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5 Mobile App Development Pitfalls You Can Avoid

Navigate the mobile app development journey smoothly by avoiding these five common pitfalls. Learn how to steer clear of challenges and achieve success.

Developing a mobile app is a complex process. Especially if you want to get it right and come away with an app that both achieves its goal and satisfies your audience, the process can be daunting. Fortunately, you can successfully navigate it by following a set framework, and learning from the mistakes of others. To help you successfully build software that will delight your audience, here are 5 mobile app development pitfalls you should avoid.

1) Choosing the Wrong Partner

Above all, you need to make sure that everyone you work with on this project works toward the same goal, and has the skills and expertise necessary to succeed. When creating a mobile app, that means finding a development partner that has worked on a project like yours many times in the past, providing the necessary experience and expertise to guide it along its way.

Choosing the wrong partner, on the other hand, can doom your mobile app. In fact, many of the pitfalls we discuss below are direct or indirect results of a mobile app developer misreading expectations, or leading you down the wrong development path.

2) Unrealistic Expectations

If you expect to create the best mobile app ever made and gain millions of users in the first day, you’re bound to be disappointed. Unrealistic expectations will doom your project, because the actual app will have no chance to live up to them. Before you know it, you’re working on the 10th revision simply because the app fails to live up to what you thought it should be.

Going into the project, be sure to set your expectations clearly and discuss them with your app development team. Know exactly what your app should achieve, and whether that goal is actually realistic. When you develop a mobile app from scratch, don’t be afraid to limit the initial scope and push less essential features into future updates.

3) Blowing the Budget

Chances are that you don’t go into app development with an unlimited budget. But what happens if you make it halfway through the project, only to find out that the money has run out to finance the finishing touches or testing?

For app developers, that’s a nightmare scenario. You cannot roll out an unfinished or untested app, which may actually harm your brand more than help – so running out of money midway through the project either means spending budget you don’t have, or never being able to use the app. To avoid this pitfall, make sure your developer knows your budget and has a coherent plan on how to stay within it, even if unexpected issues arise in the course of development.

4) Lack of Testing

The previous point hints at another problem you may run into: if you’re not careful, you may not test your app thoroughly enough before rolling it out. That, in turn, could have devastating consequences. Without user testing, you will not know if everything works as intended, and could be inundated with bug reports and problems once you go live.

A lack of testing is usually caused by a timeline that is too tight to be realistic. To avoid this, set expectations with your developer, and work with a partner who subscribes to the agile development methodology in which testing is not the final step, but happens continuously throughout the project.

5) An Uncoordinated Roll-out

Finally, even a finished app can be unsuccessful if you are not effective in rolling it out. If your audience never knows that the app exists, what it can do for them, or how it works, even the most beautiful and beneficial piece of software will not have been worth your resources.

Many companies make this mistake by not considering the roll-out until the app is actually finished. Instead, you should sit down with your marketing team and development partner early in the development process to discuss the best possible ways to share your new app with your target audience.

Further reading: 8 Issues in Software Development and How to Tackle Them

Are you looking to develop an app, but are afraid of the potential pitfalls? If so, talking to a developer can help alleviate your worries, and guide you through the process with confidence. Contact us today to get started!

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