process of creating the interface of your app without the distractions of the color and styling of your app.
3.3.3 Style Guides
In order to create brand consistency across your app, you will need to develop a style guide. This document that outlines important design elements like: Fonts Color palette Spacing and layout rules Buttons and widgets Other UI components Style guides are vital when promoting visual consistency and maintaining brand continuity throughout your app.
3.3.4 Mockups
After developing the style guide, you will apply it to your wireframes to produce mockups—high-fidelity visualizations of what the app will look like upon completion. This is the time when all of your visual design will come together, allowing you to see the full extent of what the final product will look and feel like.
3.3.5 Prototypes
The final design step is the building of prototypes—interactive models of the app that simulate the experience of actual users. Prototypes will enable you to test out different workflows, receive feedback, and assess any potential usability or design issues before the development of the app even begins. While prototyping can be time-consuming, it is one of the most worthwhile steps to take in refining your app before development begins.
3.4 App Development
Now that your design is complete, it is time to move into the development phase, which is arguably one of the more important steps in launching your mobile app. During this phase, we will usually have two main components:The backend and The frontend.
3.4.1 Backend Development
The backend is what will make your app go. It takes care of server-side logic, the database, and all operations that occur in the background. During the backend development of your app, your developers will determine the best programming languages, database engines, and hosting environments to provide your users with the best performance and stability possible. The backend of your app will handle every function performed by your app in an efficient and secure manner. This phase of development will also be a large contributor to your app scalability. If you are hoping to grow your app to accommodate a larger and larger user base over a period of time, you will want to make sure to be working with developers who are experienced in building out solid and scalable backends for your app.
3.4.2 Frontend Development
The frontend covers everything users see and interact with, and this is the part of the app that needs to be responsive and intuitive to use, based on the UI/UX designs and wireframes produced earlier in the process. Frontend development generally takes one of three main approaches:
3.4.3 Platform-Specific or Native Apps
These apps are essentially written separately with their own languages and tools for iOS and Android (swipe for iOS and Kotlin for Android). Although this method is generally the most expensive, it provides the best performance and user experience.
3.4.4 Cross-Platform Apps
These apps are created with a single codebase that operates across multiple platforms, naturally lowering development costs. By using frameworks like Flutter or React Native, developers can quickly deploy apps for both Android and iOS, as writing just one codebase eliminates the need to duplicate effort for each platform.
3.4.5 Hybrid Apps
These apps unify the features of native platforms with the cross-platform benefits of web technologies. Developers create them using standard web languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then encapsulate the app within a native shell. Even though hybrid apps may lack the high performance of native apps, they remain a smart choice for rapid cross-platform development.
3.5 Mobile App Testing
When the development phase is over and you’ve debugged your app, the next major stage is testing. This step will ensure your app is trustworthy and safe and that you have addressed any major bugs prior to launch in the production environment. To feel confident that your app is a quality product, I suggest going through these five types of tests:
3.5.1 Functionality Testing
Functionality testing is conducted to confirm that the app features are working as designed. When every button, form, and page is functioning properly, the user can have a quality user experience.
3.5.2 Performance Testing
For performance testing, the focus will be on the speed and responsiveness of the app. Specifically, you want to identify how the app is behaving in the real world with multiple users on the app at the same time. During peak usage time, you want the cyber operations to function efficiently.
3.5.3 Security Testing
You can’t take any shortcuts on the security portion of your app, especially for enterprise apps in finance, healthcare, or insurance. Users will disclose sensitive and confidential information when using your app, as your company will be storing the information. Likewise, consumer apps need security in order to earn user trust. Know the most secure design guidelines before field testing, test the security guidelines, encrypt confidential data, and have a plan to address vulnerabilities and loopholes. Anytime you have user data, it is worth taking the extra time to verify that the app adheres to security best practices.
3.5.4 Platform and Device Compatibility
Considering the variety of mobile technologies—new devices, screen sizes, or OS updates—your app should be tested across platforms and devices. Testing can be in the form of real-device testing or simulator testing and checking compatibility across devices provides a single experience for users.
3.5.5 Updated User Testing
Run your app through user testing before launch. This could be in the form of a closed focus group or through beta testing. The purpose here is to receive feedback data and identify hidden bugs and usability issues based on user interactions in a real-world context.
3.6 Deployment
Once your app development and testing have been completed, it is time to launch your app into the world! The deployment of the application will depend on your distribution platform - whether that will be iOS, Android, or for private distribution. When the application is deployed as a public app, you will need to submit that app to the Apple App Store or to the Google Play Store. Each platform has different policies and processes for app submission and review. You all need to provide comprehensive details about your app—such as its description, screenshots, and relevant keywords—complete several forms, and then wait for an undefined period while it undergoes review and approval before going live.Note - it is likely that Apple is going to have a higher standard for the app to be approved into the App Store, so it is helpful to be aware of the guidelines and follow them to prevent having to go back to the drawing board.If you are deploying an internal or enterprise application, private distribution may be the best route to take—especially if the application is intended for use by a small group of users or solely in-house.
3.7 Long-term Support and Performance
When your app launches and starts getting downloads, your focus will shift to performance monitoring. Do not overlook this stage — in many cases, performance tracking may require more time and attention than the development of the app itself, and it never stops.
Here are the KPIs you should focus on:
Here are the KPIs you should focus on: - ● App downloads
- ● Active users
- ● Average visit time
- ● Retention
- ● Churn
- ● Conversions
- ● Customer lifetime value
- ● Ratings
- ● Reviews
In addition, you will monitor crashes, bugs, user feedback, and performance on the app. This data will be valuable for you during the ongoing iterative process in improving the user experience.Keep in mind, launching the app is just the beginning. Mobile apps require updates to keep compatibility with evolving and changing operating systems and to comply with store guidelines and performance. If you are not regularly updating and taking precautions, your investment will disappear quickly. You also want to consider how you will maintain the app as it continues to function. You can perform ongoing updates in-house or hire a reliable development partner. The software development company you partner with will be able to provide post-launch app maintenance to help you respond to app updates in a timely manner.
- ● App downloads
- ● Active users
- ● Average visit time
- ● Retention
- ● Churn
- ● Conversions
- ● Customer lifetime value
- ● Ratings
- ● Reviews
In addition, you will monitor crashes, bugs, user feedback, and performance on the app. This data will be valuable for you during the ongoing iterative process in improving the user experience.Keep in mind, launching the app is just the beginning. Mobile apps require updates to keep compatibility with evolving and changing operating systems and to comply with store guidelines and performance. If you are not regularly updating and taking precautions, your investment will disappear quickly. You also want to consider how you will maintain the app as it continues to function. You can perform ongoing updates in-house or hire a reliable development partner. The software development company you partner with will be able to provide post-launch app maintenance to help you respond to app updates in a timely manner.
The Author
Ramkumar Pichandi
Founder,Rytsense Technolgies
I’m a founder who builds for one reason → To solve real bottlenecks with real technology.