5 common mistakes made in Mobile Application Development

With the invention of smartphones, mobile apps have simplified life of people largely. This has led to mobile apps industry emerging as the most lucrative one among all. Especially with a neck-to-neck competition between iOS and Android, you get to see new apps arriving on the scene daily. Both play stores account for more than 1 million apps each. In such a scenario, companies fight out each other to create apps firsthand than others. In such a case, it is evident to see lot of common unseen mistakes taking place.Have you ever thought why some apps are just better than others are even though they are a lot similar in terms of application? It is because some apps are just perfect in terms of functionalities and features, while others are trapped by common mistakes. This differentiates the successful apps from the unsuccessful ones. After having a hands-on experience with both types of apps, I am listing down the common mistakes for you to avoid in your future projects.

1. Is the app meeting user expectations?Attracting new visitors to your app each day is not an easy task. There is a different set of expectations associated with every single user. As the famous saying goes “first impression is the last impression”, the first interaction of an app with the visitor is the most important stage that should be taken utmost care of. Many users expect a welcome message followed by an app manual, while others go for a kill to figure out things on their own. To reach preferences of every single user is an almost impossible task, and because of that, most of them miss early visitors with a poor homepage screen.Users should not be made to fill long registration forms without letting them know how the app will be useful to them. It is an extremely bad idea to keep long registration forms in the beginning with splash screens that are animated as well as various different elements blocking the relevant content. Get routine sign in / sign up procedure in place asking for just name and email address. Also, try to integrate social media login so that users can login directly through their social media profiles.

2. Is the app displaying a systematic logical flow?

Show your users an organized logical path to follow to get the information out that is relevant. Random screens appearing from nowhere will not just confuse users but also let them abandon the app from in-between without accessing any further. Users be guided in such a way that every single step seems to be important for them to fulfill, in order to extract the exact piece of information.

3. Is your app having visual clues to help users?

An image always helps in better understanding rather than plain text. Hence, it becomes even more prominent to incorporate visual clues within your app. However, it is not necessary that visual clues cannot go wrong or they are always perfect. Even visual clues have a tendency to look poor or not as per individual user perceptions. In such a scenario, the designer has to be more careful in providing generic appearance that goes with the expectations of all. Hence, let us look at a few design principles that can be helpful in tackling this problem:

• Go with the conventional forms of design rather than ones that look unique and impressive. The reason being simple. Most people do not like a mobile app undergoing significant changes. In fact, they are happier to use the traditional form instead.

• Regions and cultures influence metaphors. Using it in your app can help users emotionally connect with the app quite easily. However, not all metaphors be understood right away. Therefore, an extensive research needs to be done for shortlisting metaphors that can be easily grasped by anyone.

• There should be text accompanied with the visual clues. Many people can understand text in a much better way than graphics. Describing an action instead of placing an icon, works like wonder for most to interpret things with a great amount of ease. Nevertheless, since most others prefer graphics to text, it is preferable to use both in parallel complementing each other.

4. Is your app focusing on niche features rather than information overloading?

Novice developers often tend to fill in too many features rather than concentrating on few and getting expertise on those selected few. However in reality, successful apps tend to have less features, but they do quite well in those limited features. It is always advisable to focus on a few top-notch features instead of installing too many mediocre features that are not even much useful to the users. Reducing unnecessary functionalities and tasks will uplift your app drastically.

5. Is your app making use of intuitive icons or interactive graphical elements?

• The standard components for graphical representation or even icons have not come up within a day or two. They have come into existence gradually with every passing year backed by extensive testing. Since they have now become a global identity, ignoring them could be a big mistake. Users would like to see only those icons or elements that they are familiar with and with whom they can interact. With unseen components, they are bound to put more energy to comprehend things that they are not interested to do. Just as learning new language do not make a lot of sense, in a similar manner trying to interpret unconventional app language do not make sense.

Summing up…With plenty of opportunities in mobile application development, you can capitalize and gain access to your own market, given if you avoid the above common unseen mistakes. If you are experiencing any kind of problems with your mobile app development, please let us know so that we can help you out.