The Complete Guide to Ordering Quality Mobile Apps for Business
Intro and Common Issues
The main reason why I wrote this article is the
intention to help business owners and app developers to understand each other a
little bit better. As a business owner I want to help my clients to succeed
with mobile apps and improve the communication between my clients and my
development teams. If you have detailed requirements specification of your
project then you are all set, but what if you do not have it…
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Sometimes it is hard to
explain what you really want to your app development company, but together we
will try to reach the “Shared vision” planet.
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We get different requests and majority of them are
based on the general intension of a client to build an app, I mean intention
without decent details. Usually people do not have the clear idea what they
really want or how it should precisely work. Popular requests look like these: “How much will it cost to copy this game?” or
“Hey! How much will it cost to copy Yelp/Google/Facebook?”/ “I have $4000 and I
want to build Google like web service. I want it to look neat and simple.”, and
“I need a mobile app that will sell my commodities and work with my website? I
gave you all needed information, so contact me with the final price and terms”,
etc. Such requests are posted at popular freelance websites as Freelancer,
oDesk, Elance, AppFutura every day. Sometimes it is hard to
explain what you really want to your app development company, but together we
will try to reach the “Shared vision” planet.
The road to the “Shared vision” planet starts from your
intention to improve a certain key performance indicator, goes through userexperience design (UX) and continuous user testing sessions, visual design
process and coding, and it ends only when chosen KPIs reach the planned numbers
or a goal. On the road you should think about your company’s goal instead of
looking to copy someone’s idea. Your company has its own uniqueness and this is
the reason why common solutions or app ideas should be adjusted to your
company’s specifics.
When you rob someone’s app ideas or source code you
will end up with nothing except loss. Don not blindly copy app ideas! Take
effective and successful business apps/techniques and adjust them to your type
of business.
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When you rob someone’s app
ideas or source code you will end up with nothing except loss. Do not blindly
copy app ideas!
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For example, let’s look at the cheap Chinese copy of
iPhone:
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Idea: Blindly copied
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It has no unique idea below the surface. Materials are cheap, software is awful, and, moreover, such copies won’t work for a long time. Yes they cost around $150-200, but they work no longer than 6 months maximum. If you don’t believe me then go and watch some customers’ reviews, but stay away from reviews filmed by resellers of such trash. Do not even think to buy it.
And here is another example of China phones. The core idea of these devices embraces all successful techniques and approaches which were adjusted to reach one goal: “Create beautiful and balanced Android smartphone with affordable price”. They did it. http://en.meizu.com/
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| Idea: Properly adjusted, redesigned and completed with own vision |
They spent time and balanced the work of hardware and
software, they fully redesigned Android UI, and created fully adjustable
launcher, they designed unique UX, and launched their own App Store with
themes, and Android apps. Lots of engineers work every day to make their
smartphones outstanding. They produce smartphones which Samsung unfortunately
has never made.
You will recognize all elements from Google Nexus,
Samsung and iOS, but they were copied, refactored and completed with OWN VISION
properly.
This is the way you should choose for your business
app.
Since we are talking about mobile apps for business then
we must understand that you are going to build apps with the purpose, and this
purpose is improving your KPIs instead of building cheap copies of popular apps.
Moreover, mobile apps are your employees, so you
should think carefully what they are going to do for your company by working 24/7.
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Mobile apps are your
employees, so you should think carefully what they are going to do for your
company by working 24/7.
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When you deal with programmers and visual designers
you should know that these guys love details. You should provide as many
details as you can. Programmers feel happy when they have clear and detailed
tasks. E.g. “Build me a 3-bedroom house.” or “Build me a house according to
this blueprint.” Do you feel the difference between these two similar tasks?
Blueprint is your way to get exactly what you want!
A blueprint of your app is the expertise of UX
designers, but even these guys need details from you and your clients. In the
beginning of development process UX designers convert your ideas and wishes in
blueprints of your app (clickable prototypes and specs).
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A blueprint of your app is
the expertise of UX designers, but even these guys need details from you and
your clients.
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Looks like you need to do a lot of work, but don’t
worry we will handle these problem together, and I will show you the shortcuts.
A Few Words About NDA and Third-Party Developers
Every mobile app development company which is
specialized in IT outsourcing services will readily sign non-disclosure agreement
or other document before any negotiations take place. These companies see a lot
of great ideas every month, and chances that they may take your source code and
build their own project similar to your app is very low. The main reason is
that their business is to implement others ideas, not stealing them. They
prefer to have constant flow of orders instead of trying to amaze the world
with own ideas, and after that trying to sell it.
