Smartphones have changed the way businesses used to function before. The latest technologies and smart devices have revolutionized every industry and made things easier for them.

Be it buying online or booking a travel ticket, ordering food or paying bills, mobile applications help users do the task more efficiently and conveniently. However, the popularity of mobile apps is increasing at a swift pace.

Every day there are thousands of mobile apps published on both Google Play and Apple App Stores from various industries. And if these apps are built under professional guidance and expert suggestion, they might have followed a similar mobile app development process.

However, in this competitive environment, mobile apps have become a necessity for businesses. It helps businesses to increase brand awareness, improve customer engagement, promote revenue growth, and many more.

In nutshell, mobile app development may open the door of opportunities for better business growth. But, many developers or mobile app development companies don’t consider the mobile app development process as seriously. It requires a thoughtful and step-by-step approach in order to make a successful mobile app.

As an experienced mobile app development company, we have developed and launched hundreds of mobile apps. While developing these apps, we have also followed the same process which includes idea, strategy, design, development, launch, and maintenance & support phases.

If you are planning to build a mobile app, here is a complete guide which may help you understand the process. We are curating key steps here.

Let’s walk through it.

Table of Contents:

App Development Process Steps

These app development process steps are those steps that we follow at Estatic Infotech. Our expert developers don’t just start developing an app hearing the requirements. They strictly adhere to the guidelines in order to create a successful app.

Step-1 Project Requirements

Once you approach us, as a prominent Android app development company, our experts will reach you via call or email. We will have a conversation regarding your requirements and will figure out to travel on the same boat.

We listen to your idea and understand it completely. Our experts will put their thoughts into your ideas and try to assist you in taking this project to the next level.

Step-2 Business Insight & Estimation

Once we understand your requirements and are done with your consulting session, we plan to have a kick-off meeting with internal experts, including developers, designers, QA engineers, and project managers.

Our development process in the meeting starts with a QA involvement and test case availability. Our QA team understands customer requirements in a better way. And this early involvement in the development process helps app flow-related queries get solved.

After analyzing the project requirements and designing phase, our QA team starts the test case creation. As an expert custom application development company, we try to incorporate a maximum number of positive and negative test scenarios while writing test cases. Also, we come up with a test plan document that describes the testing scope and objectives. This will help us give you a proper project estimation and provide a feasible concept of the mobile application.

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Step-3 Signing NDA

Now you have got a case study and cost estimation. So, if you are planning to proceed further with our mobile app development services, we make it official by signing the NDA agreement.

Why does a mobile app development company require NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)?

To protect the intellectual property (any idea, concept, and information that benefits a competitor or third party) of a client. NDA is a legal agreement between the software company and the client.

What is a project development agreement and what are things to consider while preparing it?

The project development agreement includes terms and conditions where the client and service provider are mutually agreed on. Below points are included in the agreement: -

  1. Deliverables
  2. Milestones
  3. Legal Clauses
  4. References

Once the agreement is signed, we assign the team, create strategies, schedule scrum meetings, and set goals to deliver the project on time.

Step-4 Creating a Wireframe

The next step comes after the understanding of requirements and selecting the communication methods is designing an app. The app design is the most important phase of the mobile app development process.

Hence, our designers are ready to create a wireframe for your app. Now the question comes, what’s the wireframe?

Wireframe

The wireframe is one type of design that shows the functionality of an app. Our designers create a wireframe on the digital board and integrate all the essential elements and functionalities. It helps to understand the flow of the system and gives a rough idea of how the system would function.

By developing a wireframe, you can understand the precise estimation of development time. Designers can get a gist of the system flow and aid them in creating flawless and accurate designs.

What is a wireframe, and why it is crucial in app development?

A wireframe is like the skeleton of a digital project; it is a simplified, visual blueprint that outlines the layout and structure of a web page or app without the distracting details, colors, or graphics.

