How To Build A

Mobile App From Scratch

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A Detailed Guide for Beginners

For food delivery and cab booking, workouts and mental health, hiring and accounting
there are mobile apps for almost everything you can imagine.

Some are low-functionality small apps, while others are enterprise level, advanced apps

But there is still so much to do. The world, although, has become modernized but still there
are several opportunities available in the market that you can
capitalize on.

So, if you are here for evaluating or validating your ideas for a new app business, or still
thinking if you’d be able to complete the mobile app development process and launch it on
the store - this guide has everything you need from start to end.

Let’s Start.

However, before getting started on skimming through the app development process, it is
imperative that you start with whether you actually need an app for your business or not.
So, here’s how you can determine whether you need an app for your business or not.

We listed a few of the most common cases where a mobile application is

necessary. Also, relevance is probably the most important factor here.

Selecting one objective that perfectly aligns and meets your business’s priority and
objectives will be more powerful than focusing on a few generic targets.

External Audience (B2B/B2C) Internal Audience (B2E)

Encourage repeat purchases
Reduce customer support costs Increase employee satisfaction
Expand customer insights Access real-time data
Foster engagement Simplify reporting
Add an eCommerce storefront Encourage smarter collaboration
Boost brand recognition Extend value of existing infrastructure

With the ‘Why’ out of the way, let’s start exploring all the ins and outs of the app development
process. This guide will enable you to go through the entire development process and will
ensure the creation of a fully functional app by the end of the journey.

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Mobile App Development Process: Strategy,

Development and Launch

We have divided the overall mobile app development process in 3 parts.

Each of these parts is further divided into 4 steps.

1. Pre-development 2. Development 3. Post-development

Strategy Product Development Launch and Market

1. Goal setting 1. Wireframing 1. Testing

2. Market Research and plan 2. Prototyping 2. Launching
3. Development Platform 3. MVP and testing 3. Marketing
4. Technical tools for 4. Full product development 4. Maintenance and
app development updates

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4 Things to Do Before You Start to Develop The Mobile App

To make your app idea successful, it is always ideal to give your app, its features,
and the overall objectives of the development process a forethought.

1. Set your goals

When you have an app idea, jot down the functions it will perform and the objectives it will
fulfil. This is just like finding the primary pain points of the end-users and how you can
provide a solution to capitalize the problem.

Before you start setting end-user goals, place yourself somewhere in this list to understand
your purpose behind designing this mobile app. All-in-all, your end goal would be to
monetize the app, but deciding your core purpose will help you choose the right
monetization strategy or approach.

1. I want to create an app to boost an existing business and improve customer experience
(e.g., an eCommerce app for a physical store)
2. I want to develop an app to sell a new product (e.g., a delivery app for a new food business)
3. I want to develop an app to sell a new service (e.g., an educational app for an online course)
4. I want to make a new app to serve a particular audience
(e.g., a meditation app for better mental health)
5. I want to acquire more users through a hybrid or native app
(e.g., developing the existing app now for iOS or Android smartphones)

Remember that this is your planning stage. For your app to be a value addition and profitable
(after launching), your goals should be specific, to-the-point and gainful, other than also being
SMART. Plus, setting clear goals will, later on help you with specifying particular
feature with every goal.
*You can also choose to set separate short-term and long-term goals, but I suggest users do
this after they have researched the market.

Example: Let’s say you want to develop a fitness app for professionals on 9-hour shifts.
You’ll have to think like your end-user, a 9-5 employee, to be able to set goals the right way.
Now, think of everything a user would want in your app. If I download a fitness app today,
I would look for healthy meal plans, water reminders, workout videos, meditation exercises,
and diet tips.
Add another column and list your personal and financial goals you would like to achieve with
this app. How do you want this app to work for you? Do you want to make money
with this app?

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End-User Goals Personal and Business Goals

1. Achieving fitness goals 1. Helping corporate employees achieve physical fitness

2. Eating healthy 2. Building a community of corporate fitness geeks

3. Losing weight 3. Earning money from the app

4. Drinking more water 4. getting 2,000 app downloads from the Apple Store

5. Sleeping well

6. Releasing stress

Once you have set your goals, find out if people in your target location actually need
an app like this.

This way, you’ll either figure out the demand of your app, or find similar models already
working in the market. Both ways, you will have your key takeaways that will help you further
your mobile app development process. Answer these questions in your market research
phase.

