The recent rise in smartphone usage has resulted in a massive shift in the mobile app landscape. Even though mobile apps have been around for nearly a decade, their use, both online and offline, has increased significantly due to an increase in the number of people using smartphones. The market potential is huge and the competition is fierce, which leads to high development costs and resources; therefore, mobile app developers need to craft solutions to overcome those challenges by creating innovative ideas. For every entrepreneur or startup, mobile app development is the first step in taking their business to its maximum height. There are many challenges that you may face while building your mobile application.
In this article, I will cover some of the common challenges and how you can overcome them by using new technologies and ways of thinking about developing your app. But before talking about the challenges of mobile app development and its solution, we should know the importance of developing the mobile app.
What Makes Mobile App Design & Development Such a Priority?
To make your design a success, the user experience must be out of the world and exceptional. You can only make the end-user experience phenomenal by putting your efforts into the visuals of the design and user interface. With great app design and professional development, you can draw the attention of a large crowd toward your app. An attractive and functional design can also help you in building customer loyalty and recognition of your app along with establishing your app strategy.
In short, a poor or unattractive design can harm your retention rate, smash your conversion rate, and can lead you to rejection. And since mobile app development makes it convenient for customers to stay interacted, keep connected, provide essential details and information, and more, it is crucial to retain the customers and develop an attractive and smoothly functioning mobile app.
Key Points that define its essentiality to business:
Have a wider reach to the potential audience
Seamless accessibility
Encourages brand loyalty and brand recognition
Increased conversion rate
Improves retail experience
Easier feedback & Marketing
Challenges in Mobile App Development and Ways to Overcome Them
The digital world is growing continuingly with the development of new technologies. The mobile ecosystem has gradually expanded as more and more people are adopting it. The excessive usage and traffic towards mobile usage swamp the tech and mobile app development companies in a race of producing a unique, innovative, and reliable mobile app. Most businesses are gradually transferring to digital gadgets and mobile apps. Mobile app development is a field of software engineering that helps to develop customized applications for mobile devices. Software developers use the platforms and tools like iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc. to develop custom applications and android apps.
This escalated competition among companies of producing better mobile app development has made this task more challenging and daunting. In today's market, with companies competing on the same level, getting a competitive advantage has become difficult. Many businesses go through a series of complex challenges before developing a responsive, user-friendly mobile application. These challenges include lack of expertise, struggling with the development process, and lastly, poor design decisions which have made life difficult for developers who are facing difficulties while designing apps for both iPhone and Android Apps. Let’s look into the challenges of mobile app development and delineates effective solution for it.
Issue: Design & Device Compatibility
One of the most known facts of all time is that everyone has dozen of applications on their mobile phones. The study also stands this fact, as an average person has 80+ mobile applications downloaded on their mobile phones. The design or device incompatibility causes flaws in the app and user experience and it ultimately provides bad outcomes. Launching a mobile app without doing a compatibility test will never play to your advantage.
Solution
Must use compatibility tools to check the level of compatibility of the app that you are designing. To examine the implementation of your app design, you can find many compatibility tools present. Compatibility testing will certify that app will work finely with different devices. It not only ensures you the compatibility of multiple platforms and devices, but it also helps you in knowing software compatibility.
Issue: Complex and Complicated User-Interface
User-interface complications are one of the most common aspects of mobile app development. The user interface is a crucial aspect of an application for it allows your users to easily navigate through the app and perform tasks. But designing an interface is not that easy when you have to take into consideration multiple factors like screen size, design, color, and much more. However, in today’s modern world of mobile apps, interface design has become more challenging than ever. The interface has to be designed in such a way that it is visually appealing and simple for users. User-interface complications need to be identified and the functionalities of an app should be prioritized.
Solution
When it comes to the design and creation of mobile apps, you will come across a lot of exciting and challenging tasks. The best way to tackle these tasks is by making user-friendly designs that are easy to use and navigate. Users are prone to getting lost when dealing with numerous and complex feature combinations. You need to keep the interface as simple as possible while making it easy to operate and navigate.
Issue: Using Already Used Design
Taking inspiration from another’s design is one thing and copying or duplicating someone else’s design is a completely different thing. Getting inspired and trying to get to that level while developing the design is acceptable and appreciable too, but completely copying some other mobile app design considers negative. Making a duplicate app that mirrors some other mobile application can bring hindrance in your design growth and success.
Solution
You can look into people’s portfolios and look for something to reflect on or get inspired from, but losing your uniqueness by copying the design will never work well for you. Coming up with your unique design will help you much more.
Issue: No Feedback
It is crucial to understand your user’s needs and requirements. Researching the user market will help you understand the user and help you design the most effective UX design. Without a user application test, you will never get an idea of the success and importance of market research. By giving preference to your user’s design, you can alter and modify the design conveniently. To avoid any risk after the launch of your website, it is crucial to get the market test.
Solution
As you gradually get to the final design, keep getting user feedback. Taking user feedback from the initial stages will help you in implementing the design that will provide positive feedback and user experience.
Issue: Poor Time Management
It is not possible to design an android app or other mobile app overnight. You will get better results if you invest your time, in planning, designing, evaluating, and other aspects of your developmental process. If you do not schedule your working process, it is most likely to happen that you will miss the timeline or design poorly. With a messy work schedule, you will end up providing a design full of problems and faults.
Solution
If you want your app to work successfully, consider making a proper timeline. You can also look for hiring a professional mobile app development service provider to get the most out of it. You need to understand that app design is a continuous process and without a proper timeline and poor management you might face huge pitfalls. It is sensible to hire an expert in this service to get successful results.
Issue: App Design & App Development
Designers and developers typically work in isolation from one another because of the challenges of the display. Often when you transition your website to the mobile app, you face some issues regarding display and design. When developing a mobile application, it's important to consider the needs of both mobile users and application developers. Designers should have up-to-date knowledge of design trends to ensure that their applications' designs stand out from the crowd. With the rise of mobile devices, more manufacturers and vendors are creating apps to appeal to users. Developers who create a mobile applications often underestimate the importance of design and development workflows. While designers can provide insight throughout the process, the value of the project increases if developers understand their role in the creation.
Solution
To build an app, you need to be able to work collaboratively with designers, developers, and other team members. Unfortunately, this process can create a lot of friction—and there will be some unexpected challenges along the way. You must learn how to bridge communication gaps as they arise. To avoid unnecessary problems, it’s a wise move to maintain regular meetings between team members. You can use these meetings to discuss common problems or issues which come up in app development so that once you discover a bug or mistake during testing, you can fix it before the release date.
Issue: Improper UI & UX Designs
To provide a seamless user experience, the user interface has to be in sync with the user experience. This means that your app’s design elements should create a coherent, holistic solution that positively impacts both. Whether you have already released your app and have received user feedback, or are currently in the design phase of a new app, you must consider both the user interface (UI) and the user experience (UX).
Solution
You should work on both user experience and user interface equally. Both elements hold much importance in the success of mobile app development.