It is essential in app development as it provides a visual roadmap for the app's design and functionality. By integrating all the features into wireframes, both the development team and stakeholders can gain a clear understanding of the app's appearance and operation. This early-stage clarity allows for quick and cost-effective adjustments if needed, leading to time and budget savings.

Step-5 UI/UX Design

Before proceeding further with the app design area, we will ask you some questions that help us know your preferences.

Our questions would be:

  • Is there any particular app color that you would want to incorporate?
  • Your specific preferences for colors and fonts
  • Is there any competitor for your app?

Well, these questions will help us know your preferences.

What do our designers do during this phase?

As an experienced web design company, our UI/UX designers design an app that contains login forms, the home page, and buttons.

Once we design a sample, we will share it with you and wait for your feedback. If there are any changes according to your preferences, then will do it in the existing sample and move further for the final approval of the design.

As of now, we are almost done with the design process. Now, let’s move on to the app development flow to make it a user-centric product by using tools and technologies as per your choice and preference.

Step-6 Mobile App Development

After creating designs of an app, the mobile app developers get down to bring everything into action. This mobile app development step covers the coding of your app.

The project manager assigns tasks to the developers and divides the project into various activities such as establishing the development environment, developing various parts of the code, and primary and real-time testing.

Generally, mobile app development services are made up of three integral parts:

  • Mobile app front-end technology
  • Back-end/server-side development
  • APIs

Mobile App Front-end Technology

The front end is what your end-users deal with. In most cases, mobile apps consist of feature-rich user experiences that use APIs and back-end tools to manage data.

If you want an app to work without internet access, then you need to integrate suitable APIs to download and store data locally.

However, we can choose any web programming language and database for your back-end app development.

We choose the following technologies for Android app development services:

  • Programming language: Java, Kotlin
  • IDE: Android Studio
  • Database: SQLite, Realm
  • Tools: Android SDK, Android NDK

We choose the following technologies for iPhone app development services:

  • Language: Swift, Objective C
  • IDE: XCode
  • Database: SQLite, Realm, CoreData

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Back-end/Server-side Development

Server-side and database objects become necessary for supporting functions of your mobile app. If you are using an existing back-end platform, then configurations and changes could be needed to support the desired mobile app functionality. The developed server-side objects must be configured and tested with the other components of the application.

We use languages such as PHP, RoR, Node js, Angular Js, React Js, .Net for back-end development.

APIs

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a method of communication between the app and a back-end server/database.

Step-7 App Testing & QA

App testing is an important step in the mobile app development lifecycle. With the testing process, we come to know the quality of an app and give an idea about how good or bad the app is. It gives us a clear understanding of stability, security, and usability.

When the idea takes its form in the manner of application and before its final launch to the world, our QA team prepares various test cases that address all aspects of app testing. We ensure that an app works flawlessly in every operating system and browser.

Generally, testing is done to find out the errors and bugs in the application. Once we find out the errors, developers work to solve them. We follow the approach to involve our QA team in the analysis and design stages. This helps us to prodigy accurate test cases.

We perform several types of testing, such as:

1) Functional Testing

The mobile application without having any bugs and errors is important for its success. It’s not an easy thing to predict every end user’s behavior and usage scenario.

Users can operate your app in many different ways. And this way, the app functionality should be tested. Sometimes, you will not be able to find some bugs which could be found by two different users. And you can get different outcomes as well.

For instance, suppose, two different uses are filling out the same form, but they both have entered different data. This could lead to discovering a defect as well.

Here, functional testing comes into the picture. We ensure that users can use your app’s functionality and features without any issues. It can be categorized into system testing and unit testing.

For both iOS and Android apps, our QA team will do a comparison between both versions of the mobile app.

2) Usability Testing

With usability testing, our QA team ensures that the app is user-friendly and is as intuitive as possible.

Unit testing involves asking new users to test the features for ease of use and navigation.

3) Performance Testing

Performance testing comes up with many quantitative criteria to measure the performance of your app.