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Market Research Worksheet

Question Answer Takeaway

1. What is my app idea? Based on the answer, you'll have to figure out
Refer back to your goal setting the complete complexity of the app features.
document and describe the
functionalities of your ideal app.

In this case, your research may take extra

2. Is my app idea original? Yes time. You'll have to develop an app from scratch.
Search if there are existing
solutions for the problems you If the idea isn't original, there must be a bunch
want to solve. No of mobile apps that serve the same purpose.
How many downloads do such apps have?

3. What do I want my MVP You can only keep the basic features in your
MVP and later introduce more advanced
(the basic version of my app with
features as updates during the
only essential features) to do? maintenance stage.

4. Which features can I add later

for an advanced version of
my app?

5. How many people want to use It has to be a close estimate to find out if you
this app? really should invest in your app idea.

6. Which age group and location This will help you specify the target audience
should I develop the app for? and the market you're about to penetrate.

7. Which 2/3/4 ways I can deploy If your app idea is functionaly and already
existing in the market, you'll have to fill
to create innovation via my app?
distinguishing features to acquire users.

8. How will I monetize the app? Freemium app

Choose one money making In app purchases
method, based on the core E commerce app
idea of your app. Paid advertising

9. What is the actual estimate for This question is important as you'll have to
app development in this sector? decide a budget you are happy to spend for a
figure of money you want to earn. Plus, you'll
need to check the cost estimates online in

development is cheaper than

advanced and so on.

After researching the market, you can choose to document your strategy in form of a simple
flowchart or a rich business plan.
1. If you are developing the app yourself, a simple document with workflows, app
development milestones, deadlines, development hours, cost of resources and budgeted
revenue would do well.
2. If you are hiring an app developer or team, you can choose to book a free consultancy and
ask them to prepare the scoping document with other analytics that you may have missed.
3. If you want other investors, partners or firms to fund your idea in the beginning, you’ll need
a full flash mobile app business plan with projected users, cost of development and
maintenance in the first five years, budgeted revenues etc.

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3. Decide Your Development Platform

At this stage, with your app strategy or business plan ready, you’ll have to choose a language
and platform for your app development. This will determine your app development approach.
By the end of this stage, you should know:

1. The platform your app will work on (smartphones)

2. Technical specifications for the back-end and front-end (codes for basic and
advanced features)
3. The programming platforms you’ll use (programming language)

To decide on these factors, you must be acquainted with two major types of apps based on
their device orientation: Native Applications and Hybrid Applications

Native Apps
These are platform-oriented applications specifically designed for particular devices – or let’s
say, operating systems.

You can choose to develop native applications for Android devices only, iOS devices only,
and web apps to work on desktop devices. Your choice at this stage will decide the usability
features and your overall user interfaces and user experience will be based on your decision
here.

Logically, the number of users and total downloads for native applications are limited and
lesser as compared to the hybrid apps.

Learn more about our Android App Development and iOS App Development processes.

Hybrid Apps
Hybrid applications are cross platform applications. They are not platform-oriented, rather
purpose oriented and cater to a bigger audience as compared to native applications.

Luckily, we now have tools like Flutter that let us design cross platform apps with a single
codebase. Also, if you already have a code for native app, and would want to acquire more
users, you can use the same code to convert to a new hybrid app.

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Native Apps vs. Hybrid Apps

For non-technical users who have limited knowledge of coding and programming languages,
I would suggest Rapid App development approaches where an app developer can use the
existing code, mix, match and manipulate specific features and make them work for their
specific app according to the plan.

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4. Get Necessary Tools For App Development

Based on the type of app you are developing, here are the tools you’ll need:
1. Design tool for wireframing and prototyping (Adobe Xd.)
2. App-hosting services (AWS, Google Firebase, Apple CloudKit)
3. App store licenses for launching the app

Depending on your overall development approach, you might have to spend some money to
access design assets (icons) and app integrations (maps, payment gateways).

If you have been following this guide till now, you are prepared for the next stage
development process. Use your app idea document, and ready your tools to start away!

Development Stage

While planning is the primary step, development part is the heart of overall
app building process.

No matter how workable and rightly planned your strategy is, you can only see expected
results if you have executed your strategy to the dot – which is what the development phase
is all about.

