Frequently Asked Questions by Novice Entrepreneurs on Developing a Mobile App

1. I have an app idea, how should I pursue? 

Before start designing your awesome app, you will have to buckle down and do some serious work. The best thing you can do to start with is, grab a notebook and write off immediately whatever’s on your mind.

Make sure you have it all in bullet points, and you whip up everything including its features and the functions. In case, there is any design spinning in your mind, you can also draw a rough sketch of what you want your app to look like.

2. Where do I start?

Speak up to your friends about your app idea.

It’s always better to share ideas and being receptive to take feedback from others, especially when trying your hand at something.

Catch up your friends, explain your idea, put your heads together, and make improvements if necessary, or, share it with your targeted audience, and take feedback.

Here’s a useful tip! Explain your app idea as someone else’s idea to as many people as you can.

By doing so, there are chances that you will get the genuine opinion about your app whether the idea will work or it has any holes in it. Whereas, knowing that the app idea is yours, somewhere they might hesitate to poke a hole in it with a good intention trying not to hurt you.

Therefore, whether you choose a friend, a relative or someone you closely know, make sure you address your app idea with someone else’s name so that they will take it seriously and will answer your questions wisely.

• Ask them if the idea arouses their interest to download it, or to know more about it?

• If they will use the app?

• If yes, then ask why and how it makes a difference from other existing apps?

• If no, why not? Ask what makes them disliking the app?

This will help you understand what a user wants and where the strong or weak points situate.

3. How can I develop an app with no experience in coding?

No matter, if you have no experience in coding and you are not a tech-savvy. To develop an app, you need to start with a prototype or say the initial version of your app design, which can be tested as well as get the development project started.

Prototyping comes with a plenty of advantages in order to build and develop a successful app. It helps you explore through various ideas, identify the problem areas and address them beforehand.

The best part is, an app developer can estimate the cost, time, required skills and resources beforehand by having a look at your prototype before designing the app.

So, make sure you have your prototype with you before moving forward to the next step. You can design your app prototype of your own as there are many tools available on the internet.

However, you can also go through the post 5 Tools to Sketch your App Idea Before you Hire An App Developer that would address you on various kind of tools available in the market for prototyping and how you can use it.

4. How will I hire the right developer for my app?

Time to relax and rely on a mobile app developer, because learning how to develop a mobile app is definitely not your job. In order to find the right fit for your app, you have to follow a few things, like:

• Interview such firms in order to choose the right medium for your mobile app development.

• Check with the apps that they have already developed and how it works.

• What kind of special features they can produce?

• How they are going to build the backend for your app as they have to set up servers, databases, APIs and storage solutions, etc.

5. Do I need to hire developers or should I outsource to mobile app development company?

If you need a cutting-edge technology in your app that’s never been done before; opt for a mobile app development company who are experts and paradigm in the app development sphere. They will hear out your idea and understand from downright before start coding on the project.

If your concern is on budget and time, then choosing an app development company is good to go as they will have a wealth of experience and can complete your product faster.

However, hiring developer is less recommended as it is time-taking.

No doubt, choosing a mobile app development company is the best option. But, if you really want to work closely with the developers as it’s your first app, you can also hire developers from a mobile app development company. Yes, it’s possible. Riktam is one of the top mobile app development companies, who not only develop iOS and android apps but, also provides iOS/Android mobile app developers for hire.

6. What are the requisites for developing an app?

A user-friendly app aids a business. Therefore, the most crucial element is to make your app user-friendly. This requires a usability testing on real users. Usability Testing is a great technique to understand where it lacks in the utility as well as the difficult areas that a user might find while using your app.

In a nutshell, usability testing is a fantastic way to understand and find out the user needs and bugs in the app.

•  Usability testing Round 1: This is a test where you give others access to the wireframe, monitor user interaction, and ask for feedback. It’s all about testing your app usability with the real users to know if its features are easier to understand and use.
  
•  Usability Testing Round 2: Once the design skin is done by the developer, test it for another round to get fixed the bugs, if any, and refine the usability.

If there is something that needed to be changed, whether it’s about improving the performance or to get bugs fixed, you can always ask your mobile app developer to redesign and resolve it.

7. After developing the app, what’s next?

The next and the most crucial part is to submit your app to the App Store/Google Store in order to make it functional.

iOS Apps- iOS developers use tools like Xcode and Application loader to upload an app to the App store in order to go through the review process and get it approved.

It takes less than a week time to get an app approved, and will be available in the App Store to download.

However, before submitting an app for the review process, App Store requires a certain list of guidelines to be followed according to get an Apple app approved.

It needs to be the final version of the test. If the app fails to meet such guidelines, it can get rejected by the App Store Review Team. You can know more about the Reasons why an app can get rejected and what are the tricks to pull through here to ensure it gets approved.

Android Apps– There are no certain instructions or restrictions for Android developers to get an app approved. The tools they use to get through the App review process are Android studio and Eclipse, and it gets approved in an hour.

8. How can I make my app noticeable?

You will want to get the highest number of users to download and use your product through the app. That’s what your target is, right?

Well, in that case, either you need a huge marketing budget or an application that’s extremely viral in order to app stand out in the crowd and convince your targeted audience to download your app.

However, promoting an app in the app market and among your targeted audience is vital in order to make it noticeable. Check out this article- Beginner’s Guide to App Marketing that may help you in promoting your app.

9. How much would it cost?

As discussed above ( point3 ), a developer can estimate the time and cost of an app through a prototype itself.

It depends largely on what kind of platform you are choosing and what are the features you have in the app. Also, it’s based on the developers you choose to build your app. Suppose, your app consists any back-end servers, then it will cost more.   

If you hire a dedicated resource for hiring app developers, it will cost you around 3000-5000 USD per month. However, if you outsource your project to a dedicated mobile app development company to handle by the professional project managers, it will cost you around 30,000-50,000 USD per year.

To know more about it, go through this article How to Estimate Cost of your app development for iOS and Android.

Conclusion

Be it a small business or a big corporate enterprise, entrepreneurs are entering into the latest mobile market by developing mobile apps on various platforms — native and cross-platform apps.

As you are planning or soon going to plan for developing a mobile app for your market presence, you need to make sure if everything is on the right track. The above answers to the frequently asked questions will definitely help you entrepreneurs those who are new to the mobile world.