  • How well is your app responding to the user requests?
  • What’s the load time of the app screen?
  • Is your app draining your phone battery?
  • Does your app leverage network bandwidth effectively?
  • Is your app large enough?

Albeit, your app gets through the basic performance criteria, we test the app, API, and back-end for load by simulating the maximum number of concurrent users. We ensure that your app will be able to handle the load and perform well even when there’s a rush of users.

We use performance testing to measure the response time of the tasks that your app performs.

4) Fit & Finish Testing

Just because we are done with designing tasks, that doesn’t mean that we won’t test the design again. Our designers will review each feature again and ensure that the new version is implemented as described in the design. That’s the major advantage you can get if you hire web designers from Estatic Infotech.

With fit and finish testing, our QA team checks whether the developers followed the design theme they had envisioned.

5) Regression Testing

If we had added one feature from the previous sprint, we don’t assume it still works perfectly.

At Estatic Infotech, our QA team will have a list of tests to perform at the end of each sprint, which will include tests from previous sprints.

We repeatedly do testing of every feature in the mobile app development phases.

6) Device & Platform-specific Testing

As we know, with the increasing amount of smartphone devices, it’s mandatory to develop an app that works seamlessly across all devices and operating systems. Our team runs the app on numerous screen sizes and OS versions. We always prefer to test the app on physical devices.

7) User Acceptance Testing

User acceptance testing is performed by either you (the app owner) or future app users. The app gets tested by the target audiences and we obtain feedback from them about every feature.

Step-8 Publishing the App

Once we test the app, our development team is ready to publish it on the app stores.

iOS app for Apple App Store and Android app for Google Play Store.

However, having vast experience in the mobile app development industry, we will help you get an app approved.

How to publish an app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store?

You don’t need to worry about anything. Our experts will help you in uploading your application to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store without charging any additional cost.

Can anyone publish the application?

Both the app stores have strong policies to approve the app and make it live. Since we have good expertise in this domain, we help our customers to get it published.

In fact, we have published more than 1500 mobile apps on both platforms to date.

While releasing an app in the app stores, it requires some information like:

  • Title of an app
  • Description
  • Category
  • Keywords
  • Launch icon
  • App Store screenshots

Once the app is submitted to the Apple App Store, their moderators will review the app. This may take several days to weeks, depending on the quality of your app and how closely it adheres to the Apple App Store’s policies and guidelines. If your app requires users to log in, then you will need to provide a test user account to the Apple app store as part of the release process.

However, this review process doesn’t remain the same with Android apps. Your Android app becomes available in the Google Play store within a few hours of submission.

Once your app is launched, our team constantly monitors its usage through mobile analytics platforms and tracks Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring your app’s success. We also will check the crash reports or other user-reported issues.

Step-9 Post Deployment Support & Marketing

Once users start trying their hands on the app, issues may pop up, feedback will pour in and for future versions of the app, we will incorporate that as an app update. For this, a good mobile application maintenance services team can be very effective.

Marketing Your App

The effective and right marketing strategy will make your mobile app successful. We follow a robust promotional strategy and plan from the beginning.

We come up with an app marketing strategy and plan to drive app discovery, increase organic traffic, and improve user engagement to reduce cost overheads.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is a never-ending process. Even if you launch an app, it will keep going as you receive user feedback and integrate additional features. It’s an extremely rewarding process and can be quite lucrative. Also, you might feel like skipping the step in the app development process, but this guide is built upon years of experience working with app owners who chose not to miss any of the steps. Hence, if you follow the steps in the right direction, your app will rule in the mobile app market.

If you are planning to develop a mobile app, you have come to the right page. Estatic Infotech is a leading custom application development company in India, offering mobile app development services to companies across finance, healthcare, construction, retail, consumer products, logistics, industrial engineering, and entertainment. Our experts follow the same steps for all of the mobile apps that we create.

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