3 Steps to Quality Custom Mobile Apps
#1 What Can You Do for UX Design
I know that you are not a designer - you are
entrepreneur! You are busy guy, but I believe that you want to invest your
money wisely, so next I will explain a few tricks that will help you to start
moving towards your awesome business apps.
First of all, you should gather your employees who
directly work with your clients on a brief meeting. If possible, prepare
these reports/data and go through these steps:
1. How the
current product is being used. If you don’t have a product then think about
to spy on your competitors (gather some information about their services).
Spy tools (for web apps): http://builtwith.com/ (to check technologies that one’s website is using), http://www.seoprofiler.com/ (to analyze your competitors SEO strategy and promote
your service in the future), and http://www.statmyweb.com/ (to check approximate users flow). You are not supposed
to use only these tools, so Google others.
For web & mobile apps: go to your competitors’
forums and talk to people. You will find a lot of info about why they love a
certain product and what they hate about it.
2. Track some
usability issues of your product. Why people click on buttons, drop a
process of filling of certain forms etc. Talk to a small group of your users.
Tools:
3. [MANDATORY] The main purpose of your company / service
(make general assumption).
e.g. "IvZ Solutions specializes in mobile
application development for business" or "We Design & Develop Effective
iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for Business".
4. [MANDATORY] Write quick review of an app idea (make
general assumption). Briefly describe what you expect your app to do.
e.g., We believe that our mobile app will help our
users to shoot great videos and photos of their trainings, upload them to our website,
and invite their coaches to analyze & comment on their training progress.
5. [MANDATORY] Pick
a certain metric that you want to improve (the main purpose / goal of your application). For instance, you want to increase a number of free subscribers
to your service. If you already have a lot of free users then you may want to
transfer them to paid subscription. Do not mix these two goals for the first
product iteration.
6. Describe
your clients (users), or create proto-personas
It is important to know your customers and this
knowledge is crucial when you create an app for them. I believe that you know
for whom you are going to develop an app, don’t you?
If you cannot provide your developer with information
about your clients then imagination will give you a hand. You will create
proto-personas — models of your clients (users) who would use your app. Just
define a users’ age and create at least one proto-persona. If you have
different user roles in your app then think to create proto-persona for each of
them. Input as much information about your potential user as you can.
EXAMPLE OF PROTO-PERSONA:
Users age: 25-30
John
25 years old
NYC
IT Project Manager
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Behavioral info:
Has a girlfriend;
Working in a big IT outsourcing company;
Lots of friends;
Teaches Yoga on weekends;
Optimist;
Realizes the value of time;
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Pain points and needs:
He is overloaded with projects, so he have to re-read different
project specs to renew in his brain information about a certain project,
before his will be ready to give developers any new tasks.
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Possible solutions (IT’S OPTIONAL
FOR YOU):
We should give him the opportunity to read texts at the speed of
minimum 300 wpm.
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Despite all these steps you still need to hire a UX
designer to create detailed blueprint of your app’s functionality.
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Remember that you should
provide app developers with all data which covers your future app. No guesses.
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#2 What Can You Do for Visual Design
At this step you can provide a mobile app development
company with your style guide or site standards.
If you do not have them then provide app developers
with colors and fonts which you would like to see in your app. All colors must be provided in RGBA or #HEX
formats.
You should also provide your app developers with
samples of apps that you like, because it will also help them to understand
your needs better.
#3 Common Questions Before Ordering Mobile Apps
Here are the additional and mandatory questions which
will help you to communicate better with your app developers:
1. What platform should be your app on - iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone?
2. What type of interface (design) do you want your
app to have? Will it have custom design or standard one?
3. Do you want to add new content on the regular basis
or your app should be static (it will have built-in content)? Content means set
of images, texts, videos etc.
4. Do you want to create accounts in your app or just
log in forms should be added? Will your users have their own profiles?
5. Do you want to allow social media sharing in your
app? Will your app users share information from your app through their Facebook
and Twitter accounts?
6. Will your users rate or review things?
7. Will your app use in-app payments? Are you going to
accept credit cards in your app?
8. Does it need to connect to back-end database? Will
your app need to be integrated with your website?
9. Will your app need to sync data across devices?
10. What cell phone's features (hardware) will it use?
Camera, GPS, accelerometer, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or other features?
11. Does your app require 3D graphics?
12. At what state is your project at? Is it an idea, a
prototype or you app is already in development process?
13. What is the budget for your app?
Thanks @jboogie for great
example of proto-persona tables.
Every professional software development company must provide you with a free simple wireframe or prototype, so we also do it. CLAIM YOUR FREE PROTOTYPE HERE!
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