The world is digitally locked with the innovative features of many powerful digital devices. When you all hear about powerful digital devices, the first and the foremost trending device which overflows in our mind is iPhone mobile device.
Yes, we all love to have the most powerful iPhone mobile for our daily use. It is built with the iOS platform.
Do you have any idea about what is iOS? To say in simple words, it is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. It is exclusively used for its mobile hardware operations.
Nowadays mobile usage is indispensable in our daily activities since we are connected to high-end technology through mobile apps. Gone are those days only to dial the number and make a call.
The revolutionary change had impacted the mobile apps developed by different entrepreneurs to attain the innovative solutions for the modern mobile technologies to enhance their mobile app development business by facing all the real-time challenges
Any business sector has its own mobile app to extend its business worldwide. They hire highly skilled mobile app developers to build their mobile app to stay connected with their customers effectively.
You might be wondering that is it easy to develop an iOS mobile app?
Developing a mobile app and that too with powerful iOS platform needs a qualified skill set and in this article, we will look into the points to be considered by the mobile app developers while developing the iOS applications.
The important things to be considered by mobile app developers while developing iOS applications are as follows:
- Pinpoint your potential customers and identify the location base
- Focus on return on investment
- Highly skilled iOS developers and team
- Development Approach with the iOS platform
- UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface ) Design
- Coding and framework
- Database management
- Payment Gateway
- Scalability and compatibility
- Security
- Testing and review
- Identify the app distribution model
- Customer feedback and engagement
- Maintenance, Marketing, and Monetization
- Support continuous integration and upgrades
1. Pinpoint your potential customers and identify the location base
- Hope you all know in any business sector, they generally focus on customer satisfaction and requirement to enhance their business. It goes on well for mobile app development.
- When customers are our major focus, we need to identify the potential customers those who will make use of your mobile app.
- This ensures that your mobile app is widely spread among customers. Analyze your customers and target them to increase the usability of your mobile app.
- Since we are focussing on iOS mobile applications, you need to focus on the customer location. You all would have seen that the iPhone is quite rich due to its strong features and high quality. It is evident that high class to middle-class range people will be using iOS mobile apps.
- For example, if you are focussing the customers in the USA, there are chances that your iOS mobile app will be on the top as most of the people living in the US are using iPhones. At the same time, in the middle east region, only a few numbers possess iPhones.
- Analyze the targeted customer location before you plan for your iOS mobile app development.
2. Focus on return on investment
- You will be successful in your endeavors only if you focus on return on investment. Analyze the in and out benefits according to your investment.
- Mobile app development may require a good investment. After analyzing the target audience, user location you will be able to estimate the output of your business.
- Try to attain the report on ROI (Return on Investment) with your continuous effort and research.
- Based on your mobile development cost and customer value and all other factors related to your mobile app development wisely calculate the return on investment.
3. Highly skilled iOS developers and team
- To build your mobile app, you need a highly skilled iOS developer. As you are interested to build in iOS platform, the mobile app developer should have good hands-on experience in Objective-C, swift programming languages.
- These are the two popular programming languages used to build the mobile app with the iOS platform.
- Though Swift programming language was recently updated to Swift 3, developers are still relying on Objective-C to develop the mobile app in iOS platform
- A highly skilled iOS developer should know to use Xcode. Xcode is an IDE (Integrated development environment) which contains the required tools developed by Apple.
- These basic skills need to be present in your mobile app developers.
4. Development Approach with the iOS platform
- Now you have decided the initial phase of your mobile app development and you are ready with your skilled developers and team.
- The development plan is very essential for any mobile app development. It includes the approach and scope of the project.
- The entire step by step project plan is outlined to monitor the development process. It includes mobile App designing and setting up the architecture, the methodology to be implemented, the testing process and maintenance, finally the production and support.
- This development approach gives you a clear picture of the entire development process and helps you to enhance your business requirements.
5. UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface ) Design
- As I already discussed that user or customer experience is a very important factor before you start developing your mobile app. Here UX means user experience and you need to plan for UX design i.e. how a user can use your mobile app in a very convenient and effective way.
- User should feel easy to use your mobile app when compared to other mobile apps in the market.
- For example, To add any bank account to your mobile app the steps followed should be very easy. and you need to plan where to include that steps in your mobile app.
- UX design will focus on the interactive architecture and design so that the usability of the mobile app increases.
- UI design means user interface design, which is the visual representation of the UX design. So how the UX design should look is mainly focussed in UI design. Font, color, graphics to be included in the pages of your mobile app are planned before the coding part of the development.
6. Coding and framework.
- With the iOS platform, you will be focussing on UI design and it is better to adopt event-driven programming for your mobile app development. All the user actions are converted to the events and it is coded accordingly.
- It is always best to choose object-oriented programming for your mobile app development. If it is a very complex mobile app development, you can split the entire project into objects and finish each and every module by strongly following the OOPS concept and principle.
- You can also reuse the coding wherever required to reduce your programming efforts.
- When you work in a team it is better to follow a similar coding style in your team so that it is easy for any outsider to understand the coding and edit the code if required in the future.
