THE UNCONVENTIONAL GUIDE TO MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT DURING COVID-19
Mobile applications are used in every part of human life to ease their day to day activities. Major Mobile Design and Development companies in the world from every sector is focusing on producing their own mobile application to cross the barrier of the gap between the end-user and the company. You will get more detailed information below (OMG! The Best MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT GUIDE Ever!)
Now let’s have a glance at some relevant stats about mobile app growth.
Key Stats about Mobile App Development :
Money matters a lot:
People are largely interested in the free stuff available. 95% of the android apps and 90% of the iOS apps are free. According to build fire mobile applications are expected to generate 189 billion dollars by 2020. Monetization strategies like the in-app purchase help to roll in the profits even if the app is free for download. Your app needs to be downloaded to be successful. As long as people install the app, it will generate money. Mobile application for money earning is considered to be the main aspect, app earning is a considerable thing. Mobile App Development increased by 40% of revenues.
The market is jam-packed
The mobile application market is crowded and this crowd continues to grow and evolve more and more. The competition is tough and there is no end to the number of apps that are made. As per the reports by Statista, there were 1.8 million apps on the Apple App Store and 2.47 million apps on Google Play in the 3rd quarter of 2019. Upon these statistics, mobile apps development companies are being in search of the developer for upholding the end user.
The viewers are global
As per reports by Business Insider, India is leading the way for app download growth, followed by the US and Brazil. Most of the app downloads were from China accounted for nearly 50% of global app downloads, 19% from EMEA, 17% from AMER, and 64% came from the APAC region. The credit on the downloads is by the top-rated and designed applications.
Social media apps are the highest downloaded apps
Social media has topped the charts with WhatsApp topping the list with 223 million new installs, followed by FB’s Messenger app, with 209 million installs as reported by SensorTower.
One of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, TikTok had an impressive 70% download in just one year. Global mobile gaming is anticipated to represent 57% of the market share in the coming year. The commencement of 4G/5G will enhance cloud gaming services even further. Attractive deals and discounts offered are the top rousing factors when deciding whether to install an app or not. (Think with Google, 2016). Find one of the best mobile app development companies based on the data.
Design and performance matters
Mobile app development services are now focusing on predictive analytics and artificial intelligence which will be used in future apps to offer better UX and UI. Let’s glance through some of the reasons why users prefer mobile apps. Mobile App Development designs make sense.
User-friendly apps will continue to be in demand. 78% of people favor accessing a store from an app over its mobile website.
App performance is more important than its design. Customers will continue to use an app only if it proves to be efficient, functional, and performs properly. Studies depict that 59% of consumers uninstall an app if it’s too slow. It was concluded that 52% of users are less likely to prefer that brand with whom they had bad mobile experiences. And also E-commerce web apps are beings used the most by the user. Some more statistical data can be obtained below:
https://buildfire.com/app-statistics/
Mobile App commerce has increased
Online shopping is the latest buzz and ninety percent of the world’s populationis connected to the internet. Online shopping is one of the top online activities reported for smartphone owners. Apple Pay and Google Pay have boosted E-Commerce. Hence it’s a must to have a mobile-first payment gateway on your mobile app.
Mobile Apps usage is growing
Reports by Statistasuggest that by 2020, there will be 6.95 billion mobile users across the world. Mobile devices generate nearly fifty percent of the global website traffic. The future is all about the next generation, Generation Z (ages 16-24) of mobile users. Generation Z will account for forty percent of all consumers buy 2020.
Users interact with mobile apps in a different way looking upon the app category and vertical. Games on mobile are being the boom areas for mobile application development The in-app activity (how to make a game app is a key challenge for developers), retention rates, and session duration all are subjected accordingly. Mobile-first companies are dignified to capture as many customers as they can get over the enterprise market. Progressive web apps are making more revenue generation. app couples (Android and IOS) are the best couples in developing different user-friendly apps for the end-users. The cost of App development is cheaper than web development products.
