How to plan an app that meets business goals and what mistakes should be avoided

Let's agree that any digital asset, an application is just an example, should be planned and built based on a business need. In the following article, we are going to show you how to avoid common mistakes when designing an app and how to create an app that will meet your company business goals.   

Mistakes to avoid - what NOT to do

Below you can find a number of mistakes we collect to make sure you're avoiding these when planning, designing, developing and launching a digital product like a mobile application.

• Developing an app without validating the business problem you want to solve - I'm sure you're deploying an application to production for answering your target audience needs, also for meeting one or more of your business goals, that's why you and your team should plan the problems you want to solve when your target audience is at the center.
• Too many features - plan your MVP (most valuable product), choose your core business features, separate your product to stages and steps. Why? Because if you include all of the required features for day one - the development process can take years.
• Lack of feedback along the way - one of the most severe problems when developing a digital product like mobile application in these days is not asking your users and stakeholders about their experience and how they act with the application.
• Design for yourself and not for your users - it's very essential that you would like the user experience and interface of the app you create, but more important than that is to have your users happy with the finalized design. Think about what they would love, what features could assist them and less for you as a business owner.
• Going live without a launch plan - your application is ready, all the critical bugs were solved, and now you want to launch your product to the target audience, without having a detailed plan to go live, you can find yourself disappointed when facing that no one is using the app after you worked so hard.

   

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Solutions - how to manage the process successfully

So, we understood what no to do, here below you can find a list of solutions that may assist you with managing and operating the app planning and development processes, together with going live successfully.

• Find your main target audience problem - you have a unique idea, now let's validate it with the market. How? By writing down all of your market problems, and how your product going to solve it. Prepare a list of business goals that will assist you to understand the business profitability and uniqueness.
• Be focused with the app features - the next step after understanding the business goals & the market problems is to decide what are the most critical components which the app can't work without these; you should ask yourself: without these features - will the app solve the main problem of the market? the same problem I started this process from? You should include only the main features your app will answer the market problems.
• Get feedback in a short time - it can be every development sprint (once a 2 weeks), or every MVP which is released, the main target here is to ask your users, your potential clients what they are thinking about your product, about the last features you've released, without having this knowledge you can keep develop and develop and your product and features won't answer your market needs. Prepare a list of questions you would like to get data on, write all the answers you get, learn the conclusions and improve your product in the next session of development.
• Design for your users - so you have now the following: business goals, customers pains, list of core features, and a list of feedbacks from customers - it's the time to design or to redesign your product based on the conclusions and goals you provided to the product. Be sensitive to what your users need at the design stage, keep your ego on the side and design your product for your users so that they will bring you economic profits.
• Come prepared for the launch event, create a launch plan - this plan should include: target audience (be specific - ages, locations, etc.), channels (like Facebook, Google, etc.), time to launch (on Sunday at 8 AM), mitigations for the moment something will go wrong and more.

 

Get feedback - ask your users, your potential clients what they are thinking about your product, about the last features you've released

 

Conclustions

We covered the common mistakes business owners usually do when developing an application without having the knowledge about their market needs, we also covered the solutions that should be managed by a business owner when having an idea. The most important thing is to be connected to the users, listen to their needs, developing a product and features that will answer their needs.