- iOS platform consists of more number of frameworks and libraries which will help to implement the UI custom animations with its hardware.
- As it is very easy to implement such automation using its framework and libraries, the production cost and effort will be reduced to some extent. So building anything from scratch becomes more easy with the iOS platform.
7. Database management
- As you all know for any app, you need the perfect database management. If there is any improper functioning of your app, then the user may uninstall the app.
- They always look for the app which will respond well for their actions on your mobile app so a speedy database is an essential factor to be considered while developing your mobile app.
- The following factors can be considered while choosing your database for mobile app development.
- First and foremost factor is fast response and scalability
- security & safety
- Data accessibility
- Structure and size of the data, etc
8. Payment Gateway
- Nowadays Payment Gateway is a very important part of any mobile app. when you do your business, there is a need for online payment transactions to happen quickly through your mobile app.
- Let it be any mobile app like e-commerce, online taxi booking app, customers look for online payment so that it is easy for them to place an order or book a taxi from your mobile app.
- Developers need to integrate the payment gateway into their mobile app so that you can attract more customers to use your mobile app.
9. Scalability and compatibility
- With the proper technology stack, you will be able to scale up your mobile app. If you are developing a new startup mobile app, then you can release MVP( Minimum viable product).
- An MVP is released for the initial users of the app and depending upon the user review and experience you can improve the scalability of your app by adding more features to your app and increase the data structure, user accessibility.
- To say about compatibility you need to know about two types of app development native app and cross-platform app development.
- Native apps are developed for certain platform and that will not be compatible with other platforms. At the same time, cross-platform will be compatible with other platforms.
- For example, In the iOS platform, the native apps are developed using Objective-C and swift programming languages and the same app will not be compatible with other platforms.
- It is always better to choose cross-platform so that in future your app is compatible with other platforms.
10. Security
- When your business is dealing with important data through your mobile app, the security measures need to be taken while developing your mobile app.
- As we all know that the iOS platform is completely secure and safe, still there are chances for hacking.
- You may follow the steps to ensure that the data will not be corrupted:
- Ensure multi level authentication is implemented in your mobile app
- Clear the cache data in your mobile app as the smartphone saves the temporary data for its caching purpose.
- Include security practices like encryption, SSL, and data protection
11. Testing and review
- Once you have done with the design and development phase, you can test your mobile app functionalities.
- This quality analysis needs to be completed before the product goes on live.
- Test each and every scenario of the mobile app from the end user’s perspective.
- Try to fix the bug by conducting the review and code walkthrough.
- Test the loading time of the pages of the application to analyze the performance of the mobile app
12. Identify the app distribution model
- Always choose the best app distribution model to make your app available to end users. Apple offers three types of distribution models.
- The model which allows all the iOS user to use your mobile app is to directly upload your mobile app to Apple store.
- You can also configure the supported versions and device. You can do beta testing by making it available only to a few numbers. This can be achieved by making use of Testflight services of Apple.
- The third model is Volume purchasing program where you can upload your app to the enterprise level and this model follows the privacy for its employees.
13. Reporting and customer engagement
- Once your mobile app is released after the testing phase, keep a track of reporting tool in your mobile app where you can find the customer feedback regarding your mobile app.
- Fix the issues, bugs found by the customers. This allows the customers to be engaged with your mobile app and allows you to improve the functionalities and thus the overall efficiency of your mobile app
14. Maintenance, marketing, and monetization
- After monitoring the reporting tool, you will come to know the customer feedback and experience.
- You need to retest your app and maintain the app by fixing the bugs.
- App maintenance is also an important part of any app development process. You need to keep your app bug and error free. Continuous monitoring is required to maintain your mobile app.
- Marketing is required for any business and to enhance your business through the mobile app you need to follow the marketing strategies to promote your mobile app.
- Just before the launch of the product, you can start marketing through social media platforms where most of your potential customers hang out.
- There are various ways you can use your app for monetization. There are different monetization strategies like In-App purchase, In-App advertising, etc.
- In-App advertising the developers get paid for any advertisements posted through their app. You have to research and choose the best monetization strategy suitable for your mobile app.
15. Support continuous integration and upgrades
- Continuous integration is a practice to maintain the app by automating the testing process and helps to manage the defects and it totally helps you in successful production with minimum efforts.
- Once it is successfully launched, you need to upgrade the version of the app with more unique features to sustain in the industry.
- If the apps are not updated for a longer period, gradually you will start losing the traffic to your app and the potential customers will get shifted from your mobile app.
Infographic Credit – IOSS
Conclusion
Yes, to develop a mobile app as a mobile app developer or as an entrepreneur you need to focus on the above-mentioned points to make your product launch and business successful. In overall, from the design phase to the maintenance phase you need to plan your entire mobile app development process so that it meets customer satisfaction and requirements. Keep your app updated and make it a profitable product by following the suitable monetization strategy to increase the overall revenue and to achieve a high return on investment
Author Bio
Jeseena. K is a senior content writer at Infinite Open Source Solutions LLP, a leading Direct Selling Software provider. She is a voracious reader and she spends her free time reading a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from fiction to the latest software technology.