Generation Zapp users desire videos more. 50% of Gen Z says that YouTube is one of the platforms they can’t get over. Hence if a business is looking to attract Gen Z to its application, they should work on a complete mobile as well as a video tactic.
To sum up, the mobile app industry continues to multiply without any sign of slowing down. And the focus remains on improving Mobile app development services, delivering more value to customers, and meeting their outlooks.
One of the best and renowned mobile app design company is YellowFin Digital. We are an award-winning digital marketing agency that has raised the bar in the era of intense competition with our creative and innovative website design, digital marketing, and SEO. Our Mobile app development services are one roof for all whether you are looking to develop a mobile app to share with the world or mobile application development to boost your local business. Turn your ideas into a mobile app reality with us. Different fields come under mobile apps like its operating system (oreo operating system) like the RAM and ROM storage are the key aspects validated by the customers.
Let us look at the average time and application used by the user in a mobile application in their day-to-day life in the below statistical image:
50 Stats for Mobile App Development Growth and Success in 2020 can be gained through this referral link.
https://clearbridgemobile.com/stats-for-mobile-app-growth-and-success/
Smartphone users spend about 90 percent of their mobile time on apps. The major sets of apps used by the users are sports bets app, mobile NFC payments apps, linking app, social media app, etc,.
cost of app development is also seen in below detailed view.
Covering the statistics, Now we will look into step by step process in a mobile application development life cycle:
The information below will give a detailed understanding of the Pre-development, Development, and Post-development phases of mobile application development:
Post-Mobile App Development phase :
Idea Generation & Validation:
All apps start with an idea, even if yours is just to have a mobile app presence. Refine that idea into a solid basis for an application. Make sure your initial analysis includes actual demographics, motivations, behavior patterns, and goals of your buyer persona. During each stage of the process, keep the end-user in mind. Now, try to think of your customer’s lifecycle, once their characteristics are pinned down. After you reach them, they need to be acquired, converted, retained and their loyalty nurtured. By the end, you should understand how the customer will be using the digital product. Doing this at the very onset will set you on firm footing, and your clarity will give you and your investors, much-needed confidence. The cost of app development is also to be considered in mind before developing an app.
This phase is essential because, during this phase, you lay down the necessary groundwork for what is to follow next. Do your bit of substantial research and brainstorming before moving on to the next phase. And another important part of this phase is analyzing the competition. A detailed study of your competitor’s app will help you figure out what features are absent in their app so that you could include it in your app, to make it stand out.
Designing the App:
Designing the application with the perfect tools is more important in the process. The design should be correctly fitted for the app that was going to be designed. There are a number of aspects to be covered in designing like choosing the structure of the application and placing catching features that are new to the user and giving an overall new experience to the end-user should be the main view of the design. cost of app development is also an important measure to be taken in designing a mobile app.
Wireframing:
The next step is to document and wireframe the app, to understand future functionalities. Although time is not on your side at this point, actually drawing detailed sketches of the envisioned product helps you uncover usability issues. Sketching does a lot more than merely tracking your steps. It can be a powerful communication and collaboration tool. When you’re done sketching, wireframing will help refine the ideas and arrange all components of the design in the right way. You can overcome any technical limitation found in the back-end development process in this initial phase. Now, aim to develop a clear understanding of how your proposed features and ideas will fuse together into a functional app. You should also create a road-map or a storyboard, to demonstrate the relationship between each screen and how the users will navigate through the app. Look for opportunities to incorporate your brand, focus on the user experience, and keep in mind the differences in the way people use a mobile app versus a mobile website.
5.Technical Feasibility Assessment :
You might have a clear understanding of the visuals by now, but you also need to consider if the back-end systems will be able to support the app’s functionality. To know whether the idea of your application is feasible technically you need to get access to public data by sourcing public APIs. An app, depending on its format (smartphone, tablet, wearables, etc.) as well as the platform (iOS, Android, etc.), will have different requirements. By the end of this exercise, the team may have different ideas for the app or decided that some of the initial functionality isn’t feasible. At this point, brainstorm a little, ask questions, and review the status.
