Mobile App Development Process: Ultimate Guide to Build an App

Every day, the number of apps released to the market grows. Plus, right now, there are more mobile devices in the world than there are people. No wonder that by 2030 mobile applications are projected to generate $626.39 billion in revenue.

With such promising forecasts, it’s easy to see why many companies are looking into mobile app development.

Some businesses are interested in creating the next TikTok or Zoom. Thus, focusing on consumer-facing projects and the revenue they can generate. Others want to optimize internal processes and choose to invest in enterprise solutions that can reduce expenses and improve efficiencies.

Discover the difference between Consumer and Enterprise Mobile Apps

Whatever the case, if developing a mobile solution is of interest to your firm, it’s valuable for you to know the process of developing an app. Today, we’re going to share with you a mobile app creation guide based on our experience and discuss each step of making the app of your dreams. Let’s get going.

8 Key Steps of Mobile App Development Process

The process of mobile app development can somewhat vary on an individual basis. However, the following eight steps are the ones that you’ll likely have to go through:

• Strategy Development
• Analysis and Planning
• UI/UX Design
• App Development
• Application Testing
• Deployment
• Localization
• Support and Performance Monitoring

So, without further ado, read on to find out what the eight key stages of the mobile app development are and take into account a few considerations to ensure a smooth flow before you start.

The very first step of the app development process is, unsurprisingly, defining the strategy. At this point, you’ve got to start thinking carefully about your future application, its goals, capabilities, and business model.

Identify Objectives

Whether you’re developing a consumer or enterprise app, you’ll likely begin by identifying its main objectives. This can be done by answering the following questions:

• What problem will my application solve?
• Who are its target users?
• What results do I want my app to achieve?

The truth is, you might not have to think too much about these questions because you may already have the initial idea for your app. However, it’s still good to note the key objectives down so you can always refer back to the goals you are striving for.

Research Competitors

The next step of strategy planning is looking into your existing or potential competitors.

Are there any apps on the market that serve the same purpose? How are they performing? Do they have many installs and positive reviews?

By researching your competition, you will be able to bypass mistakes that may already have been made within your industry. Moreover, you’ll get an idea about the current landscape of similar mobile apps and be able to determine how you can differentiate from competitors.

Select Platform

At the strategy development phase of the app creation process, you’ll also need to decide for which platform you’re building your tool. Will it be a custom Android solution? Or, is an iOS app a better pick? Or, perhaps, it is a cross-platform application that you truly need.

We’ll later go into more detail about the various options you have, but it’s important to already begin thinking about this area of the process.

Discover the Main Differences Between iOS and Android Apps

Choose Monetization Method

Lastly, choosing the right monetization method is only applicable for those delivering a consumer application. In this case, you want to make direct money from your investment, but there are various options for you to pick from, including:

• In-app advertising
• In-app purchases
• Subscriptions
• Affiliate marketing
• Paid apps

The monetization method depends on your goals and the type of application that you’re making. For example, if you’re developing a dating app, it’s probably not a good idea to charge for downloads. Instead, you’ll likely go for in-app purchases and subscriptions.

On the contrary, if you choose to build a game app, chances are you’ll leverage in-app advertising along with in-app purchases and subscriptions.

As you can see, everything depends on the purpose of your application. However, it’s worth mentioning that the subscription-based monetization model seems to be gaining widespread approval.

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The second step to take is analysis and planning. At this point, you already have your idea in mind, have done some research, and know the general direction of where you’re heading.

Now is the time to get practical and turn to business analysis services to identify all of the details you need before jumping into the design and development stages.

Functional and Non-Functional Requirements

First, you’ve got to get specific with the actions that you want your mobile app to perform. If you’re crafting an app for the finance industry, perhaps you’ll need it to create new accounts, manage credit cards, make payments, generate account statements, and so on.

The tasks that your software has to perform will go into your functional requirements document. That way, you’ll gain a clearer idea of what features have to be developed.

Then, you will also need to think about the non-functional requirements of the software. These relate to the quality of how your system performs and have a big impact on the user experience.

Uncover the Difference Between Functional and Non-Functional Software Requirements

Product Roadmap

Next up is defining your app’s roadmap. This process is much like preparing for the future and making a detailed plan of how you’ll reach the end goals you’ve set.

