7 Mistakes to Avoid When Developing a Mobile Application

With the proliferation of digital technology, smartphones have become an integral part of users, and mobile apps are now an essential tool. As of 2020, there are more than 2 million mobile apps available in the Google Play Store and Apple Store. Mobile application development is evolving rapidly to meet the needs of advanced technology and the changing needs of users.

By simplifying user tasks, mobile apps enable businesses of all kinds to better understand their customers. This has led to fierce competition in the mobile app industry. Every business has its own mobile app. But why do some apps work better than others?

Apart from making your app user-friendly, intuitive and interactive, it's important to focus on avoiding the mobile app development mistakes described below.

1. Not Doing Proper Market Research

The development of mobile apps is a huge investment. Therefore, good app ideas alone are not enough to make the decision to create a mobile app. Going to app development with proper planning and research is essential. In this context, it's important to test the market, conduct research, and target your target audience.

You need to understand everything from the types of mobile apps to the needs of your target users and the features that attract your app users. Proper market research can give you clear ideas on how to drive app development. Simply put, knowing who your target users are will help you build apps that not only help you win customers (maximize installations), but also keep your customers (prevent uninstalls).

2. Ignoring creating an MVP

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a useful way to test your app in your customer base in real market situations. This is a great way to assess the performance of your app. At the MVP stage, mobile apps consist only of key features. Therefore, figuring out an MVP before going to a higher development level can save you a lot of time and money.

MVP can accelerate your development process and release early versions of your app. This allows us to get feedback from our customers, modify the app as needed and launch the final product with the right improvisation.

3. Construction of a Poor Mobile UI

Not paying enough attention to the mobile app user interface is a serious mistake to avoid. The same applies to your app as it is important to solicit in the first impression. With thousands of mobile apps uploaded to the App Store every day, a good UI is key to attracting and retaining customers.

From high-definition designs to features such as gesture-based interfaces, you need only a great UI to succeed in the long run. Below are some overviews of good UI strategies.

• Always use the flow chart of the app
• Include high-resolution images
• If you include animation in the app, make sure the loading time is not too long.
• Include cool UI elements that are addictive and attract users.
• Too much information can confuse users and make it harder to understand the app, so reduce the information used by the app.
• Avoid flashy fonts. Rather, keep it simple and clarify with system fonts like San Francisco. Also, make sure you are using a licensed font.

4. Big size of the app

The combined effect of all the above mistakes can be seen in the size of the app. Apps that take up more space on your smartphone will use less than apps that don't. Optimizing size or space is one of the best practices for mobile application development, and it's kept by the developers.

However, nonetheless, most mobile app development services cannot provide the final product that consumes the least storage resources on mobile devices. There are the following methods to reduce the application size of mobile apps.

• Don't develop too many resource libraries
• Delete unused resources
• Resource reuse
• Data package compression
• Use multifunctional elements
• Enable support for specific requirements
• Render from code
• These tricks not only reduce the size of the app, but also make it work smoothly on smartphones with different configurations, thus increasing the processing speed of the app.

5. Incomplete testing

Mobile app development services make common mistakes in accelerating the testing phase. When using a mobile device emulator, developers should adopt the testing procedures used in cross-platform app development. Most developers consider automated testing a solution. However, we are not aware that debugging script test code through automated script analysis can have fatal consequences. Similarly, automated test methods cannot maintain test data for multiple scripts. White-box testing can sometimes solve these problems, but if the tester can't check every bit of the code, there is always the risk of overlooking the bug. Ideally, a combination of automation tools and white box techniques should provide comprehensive testing of mobile apps.

6. Overcrowding the Features

If you think your customers love too many features, think again. Make your app bulky and unwieldy rather than full-featured. Plus, long load times can even slow down your app. Therefore, avoid wasting effort and money on unnecessary features. Instead, focus on features with limited functionality that serve the purpose of the app. Keep in mind that the app is easy to understand and useful to your users.

7. Lack of attention to user reviews

Feedback is important to the success of your app. Therefore, don't ignore this important aspect of app development. Remember, you are developing an app for your customers. Therefore, it is important to consider those reviews and feedback. It helps you to clearly understand their needs and preferences. It's useful here to repeat customer feedback over and over. It helps you make the necessary changes to your app based on what your users and customers want.