A Guide To Keeping Your App Shiny And Relevant

So you are a business person who's planning to launch development of an app for whatever business purpose. Sure you want success, you'll struggle for it, and you want your app to be perfect, bug-free, shiny, relevant. But there are things that always work against your success. Half-baked marketing, for example, counts - but it comes a bit later. What comes first is expressing your ideas in the correct way - not only understandable for your development team, but suitable for the market, which is none the less important.

But do you know what's suitable for the market? Can you predict what your future users really would like to see in it? You think of several features, you roughly understand how your software is supposed to work, but you cannot be sure that all this will remain unchanged. You cannot be sure that another new iOS or Android version won't require readjustments of design or rebuilding of features due to new APIs. And of course, you cannot be sure that your own business conditions won't change, trends and needs of your own clients/users won't change. Because they do change. Everything is constantly changing.

In the worst cases these changes mean a failed app that got clumsily rebuilt, yet still it remained irrelevant, uninteresting and not viable on the market. Simply put, a loss of time and waste of money. And if you have a bare idea, the risks increase. Is it all that hopeless? Well, not - with the correct approach.


How Can You Gather Ideas In A Viable Product?


What do you start with, when you have an idea? Let's take for granted that you chose a good team of professional developers who will create your product - sure you wouldn't wish for someone incompetent. So you come to them, show them your sketches and list of planned features, a deadline of 3-4 weeks, and say that you need a demo to show to friends, investors, etc. The team creates a product, and you show it and receive positive feedback. Then you come up with new features, gather suggestions, go back to the team only to find out that new features will technically contradict with the existing product. Will you need to spend more budget on constant rebuilding? Is it possible to gather ideas with minimal losses?

It's possible, but you should remember that you cannot predict everything from the start. You cannot predict the development of mobile market and technology, the behavior of your users, all in all, you cannot foresee emergence of competitors with better products - and when they appear, you'll need to make your own product better than theirs.

There will be changes in your requirements. Sooner or later the requirements will not satisfy you, your users, the market in general. It's possible to prevent technical contradictions by implementing superflexibility, but it will increase time required for building the product, and as a result, costs. What's more, you might eventually not need it, or even have to rid of it.


These risks are usually handled through agile development approach - you don't perform excessive operations, don't spend excessive budgets - you simply implement features iteration by iteration, release the product, listen to feedback, make the product better, over and over again. We believe it's the best way to gather your ideas in a viable software product.



Everything Can't Be Perfect, But It's Possible To Come Close


The only case in which you don't have to choose agile and be safe with traditional waterfall model, is the case when your market is extremely stable, and you definitely know that this feature and that feature will be needed in the future, and your developers will lay the basis for defined upgrades. And the perfect picture for them is the code that doesn't have to be rewritten during upgrades, but rather the code that's simply added.

But it's a perfect picture that doesn't exist in the modern world. Yes, developers aspire for perfection. Yes, you try to consider everything, and you may believe you thought of everything. But it's impossible to reach even for the best developers and best business people in the world. Beforehand can be hit and miss. What's more, no popular app has been this way - everyone had to start with modest success, even Instagram. And everyone had to apply efforts and tirelessly make the app better and better. It's a continuous process - and you'll have to monetize your efforts to cover the costs.


How Will You Monetize Your Product?


Rarely is it possible to roll out an app with definite monetization, except for games with in-app purchases. With other apps it's more complicated. Very often software owners roll out their products just to share with the world, and only then gather feedback and realize that they can build a monetization channel, and people are ready and willing to pay for what they'd love to see.

Or it may be a separate version of the app, for example, paid extended functionality for corporate users. One more way is making a little free app with ads - the revenues from ads will either cover the development and support costs, or in the best case the owner will earn money on such apps. Meanwhile users will be happy - win-win. Whatever is the way you monetize, the purpose is to make your users happy with the app.


The Secret Of Keeping Your App Shiny And Relevant


Find the balance between initial flexibility and the real need; between thinking beforehand and reacting to sudden changes.

It's hard, but you are not alone. You deal with professional developers, and if you have a certain degree of trust, you can start discussing your ideas from the very beginning, and do it together. Each situation requires a discussion, and none of your suggestions will be treated as 'odd' by your professional development team. You simply use the expertise of your team and share your ideas on the early stages.

That's how your ideas evolve into a concrete product with defined purposes and audience. Experience of your team is another part of this simple secret. They use it to implement certain level of flexibility, since most of the apps are rather standard - users create, retrieve, edit, send, delete data. Rarely do ideas involve such uncommon areas as augmented reality. Much has been done before, and your developers can make suggestions, partially predicting users' needs, wishes and behaviors - through experience.


What's more, the experience of your developers, combined with your ideas, will show the best technologies for implementation and further maintenance, choice of best suitable tools. Use the experience and 'agility' of your team to the full, go iterationally, gather precious feedback, and update - that's the secret of keeping your app always relevant, fresh, and interesting for users, who love updates and love to feel that they are taken care of.

See more:
5 Don'ts For A Successful App Owner
Why A Good Specification Is Important For A Software Project
A Guide To Fueling Up Your Project