On the day your minimum viable product (MVP) is released, you want it to be successful and avoid any potential failures. Hence, during the product roadmap creation, you note down all of the things that you want your app to be able to do. Then, you make a ranking of the top priority functions and consider which features can be added at a later date.

Take a look at the Essential Mobile App Features to Prioritize in MVPs

Technology Stack

The last part of the analysis and planning phase includes identifying the skills needed for your mobile project.

If you’re building an iOS app, you’ll need experienced iOS developers. If you want to create a cross-platform app, then you need someone skilled in technologies like Titanium, Xamarin, and others fit for multi-platform development.

So, don’t forget to have the technology stack aspect of your project figured out before moving on.

Project Estimation

Considering what professionals you need on board to implement your IT project is just a drop in the bucket. Ideally, you should accurately estimate the required budget. Otherwise, you may fall short halfway through. Meaning, your app may never go live.

It’s also crucial to set a realistic timeframe for developing your product. And the project estimation is exactly the process aiming to shed light on those factors. So, let’s wrap up what you can clarify in project estimation:

• How much will it cost to create your desired mobile app?
• What professionals do you need?
• How long will it take to complete your project?

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Project Estimates

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Software Development Methodology

Though it may sound like an exaggeration, software development methodology is the bread and butter of successful project completion. The right framework will not only keep your team organized and focused but also help you save budget and launch your app on time.

There are plenty of development methods to choose from. It all depends on your project specifics and business goals. Probably the first development approach that comes to your mind is agile methodology. And that is for a reason. It is considered one of the most popular frameworks in software development.

Alternatively, you may consider Lean or Waterfall approaches to drive tangible results.

Discover more Software Development Methodologies

In order for users to get the best experience, a lot of attention has to be paid to an app’s design. If it turns out messy or faulty, users will immediately flock to competitors and abandon the tool you’ve worked so hard on. That’s why this step requires a lot of effort when you want to create an app that users love.

So, your UI/UX design has to be intuitive, user-friendly, engaging, and offer a seamless experience. Let’s keep that in mind while we look at each of the design areas more closely.

Discover how Velvetech enhanced the Multi-Platform UX for a Medical Reference App

Information Architecture and Workflows

One of the first actions to take in the app design process is developing rules as a part of your app’s information architecture. You’ll need to establish what data will be present within your app, how it will be displayed, and how the users will interact with it.

On the basis of the above, you’ll then create workflow diagrams that can be very helpful in keeping track of all possible user interactions. Essentially, they will let you see how your app’s navigation is implemented.

Wireframes

Next, business analysts create digital sketches called wireframes. These are basically conceptual layouts that provide a visual structure of your app’s functionality.

Read up on The Role of Business Analysis in Mobile Projects

Wireframes usually emphasize the user experience and app aesthetics. All to ensure that the finished application is intuitive and seamless to use.

Style Guides

Style guides are created so that your company branding can be easily found within a single document. These records usually contain the following design aspects of your app:

• Fonts
• Color scheme
• Spacing and positioning instructions
• Buttons
• Widgets
• Other relevant design elements

Style guides are essential to your app’s design strategy. They help maintain consistency within your app and ensure its look and feel are always harmonious.

Mockups

After you’ve created your app style guides, it’s time to move on to mockups. Essentially, these are the final renderings of your app visuals, and they are created by applying the style guide to the wireframes.

After completing this stage, the most important thing is to ensure that your design is consistent throughout the app.

Prototypes

Finally, the last step of the UI/UX design strategy is developing prototypes.

Prototypes let you simulate the user experience and the app’s entire workflow. That way, you get a good sense of how everything will work upon completion.

This stage of the process can be time-consuming, but don’t overlook it. When done properly, a prototype can help you detect any design and functionality mishaps that you may want to fix.

After taking all the above-mentioned stages, you still have some job to do. Specifically, you need to make sure your product is comfortable for every user, regardless of their disability.

You can get there by following the development standards and guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which also cover mobile accessibility, particularly the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

WCAG provides detailed instructions on how to make your app accessible to all kinds of customers. Hence, make accessibility checks an inextricable part of your design strategy to elevate the overall user experience.

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Now that the design part is complete, it’s time to move on to one of the most important stages of your mobile app implementation. Typically, it’s made up of the following components.

