What does it take to make an ideal mobile app?

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

Mobile Apps are becoming the main channel of communication among almost everyone. People use them nowadays to carry out a lot of their daily activities. In fact, they even played a vital role in making our lives much easier during tough times such as quarantines, from aiding us in our remote work and education, to ordering groceries in times where merely stepping outside could get us in trouble. All this proves that a well-designed mobile app can bring a lot of joy and convenience to many people.

But what does it take to build an ideal mobile app? To answer this question, we should recognize some of the main aspects of successful mobile app creation and how to best accomplish them.

Know your audience

This point is so essential that every other element in user experience design revolves around it. To put it simply, think of your mobile app (or any other type of software actually) as a piece of art; before you decide how to craft it, you should think carefully about your target audience.

Ask yourself, who would be using this app? How old are they likely to be? What language(s) are they likely to be speaking? Are they going to be males? Females? Or both? What are their cultural and educational backgrounds?

It is exactly these types of questions that can help you draw a detailed persona of your target audience. Based on this persona, you are much likely to come up with a blueprint of your mobile app that can promise to add a real value that your audience actually needs. Thus, your mobile app would be more likely to be used and appreciated by this audience.

In short, developing a comprehensive understanding of your audience enables you to create the perfect app blueprint for their needs and preferences. Moreover, it gives you a clear idea of how to make the app as useful and engaging for them as possible.

Give your users a sense of control

Another important aspect of an engaging mobile app is that it enables the end-user to personalize the way they prefer to use it. Personalization can be provided on several levels. For example, the app may allow the user to choose from a variety of themes and colours according to their taste. It can also allow them to choose the types of notifications they want to receive and how often during the day.

To put it simply, the more an app makes it possible for the end-user to tweak its behavior according to their preferences, the more this app is considered flexible, and hence more comfortable to use.

Convenience and ease of use

They say that a user experience is like a joke; if you have to explain it, it’s probably not that good. And if this analogy applies to all types of software, it applies the most to mobile apps. Let’s say it is a patient mobile app, for example. The last thing you want is for a patient wanting to book an appointment and they end up spending too much time just trying to figure out how the app itself works.

Thus, a good mobile app needs to follow a smooth and simple design that is quite self-explanatory. The main purpose is to allow the user to find what they are looking for in the least possible amount of time and effort.

Less clutter, more clarity

Ever tried downloading an app that sounded interesting, only to find out that it is cluttered with buttons and information in an almost haphazardly fashion? Or maybe that they were pretty organized, but there are just too many features that they make you feel lost? Trust me, we’ve all been there in one way or another.

It’s a sad fact that many mobile apps out there suffer a lack of order where the app is cluttered with elements we hardly care about, much less need. And this happens when developers attempt to incorporate too many features all at once.

Thus, good practice in app design is to identify the elements that the users are likely to need the most and place these at the most accessible locations such as at the top. Afterwards, all other elements should be prioritized according to their importance and ordered accordingly while eliminating repetition.

Keep access requests relevant

One of the deadliest mistakes in app development is when the app requests access to certain components of the user’s phone (e.g. camera, microphone, photos) that are not relevant to the actual purpose of the app. Therefore, you have to make sure that your app only requests access to a certain component when this is absolutely necessary for delivering a certain function that is directly related to it. Also, it should only request access when the user directly prompts it to deliver that specific function.

For example, if you are creating a videoconferencing app, then it makes sense to have your app request access to the camera and microphone once the user tries to have a video/audio conference for the first time. However, if you are developing a food delivery app, for instance, then the camera or microphone, in this case, are not relevant, and therefore access to them should not be requested.

Okay, now that your smartphone app has been built and ready for launching, there are a couple of points worth noting in order to make your app easily accessible to its target audience. They are as follows.

Implement a solid ASO strategy

Just like how websites could use a good SEO strategy in order to rank higher up the search results, so do mobile apps require solid App Search Optimization (ASO) in order to achieve better visibility in the app stores. Also, similarly to how SEO works, ASO depends heavily on the use of the right set of keywords and metadata to help apps get picked up easily by the right audience. Furthermore, the main goal, and therefore KPI, of good ASO is to increase the app’s download rate.

Feedback-driven improvement

Pay very close attention to users’ feedback on your app. Receiving feedback can actually be a very good thing. It can help you enhance your app and build a more powerful product that users need and like. When you receive a lot of negative reviews about certain issues in your app, then there is definitely a problem that must be sorted out. Likewise, the more positive reviews your app receives, the better and more likely it is to rank in the app store search results, and more importantly, the more people are likely to download it.

These were, in a nutshell, some of the most important guidelines to consider while developing a mobile app. By following these guidelines, you will be better capable of creating a mobile app that is truly useful, engaging, and safe to use. As a result, your users are more likely to enjoy using your app, and it will keep them coming for more!

ESKADENIA Software offers a wide range of Internet solutions and mobile apps as well as industry-specific mobile apps for healthcare, insurance, education, and telecom.