8 Mistakes to Avoid While Developing a Mobile App Share: itjet Date Published 20 April 2023 Categories Blog, Guide, Tutorial Reading Time 9-Minute Read What mistakes should business owners avoid when building a mobile app for their business? Here are 8 common mistakes you need to avoid to make your idea successful. Getting a mobile app for your business undoubtedly opens new horizons and opportunities. However, before starting the app development process, you must consider all the pros and cons and ensure your business needs a mobile application to achieve its main business goals and objectives. Having a mobile app brings many benefits to your business and can help you stand out in the market and attract more clients. But to avoid unpleasant consequences, like loss of time and money, unrealistic expectations, and unsatisfied customers, make sure you aren’t going to make the mistakes described below. Main mistakes that are often made during the process of app development Our team of developers shared some common mistakes and how to solve the problems that may appear during the development process: Absence of clear business objectives No research Skipping the MVP stage Not testing the app properly Misunderstanding who your audience is Poor design Too much functionality Not properly securing sensitive user data and transactions Let’s dive deeper into each point and see how to solve these problems or prevent their appearance. 1. Absence of clear business objectives What are your business objectives? Why do you need a mobile app for your business? What pains of your customers will it alleviate? How is the app supposed to benefit your business? If you answer these 4 basic questions, it will help you form your app vision. You’ll see why you need an app. You’ll also understand what problems your app is supposed to solve and what type of app it should be. A SMART goal-setting tool and a SWOT analysis can come in handy here. You can define the right direction by following the SMART goal-setting method, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals. And conducting a SWOT analysis may help understand your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Moreover, we recommend reading the book “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr. At itjet, we follow these principles as well, so we recommend this book to help you create OKRs, collect up-to-date data to track progress and measure what matters. So when it comes to numbers, you’ll easily see what you want to accomplish and what steps are required for this. 2. No research If your motto is “the faster, the better,” put it aside while developing a mobile app. Since to avoid crucial mistakes in the future, proper research, and deep and well-considered actions are a must. And without doing proper research, it’s impossible to understand what apps already exist, what features they have, what users like and hate there, what features your app will need, what market demands are now, and what app to choose. In addition, after your product is ready, it is much more difficult and expensive to choose some features or change the main idea. So it’s much better (and cost-effective) to investigate this before the development stage. In case you are still determining what tech stack may be an appropriate option for you, you can always ask our team of developers. They’ll recommend what tech stack is a match for you. 3. Skipping the MVP stage Though any big success always starts with a fantastic idea, lots of cool ideas fail to become a reality due to being too comprehensive from the beginning: trying to do everything at once results in finishing very little of the initial plan. And in tech product development, this has led to a concept named MVP — Minimal Viable Product. Which is the first version of the product, representing its core idea. An MVP should keep the perfect balance between the efforts spent and the amount of outcome/feedback you may receive from your target audience. An MVP usually contains only core features of the product, excluding some general features which do not relate to the core idea. That’s why creating a proper feature scope for the MVP is the most challenging part of the development process. However, if done right, it may lead to a great result. MVP stages of development help you validate your idea among target clients and/or investors, making it a fantastic basis for full-fledged product development later. That’s why an MVP is so significant when creating something “big.” 4. Not testing the app properly and on multiple devices & platforms before the release Poor testing of a mobile app can lead to several problems, including: bugs and glitches (that can make the app difficult or impossible to use); security vulnerabilities (which can make the app vulnerable to hacking or data breaches); incompatibility with different devices and operating systems, resulting in a poor user experience; poor performance, such as slow loading or massive battery usage; and negative reviews and low ratings on app stores (which can make it difficult for the app to succeed). In addition to these technical issues, poor testing can also lead to financial losses for the app developer or publisher. Overall, poor testing can result in a poor user experience and damage the reputation of the app and its developers. And it can also lead to financial losses. 5. Misunderstanding who your audience is Who are you going to make your app for? Who will be your customers, your users? What do they need? Though answers to these questions may seem obvious, pay enough attention to this step, as creating a mobile app and offering it to the wrong audience may lead to a huge failure. That’s why it’s vital to know your audience and their needs and expectations. Here are 7 proven ways to know your audience, offered by HubSpot. And in addition, another widespread mistake many business owners make is trying to guess or predict the feedback & behavior of their target audience instead of having direct contact or monitoring processes (feedback forms, beta-testing stages, analytics, app ratings, etc.). Even if you think your idea is super cool and you are 100% sure it will be successful, such an approach is more about a gamble than a prediction and a real business strategy. 6. Poor design Poor design can lead to app failure for a variety of reasons. One reason is that poor design can make the app difficult to navigate and use, discouraging users from continuing to use the app. Additionally, poor design can also make the app look unprofessional, which can negatively impact the user’s perception of the app and the company behind it. In addition to the reasons previously mentioned, design can not meet the needs or expectations of the target audience. This can happen if the design doesn’t consider the user’s goals, habits, and preferences or doesn’t align with the company’s brand or style. And if the design is cluttered, overwhelming, or confusing, it can cause users to feel frustrated or stressed. This negatively impacts the user’s experience and can become the reason why users abandon the app and seek out alternative options. Our tip: sometimes you can use pre-built solutions & templates when this is appropriate for the project instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Additionally, poor design can also negatively impact app discoverability and visibility in app stores. If the app’s design does not stand out and grab the user’s attention, it may not be as successful in attracting new users. 7. Too much functionality Rich app functionality with miscellaneous functions and buttons may bring both benefits and troubles. On the one hand, this is how you can offer users a wide variety of services. On the other hand, implementing all of them may require too much time and effort (and maintaining the app after release is also a point to consider here!). And also, too many buttons and features may confuse users. They may distract users or make them confused about what to do here (especially if there is no guidance or instructions on what to click here and there). If this happens, they can start thinking about finding an alternative where they won’t need to spend many minutes figuring out what to click. So, set priorities and highlight the main functions of your app, conduct user research, and ask your potential users what they think is redundant and what is “a must”. And only after taking into account your customers’ opinion, development cost, the time needed for implementation of each function, and maintenance cost after the release, make the final conclusion on what to do and what may (or even must) be skipped. 8. Not properly securing sensitive user data and transactions Properly securing sensitive user data and transactions is more than just important when developing a mobile app. And this is a point to pay attention to from the beginning. Because not properly securing sensitive user data and transactions can lead to data breaches, loss of user trust, and potential legal and financial consequences. Sensitive information such as personal information, financial information, and login credentials must be protected using secure protocols and encryption methods to prevent unauthorized access and ensure the integrity of the data. Additionally, implementing proper security measures can help prevent fraud and other malicious activities and help maintain the reputation of the app and the company behind it. Summing up Making such mistakes can become disruptive and cause troubles such as poor user experience, dissatisfaction with how the app works, bugs and low performance, loss of clients, and data security troubles. To avoid them, talk to development experts, conduct user research and test your app extensively before launch. This article was originally published on the itjet blog.