6. Prototype :
Build a rapid prototype. Rapid is the keyword here. You can’t truly comprehend the touch experience until and unless you touch the App and see how it works and flows. So, build a prototype that gets the app concept into a user’s hands as quickly as possible to see how it works for the most common use case. Use rough and not exhaustive wireframes for this phase. This will help you see if you are taking things in the right direction. Include the stakeholders in this process, allowing them to touch the prototype will give you their feedback and implement it into your work. And moreover, the prototype will give different stakeholders the first look at your app and will help you validate the information you’ve gathered.
Mobile App Development phase:
Developing the App:
The development phase generally starts quite early on. In fact, once an idea gains some maturation in the conceptual stage, a working prototype is developed which validates functionality, assumptions, and helps to give an understanding of the scope of work.
As the development progresses, the app goes through a set of stages. In the initial stage, the core functionality although present is not tested. See the app is very buggy, and non-core functionality doesn’t exist at this point. In the second stage, much of the functionality proposed is incorporated. The app has ideally gone through light testing and bug fixing, though some issues could still be present. In this phase, the app is released to a certain group of external users for more testing. After the bugs in the second stage are fixed, the app will move to the deployment phase where it’s ready for release.
If yours is a complex project where user requirements change regularly, make use of the agile methodology. It helps with flexible planning, progressive development, early deployment, and constant improvements. A large application can be broken down into smaller modules, and agile methodology can be applied to each of these small parts.
2.Testing the App:
In mobile app development, it’s a good idea to test early and often. Doing this will keep your final costs low. The farther you go into the development cycle, the costlier it becomes to fix bugs. Refer to the original design and planning documents while building out the various test cases.
Application testing is vast, so make sure your team covers all the necessary facets of it. The application should be tested for usability, compatibility, security, interface checks, stress, and performance. In user acceptance testing you discover whether your mobile app works for your intended users or not. To test this give your app to a few people in your target audience and ask pertinent questions. Once your application passes the user acceptance test, you know your solution “works.” And further make your application available for a beta trial, either through the enrollment of previously identified groups or an open solicitation for participants. The feedback you receive from beta users will help you find out whether the app’s functions are operating well in a real-world situation.
3.Launching the App
During the development phase the main things to take into consideration:
Firstly to analyze the type of method to be used
Native development:- in native development, we need to code in Java, Objective C etc, so need to learn java, etc before start coding for the native app.
Hybrid app development:- in hybrid app development, we code in Web technologies like HTML, CSS, and Java Script. For more robust apps I prefer JS frameworks like Angular JS, j query mobile, Onsenio, Bootstrap, etc.
Differences::-
Hybrid app development is simpler/easy than native app development.
Hybrid app development is using the same code for most of the OS like android, iOS, windows, etc. So we don’t need to write separate code for different OS.
A native app is faster than Hybrid apps.
Native app code is directly interacting with mobile hardware but hybrid do it with the help of Plugins
To build an app for both iOS n Android using a single tool you can use cross-platform tools like Xamarin studio.
To build an app only for the Android platform you can use Android studio while for the iOS only you can use Xcode. These tools are also known as IDE ( Integrated Development Environment ).
Suggestions of the top tools used to develop a mobile application:
- Xamarin,
- react-native
- Flutter
- Andriod studio
- jquery-mobile
- Native script.
- Sencha
- Appcelerator
- Ionic
10.Framework 7
We have seen an overview of the different tools used in mobile application development. The next area of the process goes down to the selection of the best programming language for your mobile application depending upon the requirements of the application.
Top languages used for mobile app development:
AngularJS:
We can define AngularJS as a feature-packed JavaScript framework developed and launched by Google. Introduced for simplifying the development of dynamic and web apps, it is widely used for restructuring JavaScript code.
