May 29, 2023 Divyesh Gohil

The era of technology brought an influx of applications and our dependency on them for everyday functioning. You have a variety of apps for different genres like music, food, grocery, education, communication, games, etc.

An app development process goes through the challenge of metamorphosing the initial ideas into a viable implementable product. An app development roadmap plays a central role in achieving that goal.

Creating an App from scratch is a task, but if you have the road map, you can get the desired result as it lays a solid foundation to act upon. The strategic document helps you concretize your vision and app development steps.

This article is a step-by-step guideline on the app development process and highlights everything an app development roadmap entails.

The Road Map for App Development

The roadmap documents each step of the app development process. It guides through the list of priority features/requirements of the product/app, along with the release timeline. Let’s go through the detailed app development steps to keep in mind.

Decide Between Native App vs. Hybrid App

You have options when you start with app development. And it would be wise to have clarity regarding what to go for, i.e., native vs cross-platform development.

Your app developer can guide you based on time, tech, and resource constraints.

Native apps-

  1. The apps are built for specific OS – IOS or Android.
  2. Flexible and better integration with other elements of the phone.
  3. Responsive with better user experience.
  4. Better security features

Hybrid apps-

  1. Hybrid apps operate on multiple Operating Systems (OS), with the same codebase.
  2. Faster development time
  3. Cost friendly
  4. Users get to stay on the latest versions always (without updates).

Market Research About App Idea

You will need to understand your customers and market extensively before delving deeper into the Mobile app development process. Do you think your app fulfils a solid need? How do you wish to position and market your product? Who are your audiences? What platform works best for your app?

The process will comprise primary and secondary research and address questions like –

Primary research

  1. Find out the need for your product through online and offline research, i,e., How to protect app ideas. You will need to know how well your product caters to users’ demands.
  2. Formulate business plans and a marketing strategy.

Secondary research

  1. Perform checks and analyses like SWOT to strengthen the application’s core.
  2. Create an effective social media strategy to reach users.

Allocate Budget

One of the essential app development steps is budgeting. Building an application is a challenging task, and setting up a budget from scratch for the project could require some effort. Application development is not the biggest chunk of your budget for the project. Your application launching process involves testing and marketing, which are equally important as core development.

Without proper sales/marketing, your application stands the chance of being dead in the water, and most developers underestimate this part.

Whatever your total budget for the project, your development cost can’t be more than half of that budget. Marketing and testing are other important factors that require a lot of money.

app development plan cta

Define Your Target Audience

Defining your people beforehand will be critical to the success of your app. Your target audience is your core set of people who will use the app and reap the largest benefits. You could divide people by age, inclinations, gender, geography, etc. It will not just define your primary demographic but concretize how and with what features your app will be built.

Try to gain an in-depth understanding of your users’ motivations and inclinations to define your audience. Address questions like-

  1. What problems does your app solve?
  2. What will your user gain by the use of it?

Prioritize App Features

The next step in the app development roadmap is prioritizing the order of features you and your team will work on based on product development. It is important because of the time and financial constraints and the abundance of available features. You wouldn’t want a poorly executed product at hand that doesn’t resonate with your audience. 

  1. Judge through the MoSCoW (must be, should be, could be, and won’t be) functionality to help attain market value and user demand.
  2. Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
  3. Learn to distinguish between the needs and wants of your users.
  4. Correspond the ratio of the value of features to the number of users.
  5. Competition analysis

App Development

The next step is the application development itself, the most essential step of the app development roadmap. It includes everything from backend technology and APIs to developing for the front end. This process will include- 

  1. Building a growth roadmap.
  2. Hiring a development team and a manager.
  3. Creating a timeline for goals and milestones.
  4. Being flexible in the process as it moves forward.

You might need to build separate versions for IOS and Android and use cross-platform development to make a compatible version for both OS.

Testing and Bug Fixing

Testing ensures that your app functions well before going live. The process will help remove bugs, glitches, or anything else that needs to be fixed to make it error-free. Testing will help ensure a great user experience by making sure that it works well and doesn’t crash.

  1. Get your app tested on both platforms.
  2. Get QAs to test the app during the development process only.
  3. Run checks on multiple devices like phones, tabs, etc.
  4. Test with real users for relevant and vital feedback.

App Hosting

App hosting helps you run the backend on servers or service providers like AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP (Google Cloud Platform), IBM Cloud, etc. There is various type of hosting services like cloud hosting, VPS hosting, shared hosting, etc. Before hosting your app, you must look for reliability, scalability, and versatility.

Launch

It is wise to have a launch strategy in place for maximum customer acquisition and retention. You will have to submit your apps to the appropriate app store. Make sure that you have a developer account before launching your app.

When you go for app store submission, ensure you have a user name and bundle identifier different from the QA version. It will help you keep your QA and production versions segregated, enabling you to test future upgrades smoothly.

Remember to prepare metadata like title, description, keywords, launch icon, promotional video, banner graphics, etc., to launch your app in the app store.

Marketing

Marketing is one of the crucial steps in the app development process. If you don’t market your product well, it might get lost in the initial phase and never reach its potential. Effective marketing strategies will help you with user clicks/downloads and boost engagement, retention, and revenue.

The marketing process comprises elaborate planning, execution, and optimization to achieve desired results.

Some of the marketing strategies are app store optimization, influencer marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, retention campaigns, etc.

Feedback

User feedback is central to the success of any product/service. User feedback will give you an insight into preferences and pain points, which will consequently help you make data-driven decisions. You can accordingly prioritize feature development and application updates, ensuring a smooth user experience and success for your app.

Support and Maintenance

Application support and maintenance work on stabilization, optimization, and improvement of your application. The service includes features like modification of the functionality, debugging, creating supplementary solutions, etc.

App Update & New Features & Improve UI/UX

How users interact with the app is the most crucial step in the success of an app. Just make sure that the user interface works well and is easy to use for an outstanding user experience. The process comprises adding new features and app updates to enhance UI (user interface) and UX (user experience).

Conclusion

An appropriately crafted product roadmap is essential to the app development process. It helps align the aspirations and development cycle, keeping everything on time and hassle-free for everyone involved in the project. 

Estatic Infotech helps you not only with app development but also with consultation and idea improvement. We are a leading Mobile App Development Company with long-standing experience. For a seamless experience and quality product, you can build Mobile App or web app with our expert developers.

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