Backend

The backend stage of app development involves creating databases and server-side objects that are responsible for your app performance.

At this point, your project team will choose appropriate programming languages and begin coding the app. Additionally, database engines and a hosting environment will be selected.

The backend part of the app development life cycle is crucial and determines the scalability of your mobile app in the future.

So, if you want your application to expand as your user base grows, make sure you’re working with experienced software developers. They’ll guide you through all the key phases of application development and ensure your system can scale with ease.

Frontend

A mobile app’s frontend is what the end-user will interact with most. There are three main approaches to building it.

Platform-specific. These apps are created exclusively for each mobile platform. Meaning that the code isn’t reused between iOS and Android but rather fully optimized for each one. It might be a more costly approach, but the speed and responsiveness can be worth it.

Find out How Much It Costs to Make an App

Cross-platform. Solutions that are built in this manner can run on different platforms with a single codebase. They are compatible with various operating systems and aren’t attached only to one. The main benefits of this approach are cost-effectiveness and code reusability.

Check out the Top Cross-Platform Technologies Used to Build Apps

Hybrid. These solutions contain elements of both: platform-specific apps and web applications. They allow developers to write the application code with standard web technologies and execute it within a native shell. They are great if you want your app to run on multiple platforms, but don’t have the time to build a cross-platform solution.

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DevOps

A heavy dose of your project’s success will definitely depend on team collaboration. And nothing serves this goal better than DevOps. By bringing software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams under one roof, DevOps makes it possible to achieve common goals more promptly and efficiently.

Find out how to Optimize Your Development with DevOps

Let’s briefly highlight key values DevOps may bring to your project:

1. Automation of repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
2. Infrastructure management and migration to modernize and optimize your systems.
3. Continuous integration and deployment to speed up delivery and improve reliability.
4. Security at every stage of the development to protect your data and systems.

Once you’re done with app development, it’s time to ensure your app performs well. Only with the quality assurance and software testing in place can you ensure launching a stable, secure, and bug-free application.

For the highest quality delivery, your app should undergo six testing methods prior to deployment:

1. Functionality: This is when you check the features of your application and ensure that everything works well.
2. Performance: During performance testing, you’ll need to pay attention to your app’s responsiveness and how it handles an increase in concurrent users.
3. Security: When building enterprise solutions like mobile insurance apps and healthcare applications, which operate in highly regulated industries, data protection is of utmost importance.
Yet, consumer apps must also instill confidence in users. So, before moving on to the next testing step, check that your app adheres to all security standards and that there aren’t any loopholes in your system.
4. Platform and device: With new mobile devices coming to market yearly and operating systems updating monthly, it’s important for your application to stay on top of compatibility. Hence, it has to be tested on various devices or simulators.
5. Regression test In this case, you make sure that updates and changes don’t compromise the performance or functionality of your app’s existing features.
6. Extended review: Before proceeding to deployment, it’s a good idea to test your application with its actual final users. Whether you arrange a focus group or do a beta launch of your app, the key thing is to collect as much feedback as possible.

When you’re finally ready to deploy your app, you’ll have to go through different distribution models depending on the platform you were developing for. Well, in the mobile app development lifecycle, this is a deployment stage.

The mobile application deployment strategy to follow is quite simple. You’ll either need to submit your application to Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store or go for private distribution.

Both stores require you to fill out several forms and submit your app for review. You should know, the App Store is considered to be much stricter with the applications it allows onto its marketplace. So, you might face difficulties if your iOS-based tool isn’t up to the highest standards.

On the other hand, if you’re opting for private distribution, check out Apple’s Developer Enterprise Program and Android’s Alternative Distributions in order to determine how best to proceed.

You may also wonder how to make a mobile application visible and discoverable for potential users. Well, simply, by utilizing ASO tools. Generally speaking, ASO tools assist with app keyword optimization, user review analysis, A/B testing, search ads optimization, and similar factors. This significantly elevates your product’s ranking in different app stores’ search results.

The key is to utilize the right tools. By the way, we have a guide on the top ASO tools to consider. Check it out to learn which ones can best cover your needs.

When aiming to create a mobile app that will be accessible worldwide, localization has no alternative. Meaning your app should be capable of easily supporting users around the globe. If that’s your plan, then localization is one of the crucial stages in your app development.