AngularJS greatly helps in accumulating data and also helps to keep developers at bay from adding extra source code and eliminates extra code in order to maintain the overall code integrity.
Angular vs react is the main difficulty going on developers’ minds for creating the mobile application. It has to be clearly determined before developing the app.
React native:
React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes.
Angular vs react has less difference but has major functionality over the development. React native app creation is the best choice for the app developer by considering its uses and vast integration.
Some of the famous app developed by react-native:
Facebook Ads Manager – Category: Business
Vue:
Vue Native is a JavaScript-based framework for mobile, which helps in creating mobile applications using Vue.js. Vue.js in the framework comes with an array of benefits. One of the main benefits is that the framework organizes UI development. Moreover, it focuses on view layers which makes it easy to understand. Creating native mobile apps in JavaScript by using Vue.js has become one of the most popular mobile app development solutions due to the easy learning curve of this tool.
Python:
Python can be used in a wide array of mobile application areas. Easy to understand, interact and easy to implement, Python programming language is an elegant language that allows you to code the same program with much fewer lines than PHP. The implementation of this programming language is simple and, at the same time, the language has a very clean structure as compared to other languages. Therefore, programmers and coders will be required to do less coding. In addition to this, writing application code is faster and easier with the help of this programming language.
Swift:
Swift is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, object-oriented, functional, imperative, and block-structured language. It is the result of the latest research on programming languages and is built using a modern approach to safety, software design patterns by Apple Inc. It is the brand new programming language for iOS applications, macOS applications, watchOS applications, tvOS applications. Soon it became one of the top 5 programming languages and gained popularity among the Apple developer community over a few years of time replacing the old school Objective C. Swift vs objective c is a big comparison by the developers on the development.
Rust:
Rust has been Stack Overflow’s most loved language for four years in a row, indicating that many of those who have had the opportunity to use Rust have fallen in love with it. However, the roughly 97% of survey respondents who haven’t used Rust may wonder, “What’s the deal with Rust?”
The short answer is that Rust solves pain points present in many other languages, providing a solid step forward with a limited number of downsides.
Ruby:
Ruby is a pure object-oriented programming language. Ruby has features that are similar to those of Smalltalk, Perl, and Python. Perl, Python, and Smalltalk are scripting languages. Smalltalk is a true object-oriented language. Ruby, like Smalltalk, is a perfect object-oriented language. Using Ruby syntax is much easier than using Smalltalk syntax.
GoLang/Go:
Go removes all of these obstacles like safety, speed, and ease of programming
Fast results: It works like an interpreted language because of the fast compilation. You’ll not notice that it’s compiling. You’ll think that as if you’re working in an interpreted language like Ruby.
Safe: Strongly and statically typed and garbage collected. Strongly typed means: You can’t pass any type of data everywhere. You need to be explicit. Statically typed means: Compiler knows the type of every variable. In Go there are no implicit type conversions, for example, uint8 and uint16 are different types (except in some cases).
Easy to work with: It’s concise, explicit, and easy to read.
Modern: Built-in support in the language itself for multi-core networked distributed applications and more.
go programmers are having a large demand depending upon their skill sets.
C & C++ :
Although Apple and Google champion specific programming languages for mobile development (Objective-C/Swift for Apple’s iOS, and Java for Google Android), independent developers spend a lot of time figuring out how to build iOS and Android apps using other programming languages.
Some alternative languages include C# (Xamarin) and Pascal (Embarcadero-Rad Studio). There’s also the C++ route; for example, DragonFire SDK for iOS and Google Android. Last year, Android Studio added support for the Native Development Kit (NDK) so that developers could use C/C++ in their Java Apps.
payment app for android is mostly developed in C, C++ with IOS being the main option in mind. Mac app is being developed in C and C++ from the start, this shows its creativity and strong handling.