Here are the 4 steps in development stage:

1. Wireframing

In the wireframing process, a user draws initial designs of the user interface. These are
low-fidelity mockups: static and motionless, yet show the overall flow of data,
and information within the app.

In simple words, wireframes are diagrams that show the basic skeleton of a mobile app.
During the wireframing stage, you, again have to think like your user and map a user journey.

These initial designs can be as rough as pen and paper sketches, or as advanced as the
ones shown in the image here.

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Location & Maps

Charts

Wireframes are usually black, white and grey. That’s because during this stage, designers
and developers focus more on the features (and their placement) in the app rather than the
branding.

5 Best Wireframing Tools

As mentioned earlier, wireframe diagrams are simple, and reflect the basic structure of the
app. While these diagrams can be made roughly, expert app development teams and
companies now prefer dedicated tools for wireframing.

Here is a list of 5 most popular wireframing tools used by professionals:

Wireframing Tool Free Trial Price

Read more about the best wireframing tools.

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2. Prototyping

Prototype, in simple words, is a visual model of a product. It is an advanced version of

wireframing process, a step ahead in which designers and developers produce high-fidelity
diagrams, animate them in full working videos and show the overall functionality of a mobile
app – which is not yet developed but now present in visual form.

In conventional app development processes, a project manager gets designers and

developers to prepare a prototype based on the complete app brief provided by the client.
The actual coding and programming processes do not start until the prototype
isn’t approved by the client.

Note: Wireframes show the user interface while prototypes show the user experience

3. Develop the MVP

The main coding and programming part starts in this step.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the very basic version of a planned product, meaning it has
only the essential features of the app without which the app wouldn’t fulfil the core purpose.

After creating MVPs, app development teams and clients collect data and feedback
about the performance of the app and refine it into one closest to the planned product,
more useful and demanded.

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4. Advantages of MVP

Developers around the globe now create MVP apps and software programs before
developing the main product. Here’s why:

All in all, you should build an MVP of your app to lower the cost, time and risks associated
with app development.

Now when you know why I have suggested building an MVP before the main app, refer back
to the app development approach part in your pre-development planning stage. There, you
must have chosen either a native application or a hybrid (cross platform) app.

4. Main App Development

By this step, you must have already coded the based back-end and front-end of your
application. Now is the time to add mid-level features and get the app ready for a
wider use than MVP.

Note that only few users had access to your MVP for testing and improving purposes. When
your MVP has cleared the initial testing phase, you can add the features that make it a more
detailed, feature-packed product.

For example,

if the MVP of a fitness app allowed 5 users to create and accept fitness
challenges, your main product will allow more users to perform the same function
simultaneously in higher speed and with more features like multiple
calendars and locations.

Similarly, if the MVP configuration allowed access to 3 workout videos a week,

your main product can allow 5 or 8 or unlimited – for a price!

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Post-development Stage – launching to scaling the mobile app

Now when your app has an intuitive interface, branded theme, major functionality,
feature-rich and zero bugs, it is ready for our post-development steps

1. User Acceptance Testing and Quality Assurance

Loading speed
Security

App bugs and crashes

Other than these factors, you can choose to go for penetration testing and usability testing.

In the former, you’ll ask a certified practitioner to audit the app, and induce methods to break
in, hack or obtain personal data from the app.

In usability testing, you can ask your family, friends, coworkers, a specific test group
containing the potential target users to check the overall performance of the app.

For hybrid apps, you also need to ensure if the app is working uniformly (and not crashing) on

2. Market Your App

After clearing quality assurance standards, you need to get your app narrative across. While
this is a continuous process and should gradually start during the development procedure,

your app idea.

1. You can choose organic advertising methods like community building, free trials,
blogging, SEO and ASO.

Join groups on Facebook, spaces on Quora and connect with people who you think
would be interested in getting a free app.

Write blogs for user awareness and try using digital marketing techniques like SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) to acquire users through search engines.
Pinterest and reddit also work for specific niches like clothing, food etc.

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Depending on your budget, you can ask existing app users to invite their social
network and earn referral money.
App stores also play featured ads to promote certain categories of apps.

3. Launch on App Stores

With your app ready with you, you can deploy it on app stores.

You can distribute your iOS app on Apple Store, Android apps on Google Play Store, hybrid
apps on both and launch your app via websites in .APK format.

