How to Create, Host and Manage Mobile Apps for Your Business
App Creation for the business or any other type of organization is a great way to earn revenue and make money. In this article, we will be talking about how mobile apps can be used to increase your sales, engage with customers, grow brand awareness, attract new clients, improve workflow management, support customer service and much more.
App Development Process!
App creation involves creating an application using HTML5 as programming language and CSS3 as its framework, then building it using various tools like Xcode, Java script, etc. Once you have created and launched an app on iOS or Android, it’s time for testing and publishing in the Google Play Store or Apple App store for both iPhone and iPad users. However, one needs to pay full app pricing to get access to all features available in an App. There are many ways to do that, but here I will discuss some approaches and strategies for small businesses. I think most of you already knew everything about how to create and launch their own applications, so let me fill in the details. Let’s proceed!
1) Build A Template
Creating this kind of application takes very less time and effort than writing code; which means that developers are free to write their custom code. So, one just need to select a template from there and start developing. This can be either a simple or complex application. One can choose between two different frameworks i.e React or Angular. When it comes to web applications, almost every platform has its own version of these technologies. So, when you build only one, it is easy for anyone to find your project, or if you have a bigger one, your competitors can see it too, and also, if you want to look at them it is easier than doing it yourself. It takes lots of effort because now the developer needs to keep updating it from time to time, which is not good for most small projects. That’s why it is better to develop several apps and deploy them separately instead of releasing them together. Nowadays, there are multiple types of software to help with the same functionality. Here my pick, which is completely made by myself. If you want to know more about what I did during the app creation, please read my next article on that.
2) Know As Little As Possible About The Platform
Before creating a new app, one should consider the system one wants to use for its functioning. Sometimes small businesses don’t have enough resources to pay even the required services and they cannot support all the features. Also, the developer may have no idea about the system how to use. So, it is best to select the right product for your requirements. My example app for a small company was developed in NodeJS and Express.js. But, sometimes, one will be unable to support one specific feature and they don’t know how it can be done. Even though the product owner knows little about the app, he doesn’t want to share the product and its features with anybody else because people might notice his poor knowledge of the technology and get angry because of the ignorance. Also, in case of emergency, you might lose the data you uploaded, so choose wisely. So, before choosing any platform and programming language one should know about all platforms and their capabilities.
3) Keep Your Time Limit
We mostly forget things about deadlines. We are busy with our day and cannot focus on anything. Most of us try to avoid tasks and activities, so by the end of the day, we have nothing to show for it and nobody wants to work hard because we are tired of working. So, to stay motivated one should always check out our daily priorities and keep the time limit for each activity. Make sure that things are progressing only on the time limit. Not only this but make sure that all tasks and actions are com Focus On User Experience pleted only in the given period, otherwise the deadline will be missed. So, always remember to check up and ensure only on time.
4) Focus On User Experience
Users can be satisfied by the quality of the UI design. An amazing interface makes people more happy. Try to get the most important thing that you need to cover. You can choose between three options while deciding whether or not to use Cordova, Flutter, or NativeScript if you want to build something by yourself or hire someone as web developer for your project. So, remember to add some basic features like camera, screen recorder, storage, timer, keyboard, navigation and others. What you have got to do is to choose those features that you can implement into your app and make sure that you follow the coding standard. After selecting the features and the coding standards, it’s time to create the first app. If your small business wants a dedicated website, you can start developing one only after adding the necessary features.
5) Don’t Stop At Making Something Simple
Small businesses don’t have the budget to spend more time writing a sophisticated UI. Instead, they prefer simplicity, consistency, and low cost. So, let me stress that simplicity is a must-have feature of any app. Moreover, smaller companies often face issues due to slow loading times for websites or huge files. So, you should be focused on making a simple interface to encourage quick traffic to your site. Every person who is coming to your page, it is an opportunity to tell him/her that it’s worth it, and if you’re successful then you can easily promote it. People will never be ready to download another app if you have a simple interface. Small companies have a lot their spare time, so try spending some of it on designing this application to grab attention of the user. They don’t need to invest lots of money, for all they need is a decent UI.
6) Pick Only Good Projects
Mostly, beginners start small projects. However, small businesses have limited budgets and resources, so it is difficult for them to bring an outstanding project, but they still need results. Remember to choose a project that fits your business’ growth in a short span of time. The size of the project should match your capacity. Also, having a big amount of project does not mean that your team can deliver it successfully. If you have a large number of people involved in the implementation of the products, you can expect the project to work better. So, focus on picking those projects. And once the project is finished, write it down and keep track of every single step you took to finish it. If you find mistakes in the steps, please correct them. Then, create new changes and update the app to fit the changing requirement of your business.
7) Use Tools To Enhance Performance
Before launching the application, you need to test its performance and make sure it runs smoothly in any hardware environment. While implementing any new features, it is necessary to have the latest versions of several apps. These may include Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and many others. It is better to search on Google for such solutions and download them for free. You can even ask your friends to give feedback on this application, so you can improve it and make changes for your business to evolve.
8). Set Up All Systems
The application can be installed on the desktop of your computer and it works on your laptop and phone too. So, let me show you how I set up the system for my organization and what I did to meet my goals.
There are four main systems I needed to install to manage our online marketing campaign: WordPress, MailChimp, Zapier, and Hubspot. Each one is used to manage the entire operation of our advertisements, and I had to install all five ones. First, I used Wordpress to build the backend of this application. Later, MailChimp helps me track the conversions, leads, comments, and contact information of leads and customers on our blog. Through plugins, I was able to make the conversion process faster, so I had to install and activate them. Next, Zapier plays a crucial role in automating and scaling the admin side of the organization, so I had to enable it and install it. Finally, I had to install Hubspot by itself and login into it. Having all systems enabled, now it’s time to setup our database for storing information about leads, clients, and promotions. Fortunately, it was not complicated. I just wrote a query, which was executed on the databases and stored the new records in a JSON file. Now, I didn’t need email lists to provide contact us with any updates for our articles. I didn’t even have to register a separate account. Just put some data into my database and it was there!
9). Deploy
To make any change, you need to deploy the app. With the deployment, everything is connected with the application. Now, when I run commands, I will see that our application in action and will respond. Additionally, the existing links for pages were updated. But the problem is that it still didn’t work in Chrome as the browser needs to run in order. Nevertheless, for Mac OSX we had to install Ruby on Rails to make it work for it, and fortunately there were lots of guides and tutorials to learn and solve the issue.
10) Connect and Share With Other Team Members
Now everything is ready for us to collaborate and share data and functions between the apps. Since I was the sole developer of this application, I didn’t share it with the rest of the team. Their apps had a different structure from mine. When I needed to update my blog and social media pages I used a subdomain, which I called "smallbusiness-blog", it was easy for me to communicate those changes and the updates without leaving each component and page URL.
It is a good practice for everyone to know the current situation and take.