Along with these languages, html5 gaming is also to be considered in mind.
Instagram’s logo and apps are being created by java but the functionality used for storing is mainly used in C and C++, other major concepts like the deep link are also explored by C++.
Post-development phase:
The most important and the last process of mobile application development is Marketing & Maintaining the App.
Marketing & Maintaining the App:
Marketing and Maintaining a mobile application deals with different aspects like day monitoring of databases and updating the application for bug fixes. Also, the main thing to cover is support for the application
Support :
Having completed each of the stages outlined so far in this guide, you should now have a live app that your target audience has started using. At this point, you will move into the fourth and final stage – Support.
The first thing to address during the support stage is any bugs or teething issues. Regardless of how much testing has occurred during the development stage, there will always be something unexpected that occurs, from usage by a very old device, previous OS, etc. These issues need to be addressed as they happen.
The next part of the support that can be planned is when major new devices are announced, or an OS update happens. Most minor updates don’t cause any problems to an app, but when there are larger, more major changes, these can cause issues. It is important to ensure that when you are preparing your app development budget that you allow resources for these occurrences.
These maintenance updates are relatively easy to manage. Developers receive beta versions of OS updates around one month before they are publicly released. This allows us to plan for them with our clients and make recommendations on the best way to handle the changes or new features.
THE MOST COMMONLY USED METHOD OF COMPLETING A MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT:
Why SDLC?
Here, are prime reasons why SDLC is important for developing a software system.
It offers a basis for project planning, scheduling, and estimating Provides a framework for a standard set of activities and deliverables
It is a mechanism for project tracking and control Increases visibility of project planning to all involved stakeholders of the development process
Increased and enhance development speed Improved client relations
Helps you to decrease project risk and project management plan overhead. The SDLC reference by Microsoft can be viewed under the below link.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/get-started/introduction-to-mobile-sdlc
SDLC Phases
The entire SDLC process divided into the following stages:
- Phase 1: Requirement collection and analysis
- Phase 2: Feasibility study:
- Phase 3: Design:
- Phase 4: Coding:
- Phase 5: Testing:
- Phase 6: Installation/Deployment:
- Phase 7: Maintenance:
In this tutorial, I have explained all these phases
Phase 1: Requirement collection and analysis:
The requirement is the first stage in the SDLC process. It is conducted by the senior team members with inputs from all the stakeholders and domain experts in the industry. Planning for the quality assurance requirements and recognization of the risks involved is also done at this stage.
This stage gives a clearer picture of the scope of the entire project and the anticipated issues, opportunities, and directives that triggered the project.
Requirements Gathering stage need teams to get detailed and precise requirements. This helps companies to finalize the necessary timeline to finish the work of that system.
Phase 2: Feasibility study:
Once the requirement analysis phase is completed the next step is to define and document software needs. This process conducted with the help of the ‘Software Requirement Specification’ document also known as the ‘SRS’ document. It includes everything which should be designed and developed during the project life cycle.
There are mainly five types of feasibilities checks:
- Economic: Can we complete the project within the budget or not?
- Legal: Can we handle this project as cyber law and another regulatory framework/compliances.
- Operation feasibility: Can we create operations which are expected by the client?
- Technical: Need to check whether the current computer system can support the software
- Schedule: Decide that the project can be completed within the given schedule or not.
Phase 3: Design:
In this third phase, the system and software design documents are prepared as per the requirement specification document. This helps define overall system architecture.
This design phase serves as input for the next phase of the model.
There are two kinds of design documents developed in this phase:
High-Level Design (HLD)
- Brief description and name of each module
- An outline of the functionality of every module
- Interface relationship and dependencies between modules
- Database tables identified along with their key elements
- Complete architecture diagrams along with technology details
Low-Level Design(LLD)
- Functional logic of the modules
- Database tables, which include type and size
- Complete detail of the interface
- Addresses all types of dependency issues
- Listing of error messages
- Complete input and outputs for every module
Phase 4: Coding:
Once the system design phase is over, the next phase is coding. In this phase, developers start build the entire system by writing code using the chosen programming language. In the coding phase, tasks are divided into units or modules and assigned to the various developers. It is the longest phase of the Software Development Life Cycle process.
