When you start your mobile app project, it’s important to choose a path to success. This path is unique for each startup, but you can increase your chances of succeeding by avoiding six common mistakes.
Why do you need to avoid the mobile app startup mistakes we describe here? If you have a limited budget, you should pay attention to these mistakes because they can influence the cost to create an app.
In addition, if your goal is to make money with your startup, you should avoid these mistakes because otherwise you risk creating a useless product that will earn no money. Let’s look at six mistakes to avoid when launching your mobile app.
1. Ignoring research
When you have an idea for an application that’s about to become the best in the world, it’s important not to start developing the app just yet. Beginning development too soon is one of the most common mistakes when building a mobile app.
Before you begin development, it’s necessary to explore your app’s niche and find all the main competitors. During the research phase, you should go through these steps:
- Idea evaluation
- Filling out a lean model canvas
- Researching the market and trends
- Mind mapping
- Creating a buyer persona
- User story mapping
Mobile application development is laborious and expensive. If no one uses your application, this can be a big financial burden for your business. You must clearly define your business goals and see if your application fulfills them.
Also, if you want your app to find users, it’s necessary to identify these users. To find your target audience, you need to understand your perfect user in detail: their age, hobbies, income, gender, and any other characteristics that are important for your type of app.
The next step is to identify your customers’ problems and requirements. Then see if your mobile app can solve those problems and live up to customer expectations. If it can, you can go to the next stage of app development.
2. Working with a development team
A perfect mobile app idea is not enough for creating the best mobile app. It’s also important to find the right development team for this project. Choosing the wrong team will harm the quality of your product.
Finding a suitable mobile app development company puts you on the path to success. When choosing a mobile app development team, pay attention to:
- Region
- Hourly rates
- Portfolio
- Similar projects to yours
- Client reviews
- Blogs and social media
- Technology stack
- Security policy
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3. Developing without a business plan
If you work without a plan, you won’t be able to cope with unforeseen situations. If you decide to add a brilliant new feature, you won’t be able to estimate the resources you need for it.
A business plan allows you to understand all aspects of your startup’s development and helps you make changes without harming your project. Also, if you don’t want to waste your resources, you should estimate your financial needs.
You need to calculate expected costs, necessary raw materials, sales and marketing requirements, etc. Also, don’t forget to estimate the time required for each task. This will help you to avoid a lot of unforeseen situations and waste.
4. Equating coding with app development
Another top mistake of tech startups is thinking that app development means coding. Coding is only one part of app development, and it’s important to keep an eye on other parts of this process. What are all the parts of app development?
- Discovery stage
- Idea validation stage
- UX strategy stage
- Design and coding stage
You should remember that these stages can change based on the specifics of your project. Because of this, it’s more important to focus on all stages, not only on coding.
5. Ignoring marketing
It’s not enough to develop a brilliant application. Your target audience won’t use it if they don’t know about it. It’s important to make your audience interested in your application at the early stages of development to avoid losing your money.
If you don’t concentrate on any promotional activities, you can’t get people to use your application. Along with development, it’s important to draw up a marketing plan and sales plan for your products and try to achieve your marketing goal. Failing to do so can cost you a lot of resources.
6. Including all the features in the world
When you add new features to your application, you make it better. But that’s only true for useful features. Sometimes, app owners want to turn their applications into universal products that can provide e-commerce services, food delivery, a payment system, a job board, an idle clicker game, etc. Including everything is one of the first mobile app mistakes.
New features should attract new users, but sometimes they simply destroy the loyalty of your actual target audience. So it’s important to focus on key features and add only features that your ideal user needs.
Remember that each new feature will increase the cost and development time for your app. Developing a complex application with several features will cost more than developing a simple application.
This is why you should start with an application that solves one big problem. First build a minimum viable product, or MVP, on one platform, either iOS or Android. Then you can introduce new features, update them, and optimize them based on feedback.
Conclusion
There are a lot of pitfalls you can face when launching a mobile app startup. We’ve explained the most dangerous pitfalls and ways to avoid them to help you increase the chances of your project achieving success.
It’s impossible to avoid all mistakes, but this knowledge can help you find the right solution for many of the problems you may face in mobile app development.
