Last Updated on May 21, 2018 by Jessica Adams
Building an app for your business can be really beneficial to your brand. You’ll get the benefit of more exposure, a wider audience and higher engagement with your brand. Here are the steps you need to follow to create your first successful app for your business in a week.
How to Make Your First
Successful App In a Week
Set a Goal and Plan Your Idea
The first step to making an app for your business is to decide exactly what your app will be….and why. Yes, your “why” is just as important as the app idea itself because it will literally drive the application’s creation through all phases. Think about the goals you have to achieve when making your app. Then you can start to sketch out how you want the app to look and function. Functionality, of course, isn’t the easiest thing to draw unless you’re an artist or techie. Just try your best to conceptualize exactly what you think your feelings about the app would look like. This might take more than a few tries but eventually, you will have a solid idea that you love and you can move onto the next phase.
Do Your Research
Building an app is no easy task. You are going to need to do plenty of research and learn loads of new things, just to understand the process of it all. Ask yourself, “how can (I) make the best possible application for (my) customers?” Perhaps researching the steps that other famous application designers and engineers took to complete their first apps, will inspire you on a similar path? Think about your app idea, is it a good one? Has anyone already done the same thing? There are thousands upon thousands of apps available online, so what will make yours stand out? When you figure out that thing that your app has above all the rest, you must figure out how to showcase it to others, to drum up interest and eventually, funding.
Wireframe
A wireframe is a skeletal three-dimensional storyboard model in which only lines and vertices are represented, created in the planning stages of your application. “An image or set of images which displays the functional elements of a website or page, typically used for planning a site’s structure and functionality” says the actual definition of the term. You essentially take your sketch idea and input it here to give you more focus and clarity when designing your application. The Wireframe is a crucial part of the app building process so make sure that you don’t take this part for granted.
The Back End
Once you have your wireframe to hand, you will want to start thinking of the functionality of your application. For example, you will need to think about the APIs and data diagrams, as well as your servers which the app will be hosted on. This is the technical part of the process and can be made much simpler with a website such as Kinvey. Kinvey delivers high impact user experience across all channels and is the industry leading app development platform. Since I am not personally “back end” tech savvy (although pretty decent on the front-end, such as using the WordPress dashboard), hearing about a company that help with this task specifically, is a no-brainer!
Gain Feedback
Now that you have started to build the foundation of your application you can start showing the app to your family and your friends to see what they think of it. You are looking for constructive criticism here which will help you to make the app better for your audience. You can also hire a one-time, paid focus group to use your app and give you honest feedback. They’ll probably be able to find any bugs you may be worried about too!
Build It
Once you have all the information you need you can start to build your app online with a website such as Bizness Apps, the number app builder for small businesses. You will be able to get the back end of the app built first and then start to work on the front end yourself. If you’re not 100% comfortable with building the front end, you always outsource that part as well. You’ll have your Research and Wireframe which are the foundation of the entire app-building process.
Time to Design
It is now the right time to create your user interface for the app. You will want to create an interface that focuses in keeping with your brand style and is also attractive for users to see as they scroll through and use your application. You’re going for an intuitive design with the end user’s experience in mind. This would be a good time to hire out a graphic designer to help you with the process but only if you really need one. Both Kinvey and Bizness Apps offer UX design features and functionality.
Test & Adjust
Start by testing the way your app works in the prototype stage and see if there are any major issues clouding the functionality of the application. If there are some issues, you can spend time adjusting your application to work better. And this is exactly what this time is for. Unless you’re under contract to meet a required deadline, you’re in no major hurry. You want to get all of those bugs fixed NOW. 
Because we’ve all been there before. We try out an app that has issues on Day 1 and the next thing you know, we’re leaving a bad review in the iTunes Store or on Google Play.
The developer is always clamering to respond with “we’re fixing the bugs now, please be patient!” (then begging that person for another review once the bugs have been dealt with). Just get them all over and done with before you launch. No one is waiting impatiently for your app to appear out of nowhere but once it appears, the general public (who, let’s face it, can be really mean!) will know about it and talk about it. Once they start talking, their opinions about your app are out there in the ether for everyone to see.
Beta Test & Release!
Once you are happy with your application you can move away from the prototype area and go into beta testing. It is important to know that mobile app testing helps improve app store ratings so it’s always worth doing as much testing as you can with your application. It’s like buying a car. Would you want to buy the car that had been factory testing for accident safety features five times or just once. That’s what I thought!
Finally, you can release your application onto the App Store, start promoting it and make those hard-earned sales!
Have you ever considered developing an app for your business? Did this info help aid your decision to perhaps, give it a try? Look into the sources linked on this page to help get you started. It’s a lot of fun and will open up a lot of new doors for your business and your career as a whole. What are some ideas you have for an app? Please let us know in the comments section below!
Jessica Rose Adams
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