What is the mobile app development process?

Creating a mobile app is like crafting a personal solution to your everyday struggles. It’s a journey that starts with truly listening and understanding. What small inconveniences drain your energy? What annoys you every day? These are the questions that transform a mere idea into a meaningful app.

Building mobile apps begins with an idea, evolves through design, development, and testing, and continues with deployment and maintenance. A well-defined process ensures a high-quality app performs well, meets user expectations, and achieves business goals.

This process typically involves:

    • Problem identification: Recognizing user pain points.
    • Solution design: Crafting an app concept to address those pain points.
    • Development and iteration: Building and refining the app based on feedback.
    • Ongoing maintenance: Updating the app to fix issues and meet changing user needs.

Types of mobile apps

Native apps

    • Built for iOS or Android using platform-specific languages like Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.
    • Example: Spotify’s native app provides high-quality audio streaming and seamless offline downloads.

Hybrid apps

Progressive web apps (PWAs)

    • Web-based apps that mimic native app behavior and are accessible through browsers, offering partial offline capabilities and push notifications.
    • PWAs typically take less time to release to users than native or hybrid apps, which involve a complex release and update process.
    • Example: Pinterest’s PWA increased engagement rates by reducing load times.

Mobile app development considerations

Before we review the mobile application development process, we should consider some key factors.

Target audience

Demographic research is the first step to understanding your target audience. This process involves analyzing age groups, locations, education levels, and other characteristics. For instance, a fitness tracking app might initially target health-conscious millennials and Gen Z users ages 25-40, with middle to upper-middle-income brackets and a demonstrated interest in personal wellness and technology.

User behavior analysis takes this understanding to a deeper level, exploring how potential users interact with technology, their pain points, and their digital consumption patterns. This analysis involves studying user journeys, tracking digital behaviors, and understanding the contextual environment in which they might use your app. A food delivery app, for example, would examine usage patterns during lunch hours, evening meal times, and weekend social gatherings, understanding not just who uses the app but also when and why they seek these services.

Platform preferences can also reveal critical insights into user technology ecosystems. Different demographic groups demonstrate distinct preferences for mobile platforms. Younger urban professionals might lean heavily towards iOS devices, valuing design and ecosystem integration, while more budget-conscious users in emerging markets might predominantly use Android devices. This understanding influences not just development strategy but also marketing approach, feature prioritization, and monetization models.

Performance requirements

Data processing addresses how efficiently an application can capture, transform, and deliver information. Modern mobile applications increasingly deal with complex data streams, from real-time location tracking in navigation apps to sophisticated machine learning algorithms in fitness and productivity tools. The challenge lies in processing substantial data volumes while maintaining minimal latency and optimal battery consumption. Developers must design intelligent caching mechanisms, implement efficient data compression techniques, and leverage edge computing principles to ensure smooth, responsive user experiences across varied network conditions.

Offline functionality has transformed from a luxury to a fundamental expectation in mobile application design. Users now demand seamless experiences regardless of network connectivity, pushing developers to create robust local data storage and synchronization strategies. A travel booking app, for example, must allow users to view previously searched destinations, save itineraries, and queue pending transactions even without active internet connectivity. This functionality requires sophisticated local databases, intelligent background synchronization processes, and carefully designed conflict resolution mechanisms that ensure data integrity across different connection states.

Technical constraints

Developing a high-quality mobile application requires considering device-specific limitations, such as varying screen sizes, resolutions, hardware capabilities, and storage and battery constraints. Developers should also be prepared to navigate the differences between iOS and Android platforms and address device fragmentation. Security concerns, such as data protection and platform policy compliance, add complexity. Applications should also meet user experience (UX) expectations with responsive interfaces, offline functionality (as discussed above), and minimal resource consumption while adhering to app store guidelines and maintaining backward compatibility.

Budget constraints

Budget constraints can impact the scope, quality, and timeline of your mobile app. Limited funds may also restrict the team size, level of expertise, and tools available, leading to compromises in design, development, and testing. You may find yourself in a situation where you need to prioritize core features over advanced functionalities or opt for cost-effective solutions like cross-platform frameworks instead of native development. You should also consider app store fees, third-party APIs, and ongoing maintenance like updates and bug fixes. Careful planning and resource allocation is critical to delivering a functional, market-ready application.

Regulations and compliance

Following data privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA and ensuring user consent transparency and secure data handling is crucial. Accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), must also be followed to ensure your app is accessible to people with disabilities. Developers must comply with platform-specific guidelines from Apple and Google, as well as industry-specific regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for payment security and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for apps targeting children. International trade laws, intellectual property rights, and ethical advertising practices are also critical. Non-compliance can lead to app store rejection, ruin your organization’s reputation, or even result in legal penalties.

Mobile app development life cycle

The mobile app development life cycle is very similar to the standard software development life cycle (SDLC). However, there are some small differences you should keep in mind when undergoing this process.