In this phase, the Developer needs to follow certain predefined coding guidelines. They also need to use programming tools like compiler, interpreters, debugger to generate and implement the code.
Phase 5: Testing:
Once the software is complete, and it is deployed in the testing environment. The testing team starts testing the functionality of the entire system. This is done to verify that the entire application works according to the customer’s requirement.
During this phase, QA and testing team may find some bugs/defects which they communicate to developers. The development team fixes the bug and sends back to QA for a re-test. This process continues until the software is bug-free, stable, and working according to the business needs of that system.
Phase 6: Installation/Deployment:
Once the software testing phase is over and no bugs or errors left in the system then the final deployment process starts. Based on the feedback given by the project manager, the final software is released and checked for deployment issues if any.
Phase 7: Maintenance:
Once the system is deployed, and customers start using the developed system, the following 3 activities occur
- Bug fixing – bugs are reported because of some scenarios which are not tested at all
- Upgrade – Upgrading the application to the newer versions of the Software
- Enhancement – Adding some new features into the existing software
The main focus of this SDLC phase is to ensure that needs continue to be met and that the system continues to perform as per the specification mentioned in the first phase.
Popular SDLC models
Here, are some most important phases of the SDLC life cycle:
Waterfall model
The waterfall is a widely accepted SDLC model. In this approach, the whole process of software development is divided into various phases. In this SDLC model, the outcome of one phase acts as the input for the next phase.
This SDLC model is documentation-intensive, with earlier phases documenting what needs to be performed in the subsequent phases.
Incremental Approach
The incremental model is not a separate model. It is essentially a series of waterfall cycles. The requirements are divided into groups at the start of the project. For each group, the SDLC model is followed to develop software. The SDLC process is repeated, with each release adding more functionality until all requirements are met. In this method, every cycle act as the maintenance phase for the previous software release. Modification to the incremental model allows development cycles to overlap. After that subsequent cycle may begin before the previous cycle is complete.
V-Model
In this type of SDLC model testing and development, the phase is planned in parallel. So, there are verification phases on the side and the validation phase on the other side. V-Model joins by Coding phase.
Agile Model
Agile methodology is a practice that promotes continue interaction of development and testing during the SDLC process of any project. In the Agile method, the entire project is divided into small incremental builds. All of these builds are provided in iterations, and each iteration lasts from one to three weeks.
Spiral Model
The spiral model is a risk-driven process model. This SDLC model helps the team to adopt elements of one or more process models like a waterfall, incremental, waterfall, etc.
This model adopts the best features of the prototyping model and the waterfall model. The spiral methodology is a combination of rapid prototyping and concurrency in design and development activities.
Big bang model
The big bang model is focusing on all types of resources in software development and coding, with no or very little planning. The requirements are understood and implemented when they come.
This model works best for small projects with smaller size development team which are working together. It is also useful for academic software development projects. It is an ideal model where requirements are either unknown or the final release date is not given.
Get feedback quickly and improvise :
Once your app goes live on the app store, the first set of customers’ usage and behavior will give you insight into how to improve and enhance your app. Enhancements and changes are constant, so keep an eye on user feedback and keep building.
CONCLUSION :
In order to make the mobile app development process efficient and trouble-free, app developers should comprehend the app development life cycle precisely. It helps you in many ways to make your app seamless, feature-rich, and functional compared to your rival’s apps.
The efficiently developed app reduces the chances of rejection by the app store. From discovering the concept to app launch, every phase has its own importance in the app development life cycle; hence, mobile app developers need to comprehend the importance of each phase before initiating further.