Your mobile app probably started as a basic idea. After the first moment of inspiration, you still have most of your work ahead of you. Your first step is researching the current app ecosystem to see whether your idea has already been developed. No matter how good the idea for an app is, your work would be for nothing if you’re only duplicating an existing product and not thinking about innovating & solving problems through your mobile app development solutions.

The basic idea for an app is not enough to start working on it. As a rule, you should budget time early on to flesh out your mobile app’s concept. Think about the functions your app needs, what you can add, and how it should all work together. If it helps, you can graphically design the back-end database and even print it out to have a workflow to look at while you’re coding. Think about the user interface, the buttons and screens that will be available, and how users are likely to interact with them

Once you have the rough outline of the app you plan to build, it’s time to test the design’s technical feasibility. This is where you and your team may have to invest cash and other resources. Different platforms and marketplaces impose their own technical requirements on apps, and you might have to study up a bit to know how to comply before selling. This process is also sometimes helpful for spotting weaknesses in your preliminary design and making changes before the prototype is developed. Technical feasibility studies can also point out opportunities to include extra functionality you might not have thought about during the early design stages

When the planning stages are finished, it’s time to build a prototype. At this stage of development, your app doesn’t have to be perfect, but the functions you’re most interested in should be built up enough for initial testing. At the very least, you should have some of the backend components working together well enough to run at least a few functions, and much of the frontend design work should be good enough for casual use.

You should solicit as much feedback from the prototype testers as possible, especially for their experiences with the graphic interface. The comments and criticism you get from the first outsiders who use your mobile app will bring a fresh perspective and guide much of the design work you do moving forward

App designers work on the front end of a program to create a useful, attractive interface. Architects build the databases that make it all work in the background. Development is the hard work of connecting these two components so they work seamlessly together. After getting your backend wireframed and finalizing your front end designs, you’re in a good position to write the connecting code in development

Start testing your mobile app design early, and test it often. From the initial feasibility studies to the advanced beta testing you do with the first release of the app, it’s extremely helpful to get abroad base of testers so you can mine their feedback. Consider releasing your first developed version to a limited audience of volunteer testers and ask them to submit questionnaires about their experience at intervals. This feedback can help guide the late stages of development as you make tweaks to the final design. Bugs are usually easier to fix early on, rather than later in the finished product

The way you roll out your app can be as much of a factor in its eventual success as any of the previous steps. Because most apps see a spike in downloads early in their rollout, followed by a gradual tailing off of purchases, you need to make a big impact right away to achieve liftoff. Choose a date for the launch and start publicizing it on your company’s social media well in advance. There is no fixed rule for how long a product lead-in should be, but you want to strike a balance between having a too-short marketing campaign that doesn’t get enough interest, and a too-long campaign that allows the public to lose touch with you. This is a good place to consult with marketing professionals to craft a multi-platform rollout strategy

It may be a great relief to launch your app to a receptive public, but this is actually just the beginning. After you launch your mobile app and reviews start coming in, it is worth your while to read up on the most common criticism and make adjustments to help. Treat the general public as a positive resource for further testing and development of the app’s future versions. Budget what you must to provide good customer support, since the public perception of your product can greatly affect future rollouts