You’d be thrilled to know that users downloaded a whopping 204 Billion apps in 2019. Do you think each of these apps will become Unicorns or successful at the least? If you examine the statistics a new app in the market has a 0.01 % chance of succeeding. In other words, only 1 out of the 10, 000 launched apps will receive their desired success and recognition.

There is a process to everything, even app creation. Important questions like what problems your users are facing, who they are, how will this product serve them in making their lives better and the likes can help you design a product that is desired by the users.

Let’s dive deep into understanding the 5 prominent reasons that are responsible for app failure and what you can do differently in order to gain traction from users from your very first launch.

Top 5 App Development Gimmicks to Build a Successful App:

1. Choosing a Suitable Platform:

The platform you choose for launching your business app is of utmost importance. If you’re someone who doesn’t have a great budget then creating an app for too many platforms can prove to be counter-productive for you. App development is a costly-affair even for a single platform.

An app with basic features for a single platform can cost around 10, 000 USD. The development rate is also dependent on the region you choose for app development. For example, the above-mentioned rate is if you choose any country in Asia for your app creation. The same app for the same platform can cost way more if build in the US or other European Countries.

The simplest way to go about app development is by choosing the platform first. You must decide if you want to go with Native or Cross-Platform app development. You must make note that Native apps are costlier to build and time-consuming. Cross-platforms apps are more budget-friendly and invite shorter development time in comparison.

User Feedback is another effective way of deciding the platforms you want to build your app for. You can start by building an app for a single platform, observe the customer feedback, and when you gain confidence over your app’s success on one platform (Android, iOS, or Windows) then you can plan development for other platforms.

2. Offering Relevant Features:

Let’s understand this through an example. There was an app named ‘Vine’ that allowed users to make 6-second clips and share with others. It was different from what Tik-Tok, Instagram, or Boomerang offered.

The app was founded in 2012, which allowed users to shoot and send an unlimited number of looped, and short videos that had a maximum length of 6-seconds. The app was a huge success and by 2013 it became the fastest growing mobile app in the world.

Vine helped many regular users become internet celebrities and attracted a lot of movie stars, actors, singers, and the likes. But what happened then? Why did Vine lose its customer base? Ankur Thakkar, Vine’s head of editorial, accepted that the company failed to roll out new updates, features, and lost user engagement due to these reasons.

It’s extremely necessary to keep an eye on your competition, study the current trends, and offer updates with relevant features. This is the only thing that helps you add on to the user experience by adapting to new market trends.

If you research, you’ll find that many such apps with potential have lost their way moving forward. Hence, you must reinvent current app features and updates consciously to retain and increase your number of users.

3. Imitating Your Competitors Completely:

There are so many unsuccessful apps that one can learn from. You don’t know about them, only because they didn’t succeed. Often people think that “Uber eats worked – let us copy them, it’s the perfect path to success”. But this is just not a good enough reason to create an app.

A Gartner study showed that in the year 2018, the commercial success rate of apps was about 0.01%. Looking at this number you can imagine how competitive the app market is. It’s very important to have an app idea that is an actual problem and you’re trying to provide a solution for the same. You should have a niche that is facing that problem and your app would ease their lives with its functionalities.

You must switch your focus to designing an enriching experience through your features, intuitive user interface, color schemes, seamless user flow, and many other app-related functionalities.

You must ask yourself questions like – How will my app create a unique value for my niche? Would my app make their lives better? Your sole focus should be on making an app that becomes a trendsetter worth copying.

4. Improper Research:

Let’s take another example, ‘Hailo’, a British cab-hailing service that hits the markets in 2011. A service that promoted only licensed, taxi drivers. Hailo had to leave the North American market a year later. What was the reason?

Hailo’s business model focused on working with professional cab drivers, similar to the Black Cabs in London. They did a great business in their native market and wanted to spread the same magic with Yellow Cabs in New York City. They acquired new markets by 2013 and generated 100 million USD in funding in the US.

The CEO of Gett, Shahar Waiser, explained that the cab-hailing system in New York is way different than the UK. As there is such wide availability of Yellow Cabs, there is practically no need for an app. If you observe the statistics, then Hailo faced an 80% rejection on yellow cabs as the users at the same time easily caught another yellow taxi.

And this wasn’t the only issue, Hailo also had various technical problems. The application showed technical problems in connecting the yellow cabs with the platform along with other issues in the payment system.

5. Underestimating the Importance of UI/UX Design:

Any screen you deal with is an exchange of experience with the user interface designed by the development team. The feeling you get while using any particular app accounts for the user experience that you draw.

If you look at the UI/UX design from a pure user perspective, it is the only thing that represents all your hard work and innovation in form of features that you’ve inculcated, the user flow you’ve designed, and the experience that a user receives while finding what they’re looking for. You must understand the gravity of how important this area of development is.

To most of the outsiders, UI/UX design is just limited to the look and feel of the app. Sure, they’re an evident part of the design section but there is plenty more to it. To seek inspiration you can try the Apple created time converting app named ‘Miranda’.

The app functions quite simply by allowing one to know times in different time zones that they can use to set meetings. So, if you are currently in the US and you want to organize meetings with your clients in India, the UK, and Germany then Miranda is the app you should try.

The app’s design is intuitive, as it places a giant wheel at one side of the screen, displays your current time zone at the top, and your client’s time and date in a list below. As you turn the wheel, you’ll see all the time zones changing simultaneously. Such a simple yet cool way to view time at different time zones, isn’t it? So, the UI/UX you design will directly be accountable for the screen time that a user offers your app.

Current App Development Process:

Nowadays the app development sector is booming, people are turning their business digital and promoting their brands online.

Nowadays, excessive use of technology and dependency on it has made every individual very precise to use an app particularly if it adds any value to their perspective and in their lives.

Developing an On-demand with customization helps in reducing the efforts of the On-demand mobile app development companies as well as it increases the credibility of the users to use such a particular app.

You need to be precise for choosing a perfect company to develop your app idea.

Author Bio:- Mr. Sanjay Rajpurohit has always been a venturer. An engineer who became an early aged entrepreneur. He shares his time between his Mobile App Development and other ventures named Technource, Eminent Academy, and Tuitment and is still exploring the world of software technologies.