Building mobile applications can be difficult for those that might have not been in the industry since the iPhone first launched in 2007. To build and improve your mobile applications, you need to understand what consumers are looking for when shopping around for apps on their phone’s app store. Take this information into consideration when building your next mobile application.
Native Elements
The typical user of a phone will first try to get used to using the applications that first come on it like the web browser, the default text messaging app, and more. Building your application to utilize elements found in many of these apps can be a great way to bring over consumers as they might not get fed up trying to learn your application when they know that they can learn it in a breeze. Make sure that you understand all of these native elements by getting hands-on with all the mobile devices you plan on supporting and look into what native elements might be changing in future updates. Your customers will always appreciate you sticking into the bounds of knowledge in what they know about their mobile devices.
Clutter
The great thing about using a desktop computer is that you are able to have a large amount of information and functions displayed on your monitor at the same time. Mobile phones luckily have the processing power today to match many of the desktop computers we use at work and home but it’s necessary to understand the problem clutter can have on a mobile device. To understand what functions you need and what you don’t need to display on your mobile application, survey users so that you put what is necessary on the main screen while keeping other functions optional or just off to the side. In addition, make sure that you keep your UI elements to be similarly sized all throughout the application as it can give an image of uncleanliness otherwise.
Data Usage
Even as mobile devices keep improving, many consumers all around the world have issues in making sure that they keep under their monthly data limit. This means that developers need to build their applications in the mind of making sure that you can take the minimal amount of data necessary from a data network after the application is installed for it to keep working. To do this, feel free to experiment with making your initial application download contain more necessary data as consumers tend to download their applications on a wi-fi network rather than a mobile network. Additionally, consider adding optional modes in which users can remove functions from the application so that they don’t have to use so much data at a time. Understanding data usage is just another way of making sure that consumers are happy with your mobile applications.
Errors
No matter what type of device you are building applications for, users are always going to run into errors every once in a while that impacts their experience. In making sure that users don’t switch over to another app instead of just using yours, make sure that users have an easy way to understand how to fix errors. The first way to this is to build an offline database of errors into the application itself. The database you build should have enough information to explain to users why a certain error appears and how they can fix it. For other errors that might not get caught until the application has already been published to the store, create an online database of error information that directly links to the app with staff that constantly updates the information available. Understanding how errors can affect your users is important in not frustrating them.
