With more than 3.2 billion smartphone users, there is no wonder why the market for mobile applications is flourishing. Every time you see people on the street, train, work, or even hanging out with their friends, you will notice that they glue themselves to their phones. 88% of that time is spent on apps.
It sounds like stepping into the mobile app industry is a good idea, right? Certainly, but how to make sure you launch an app successfully? Let’s find out.
Where to begin building and launching your app
To build and launch your app successfully, the first step is to research the market thoroughly. Go through Google Store and Apple Store, browse statistics, and see the most popular applications and where these apps get downloaded most often. Next, analyze how people are using these products. Even though most of us have about 80 apps on our devices, we only use 9 mobile apps per day and 30 per month. You don’t want to be in the group of applications that are just hanging around. Instead, target those that get the most clicks daily. By carrying out proper market research, you will define your target audience’s needs, competitors’ offers, and market conditions.
8 Steps to successfully launch an app
Knowing where to begin while building an app, let’s see how the whole process should look and what steps you need to take to launch the application well.
1. Identify your market
Before you dive into creating your marketing plan for launching your app, defining monetization models, or testing your product, thorough market research could save you a lot of trouble. By identifying your market, you can get to know your audience, their needs and expectations, the competition’s offer, and your app’s unique selling point. Thus, it will give you an idea of the general market requirements to launch an app successfully.
2. Validate your idea
Once you discovered your target audience’s needs, it’s time to verify whether your idea has potential in the market. To test if your customers will find your product helpful, you can launch an MVP first. It doesn’t have to be any complicated project; focus only on the core features. Then, find the easiest way to solve one issue your end-users face and validate your idea by getting real-life feedback.
3. Research your competitors
Checking out your competition is one of the essential steps before launching an app. See what solutions they came up with and verify what they did well and what they did poorly. Read apps’ reviews in the app stores to find out what bad experiences users had, and don’t repeat the same mistakes in your product. If some of your competitors offer an application with great features but poor graphic design, you should combine the same functionalities with an eye-pleasing UI/UX.
4. Define success criteria for your app
If you want your product to be successful, you have to define what ‘successful’ means in terms of your project. Success criteria for your app determine benchmarks based on which your product will be compared and judged. Setting clear goals, defining how you will measure them, and getting results enables you to show stakeholders whether your project was lucrative or not.
5. Choose an App Store
Once you validated your idea and conducted a thorough analysis of the market, it’s time to release your app. You can choose whether you want to launch it in Google Play Store or App Store; however, the best idea might be to go for a cross-platform solution. If you are available across multiple platforms, you can expand the number of your customers. Thus, you reach out to both iOS and Android users at the same time. On the other hand, the most popular categories in App Store might differ from those in Google Play Store. Thus, it might be worth checking what type of apps gets the most downloads in which market.
6. Submit your App
Finally, the time has come to show your app to the world. Go through the submission guidelines of the store of your choosing, make sure you meet all the requirements, and get through the review process seamlessly. Then, the crucial thing to do is to spread the word about it. Make sure everyone knows your app is going to be released. Press, influencers, and communities will not only feel encouraged to test your application, but also they might forward the news and put in a good word for your offering.
7. Monitor reviews
Do not forget about keeping an eye on your app in the throes of celebration once it’s available on the market. You should check your performance and ratings regularly. By getting track of reviews, retention rate, and the number of downloads, you will get yourself a robust background for necessary updates.
8.Test your app and release the first update
It is impossible to release a bug-free product. Thus, what you have to do is test your application. By putting it in the end-user’s hands, you can be sure that they will tell you about any faults that occurred while using the app. Therefore, identify what improvements you should make and release the first update of your application. Even the most popular apps such as Facebook or Instagram need to fix something from time to time; make sure you listen to your customers and provide better solutions to their needs.
What does it mean to launch an app?
Launching an app, especially a good one, is a complex process that usually requires a well-managed team that will cooperate on product design, development, and implementation. Of course, you could do it just for fun; however, new applications typically emerge on the market to solve specific problems. Therefore, apps development and release is a pretty big investment too. Moreover, you can’t be sure if it will bring you the expected profit. That’s why it is so vital to run proper research and gather a team of professionals who will help you with the product validation, setting the general goals, and product release and maintenance.
How hard is it to launch an app?
Creating a product that truly meets the needs of its users and launching it to the market is an extremely complicated task. Especially if you want to do it all on your own. If planned properly, the whole process could be easy and pleasant to go through; however, who said that planning was a simple thing to do?
There are many steps on a project roadmap that you must complete if you hope for a successful launch. The tasks include identifying the market, validating a project idea, running research on competitors, defining release goals, actual release, updates, and further maintenance. Completing this list on your own account is not impossible, but it indeed is much more difficult. In addition, you always need to remember about App Store Optimization. So, to make your life easier, consider hiring an experienced team of digital natives who will support you at every step.
What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?
App Store Optimization is a marketing practice that enables you to enhance the visibility and appeal of your product in app stores. Like SEO, ASO can help you optimize the app’s title or description to get a better chance to rank higher in the marketplace. Just as with the app’s market research, you can go through your competition’s strategy and see what works the best. Every person that is going to download your app has to visit a store. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize your product’s name, keywords, description, and visuals, such as your app’s icon, so your end-users find it as their number one option.
How much does it cost to launch an app?
As every project is different, there is no particular answer to this question. Clients always wonder how much it will cost to launch an app, at least approximately. It is obvious that low prices and high quality are what everyone dreams of when reaching out for assistance with mobile app development and implementation.
However, the cost of software development varies widely as everything depends on many factors: application type, platforms on which the app is going to be released, how complicated the design is going to be, which database you will use, post-release support, and many more.
The best way to estimate how much it will cost to launch your app is to contact us and request a consultation. We will analyze the market and needed resources to provide you with the most specific number possible.
What to do after launching an app – summary
If you thought that launching an app would be an easy ride, then after reading this article, you surely are convinced otherwise. Moreover, after working hard to develop your product and release it to the market, the work isn’t yet completely finished. Even if your app succeeded initially, the key to success is improving it and fixing glitches regularly. In today’s world, technology is developing, and market demands change quickly. Therefore, launching an app can’t be a one-time event. It is much rather a cyclical process that requires lots of exploring, testing, and upgrading.
If you want your app to be one of the top choices, always look for new solutions and improvements. However, in case you feel overwhelmed with all these tasks, do not hesitate to reach out to us. Our team of experienced consultants and developers will guide and support you at every stage of the project roadmap. By choosing our services, you will save your valuable time and deliver unique products to your customers.
February 10, 2022