Google’s Developer account costs $25 while an individual developer account on

Apple Store is $99.

When launching the app, make sure to:

1. Choose right app category on the store

2. Write detailed descriptions for potential users to make their buying decision easier
3. Stay honest in your app descriptions otherwise bad reviews can hurt the long-term
success of the app.
4. Use ASO techniques. App Store Optimization means you use certain keywords and
phrases in your app descriptions that people are actually searching for. When your app
will rank higher on app store, there are higher chances of more people downloading
your app.
5. Provide catchy screenshots, videos of the user interface, and images that show the right
features for user experience.

4. Maintain and Send Updates

This is the step where you need to check back your initial strategy document and
compare results.
Use the app and check analytics, then ask yourself these questions and take the
necessary actions.

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1. Is my app performing all the functions I initially wanted it to?

Yes. No
Action: Now try adding a light feature or Action: fix the errors, check for updates,
two to further boost the user experience. upgrade content and send an update.

2. Is my app performing well on the App Store – no. of downloads and reviews

Yes. No.
Action: check the no. of downloads and Action: Respond to users’ queries.
reviews. Then compare if you had added Check the reasons behind negative
a figure in your ideation process. Make reviews. See what can be fixed and
measures to further improve the metrics. reply to users about fixed bugs.

3. Is my app making enough money?

Yes. No.
Action: well, done! Now project your sales Action: find out why you are not getting
and revenues for five years from now and sponsored ads, or why users are not
research on your competitors. buying the premium features of the app.

If you have developed the app yourself, it is ideal to hire a third-party maintenance service.

Maintenance usually costs 28% of the overall app development cost in the first year and then
goes to as low as 10-15% of the initial cost.

If you had hired a mobile app development company for the project, it is ideal to hire their
testers and support specialists only. They charge monthly, regularly or according to
development hours needed – but considering the significant improvements,
the cost is worth it.

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Conclusion

As you can see, mobile app development does not have to be a towering challenge. Just like
any other business process, it can be broken down into manageable components arranged
in a logical sequence.

it becomes clear which features the app should include.

Prioritizing those requirements then informs what development tools and tactics should be
applied. Finally, an assessment of how to best access those technical resources ultimately
reveals which people should participate in the project.

With this blueprint in your pocket, there is no reason to treat mobile app development as a
potentially exhausting process. You now have the knowledge you need to create something
great!

WANT TO TALK TO US ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE?

[email protected]
(800) 362-9239

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Glossary

API (Application Programming Interface) — Code that governs how two distinct software
programs can communicate and request services from each other; helps AN app tap into
powerful pre-existing resources (i.e., Database spreadsheets, Google Maps).

B2B (Business-to-Business) — Product strategy in which a company develops an app for use
among another company’s employees.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer) — Product strategy in which a company develops an app for

use among mass market consumers.

B2E (Business-to-Employee) — Product strategy in which a company develops an app for

use among its own employees.

Backlog — Master list of technical tasks and app features to be completed by a development
team.
Cross-platform development — Building one hybrid app, or multiple native versions, for use
across multiple platforms.

Hybrid development — Building an app that combines web and native mobile capabilities
that can be used across multiple platforms.

MVP (Minimum viable product) — Earliest version of an app; contains only the core features
required for functional use.

Native development — Building an app for exclusive use on a single platform.

— Basing production resources overseas, primarily to leverage economic

advantages.

Operating system (OS) — The software that supports a mobile device’s basic
functions (i.e., iOS 7, Android Lollipop).

Outsourcing — Purchasing the development services of an outside contractor to help build

an app; contractor can be based locally or abroad.

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Pareto Principle — Theory suggesting that 80% of a system’s output is determined by 20% of
its inputs; commonly applied to prioritization of app features.

Platform — Combined hardware/software environment that an app operates within; often

used interchangeable with “OS version.”

Sprint — Development micro-cycle during which a specific portion of app features must be
completed and presented for review.

Story mapping — Exercise designed to define and prioritize the actions and features
required to satisfy app users’ goals.

User experience (UX) — The combination of practical and emotional perceptions

surrounding an app’s appearance and functionality.

User interface (UI) — The space in which inputs and feedback are exchanged between the
user and the computing device.

User persona — A semi-fictional representation of the demographics, attitudes, and goals

expressed by a segment of app users.

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