Ideation and research

        1. During the research phase, you should conduct a thorough market analysis, which involves analyzing competitors and their pain points.
        2. Another crucial step is identifying your users (persona development).

Design

        1. Once you’ve identified pain points and users, you should begin UX and user interface (UI) development. This process involves creating prototypes for potential designs. You can use tools like Penpot, Figma, or Sketch for initial prototyping.
        2. During this phase, you should also implement product branding, color scheme, and responsive design.
        3. It’s also helpful to validate your concept with potential users through surveys or focus groups.

Development

        1. The development phase starts when app designs are completed and ready for handoff to the dev team.
        2. During this phase, you should also choose a development approach (native, hybrid, or PWA) and tools to realize your application’s vision.
        3. Your technology stack can be chosen based on the engineering team’s skill level and app requirements. Here are some options:
          • Native iOS: Swift, Xcode
          • Native Android: Kotlin, Android Studio
          • Cross-platform: React Native, Flutter

Testing

      1. Depending on how much time can be dedicated to testing the initial releases of the app and whether a dedicated team is available to do it, testing can be classified into one of the following categories:
          • Unit testing
          • Integration testing (I&T)
          • User acceptance testing (UAT)
          • Performance benchmarking
          • Security vulnerability assessment
      2. Of the above testing categories, integration and UAT are most fitting for early-stage apps. Integration testing ensures the app behaves as it should, whereas UAT helps you understand whether the added features meet customer expectations.

Deployment

    1. The deployment phase involves displaying your application in places where users can easily install it. This process can start with a phased rollout and submission to the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
    2. These app stores have a long list of strict guidelines that determine which apps can be published and how. Before starting the publishing process, make sure to read them thoroughly.

Maintenance and updates

    1. Once your app is live and accessible, you should enable user feedback monitoring to track how customers engage with and respond to it.
    2. Regular updates via security patches and feature enhancements are crucial to meeting customer expectations.

Mobile app development best practices

Building useful, scalable apps is a marathon. Let’s look at some practices that can help ease this process.

User-centric design

    • Prioritize intuitive navigation and accessibility.
    • Example: Duolingo uses gamification to make language learning engaging.

Optimize for performance

    • Minimize app size and ensure quick load times.
    • Example: Pinterest implemented lazy loading to improve performance on slower networks.

Secure data

    • Use encryption and secure APIs to protect sensitive user data.
    • Example: Banking apps like Chase use two-factor authentication for added security.

Focus on scalability

    • Design systems to handle future growth.
    • Example: Spotify scaled its architecture to support millions of concurrent users.

Mobile app development costs

The cost of developing a modern app depends on the features you want to include. However, building apps is not the only thing to consider; the cloud infrastructure, including the cost of databases and hosting APIs, can also rack up the budget. On top of this, you have to think of marketing, hiring engineers, and a lot more.

The following are rough estimates of how costs can range for mobile apps:

Simple apps

    • Features: Basic UI, no backend.
    • Cost: $10,000 – $50,000

Medium complexity apps

    • Features: APIs, payment systems, and moderate UI design.
    • Cost: $50,000 – $100,000
    • Example: E-commerce apps like Etsy.

Complex apps

    • Features: Real-time syncing, machine learning, custom animations.
    • Cost: $100,000+
    • Example: Uber’s app, which includes GPS, payment, and live tracking.

Mobile app development platforms

There are three major platforms you can choose to target.

iOS development platform

If​​ you want to ship your app exclusively for Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV), you need to target the iOS platform. Developers can use Swift, the programming language while relying on Swift UI to build the app’s interface. Additionally, iOS platforms offer strict security and access to the latest features.

Android development platform

The Android platform is open source, which means it supports a wide range of devices from multiple manufacturers, unlike iOS, which only supports Apple devices. Developers can build their apps using the Kotlin programming language to access native features of the platform, such as hardware sensors and platform-specific UI components.

Cross-platform

Building cross-platform apps can be the ideal middle ground. Developers can leverage more readily available languages like JavaScript to build apps with the same user experience across devices. As mentioned earlier, frameworks like React Native and Flutter are among the few that can be used to build and deliver cross-platform applications.

Mobile app development checklist

To summarize, ensure the following steps are covered:

    • Define clear objectives and your target audience.
    • Choose between native, hybrid, or PWA.
    • Plan the features, focusing on a minimum viable product (MVP).
    • Allocate a realistic budget.
    • Test rigorously for performance, usability, and security.
    • Use analytics for continuous improvement.

Review the resources below to gain a more in-depth understanding of application development:

Author

Posted by Mark Gamble, Director of Product & Solutions Marketing

I am a passionate product marketer with a technical and solution consulting background and 20+ years of experience in Enterprise and Open Source technology. I have launched several database and analytic solutions throughout my career, and have worked with customers across a wide variety of industries including Financial Services, Automotive, Hospitality, High-Tech and Healthcare. I have particular expertise in analytics and AI, love all things data, and am an emphatic supporter of data-for-good initiatives.

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