Okay, so you’ve embodied a bold mindset in your startup. The company has enjoyed its initial success because you have managed to maintain this approach: bold, simple, cost effective and, most of all, humble.
It’s time for you to consider taking a leap in your industry by creating a mobile app for your startup. With branded mobile-business apps in today’s marketplace to achieve recognition and customer engagement, some startups might not be able to gain a competitive edge without one.
With so much time being spent on mobile, it’s a great opportunity for startups to reach out to potential and existing customers, as well as cater to existing partners, clients, investors and other related parties on the small screen.
But how do you make it happen effectively? What is your app development strategy? How will you test user interface to ensure your app manages to get recognized and achieve a unique appeal from the crowd? How do you deal with the inevitable demand for gestures?
Startups that follow best practices for making a mobile app can successfully address most of these questions. Fortune favors the bold, if the bold gets it right; here are the steps required to develop a high quality app:
Inspire the app by consumer need.
In the startup world, businesses are still struggling to connect wireless devices to network scanners, but consumers are already discovering new ways to utilize their mobile devices to enhance nearly all aspects of their lives.
Great apps, as a result, will be inspired by needs of consumers. Snapchat and Vine are great examples of how an app should respond to real consumer need. So staying ahead of the curve requires gearing your startup’s app to fulfill a consumer need.
Opt for a UI that leaves no stone unturned.
There are a few UI elements that are ignored by most businesses creating an app. A major factor when considering UI for mobile is how elements on the screen react to user interaction. It doesn’t matter where these elements are, but just how they behave. As noted in their mobile analytics blog, Appsee mobile UI design places a premium on the role of engagement and usability in app design. They recommend approaching UI design with a minimalist philosophy and emphasizing the development of an understandable interface.
An example of user interactivity is Apple’s iOS, which is a canvas that provides opportunities to explore the optimum ways to inspire interactivity with the user. When it comes to the splash function (when an app opens on an iOS device), an image is displayed while the app is loading. Here, the ideal way to address the UI is to utilize a blank image during the load up phase, as it makes a psychological impact that the app has loaded faster. A flashy splash screen is not recommended unless you’re sure it is going to aid user experience.
Don’t forget to integrate your brand.
This might be obvious, but you want to ensure consistent design and branding in every element of your app. Select the color with care, and go with a logo rather than text in the app’s head to increase brand recognition and emphasize your startup.
When Facebook took over Instagram, for example, it kept the Instagram icon, but modified the backdrop features to its standard blue, which helped in maintaining brand recognition for both companies; you want your startup branding to be recognizable so when someone sees the logo or color of your app, they think of your business. Use all three sets of graphics; low density, medium density, and high density.
Got any additional tips? Feel free to share them in comments section.