Frankly speaking, localizing an app is not that straightforward. Plus, it can burn a hole in your pocket. Yet, it’s the only way to ensure smooth engagement with your product across diverse regions. Well, how to develop an app that can handle multiple languages and ensure seamless customer support?

Without diving into the technical details of how to localize your product, let’s zoom in on the basics you’ll need:

• Plan early to save you time and resources.
• Use Unicode to have peace of mind that your app displays correctly worldwide.
• Keep translatable content separate from your code to minimize risks of breaking functionality during translation.
• Adopt different date, time, number, and currency formats to give users a native experience.
• Design flexible layouts to seamlessly handle texts regardless of the length and language.
• Test the localized version to identify potential issues early and fix them before launch.

Once your app is finally live and users are steadily downloading it, it’s time to get your analytical hat on and monitor performance. Don’t underestimate this stage. It may take more time than to create a mobile app itself, and it should be managed continually.

Some of the most important KPIs you should look at are:

• App downloads
• Active users
• Average visit time
• Retention
• Churn
• Conversions
• Customer lifetime value
• Ratings
• Reviews

Also, don’t forget to keep track of crashes, bugs, customer requests, and overall app performance. By doing that, you’ll be able to perfect your solution as time goes by.

Read how to Engage and Retain Your Mobile App Users

Overall, it’s just important to remember that work doesn’t stop once your app has been deployed. In fact, it’s only starting.

Mobile apps require regular updates to keep up with the latest operating system changes, review guidelines, and performance standards. Otherwise, you’ve just invested in a solution that won’t stay functional for very long.

So, make sure to account for the fact that your application will need continuous maintenance if it is to be worth it. Whether you choose to support it yourself or with the help of an outside firm is completely up to you.

If you’ve chosen to partner with a software development company for your mobile project, the vendor will certainly offer post-launch support services. Thus, taking the upkeep work off of your hands.

Key Considerations Before Starting the App Development Process

Now that you know the main app development stages of application development, you might be seriously considering starting your own mobile initiative.

However, before setting aside a budget and embarking on a software development journey, there are a few points you ought to consider.

1. Strategic Relevance of Building a Mobile App

First, take the time to think if your business really needs a mobile app. Is it the next logical step in your digital strategy? Or, perhaps, are there some more pressing IT projects that you should take care of first?

Creating your own mobile application isn’t the cheapest endeavor. So, even though there are opportunities for building a high-quality app with a limited budget, truly consider if it’s a top priority for you or if it is best to be postponed.

2. Implications of Developing Enterprise vs. Consumer-Facing Apps

Even though the development process will be similar for both enterprise applications and consumer-facing ones, certain strategic questions will differ based on who the end-users are.

For instance, when building a tool for the world to try, you’ll need to spend more time thinking about the uniqueness of your solution and its commercial purpose. Is your idea different enough to justify this investment?

On the other hand, if your employees are the end-users of the application, you’ll have to consider how to incorporate their preferences and opinions into the mobile tool. After all, you don’t want to create something that will not be well-received within your company.

3. The Choice Between In-House Development and Outsourcing

Lastly, you’ve got to determine whether you’ll be building your mobile app in-house or outsourcing to a development partner. The choice will largely depend on whether you have an experienced IT team within your organization and the ability to take on a mobile app project.

If you don’t have your own developers or they’re too busy with other assignments, it’s worth looking into outside vendors who can help you reach the goals you’ve set out and build a truly unique application for your business.

Find out Why You Should Outsource Your App Development

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Should You Begin Your App Development Process?

It may seem like all the mobile application development stages you’ve got to climb are insurmountable. However, even with the lengthy list of steps and things to consider, it’s definitely an initiative that your firm should think about.

Whether you’re looking into mobile app development for internal use or for consumers, Velvetech’s team is happy to help. We have vast experience in developing solutions that solve corporate challenges and deliver state-of-the-art experiences to end-users.

So, if you’d like to discuss your next mobile initiative, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our team will get back to you shortly and answer any questions you may have.

About the author

Matthew Carrington

Years of experience in mobile app development and tech blogging allow Matthew to inspire readers with his practical ideas and meaningful insights regarding mobile solutions.