Things you might not think about when planning your app

December is a busy time for in the apps world. A lot of businesses are finalising their app plans and reaching out to app developers for advice and quotes.

There are a few areas that are commonly overlooked by people new to developing consumer apps. Some of these can be quite critical because they affect everything that happens next.

If you're about to get your app plans moving, don’t forget to ask yourself these important questions:

Star Rating

What star rating are you shooting for out of the gate? A high star rating is more costly and time-consuming to obtain. However, it will increase downloads and improve brand reputation. Can you get away with three stars, or does it have to be four stars or more?

Product Analytics

What customer behaviours will you measure? For example, do you need to know how many people drop out during registration? Or how popular a particular feature is? Push Will you use push messages? These are good for retention and win-back campaigns. This is important because most apps lose over 50% of their customers on day one.

Customer Demographics

Who are your customers, and what phones do they own? Some apps get 70% of their revenue from people on tiny, cheap phones that they only upgrade every two years. So you have to design for them.

Cross Platform

Does your tech team care if you build native Swift and Kotlin apps, or will Flutter or React Native do the job?

Devices

What variety of devices does your target audience use? More devices mean more design and quality assurance spending.

Security

Is your app handling payments or sensitive data? Will you need to plan a PEN test? And do you want your developers to work to security standards such as OWASP?

Roadmap

What features or bells and whistles can you cut? Developing an app can take more time than you’d hope, so it’s helpful to know what you can aggressively cut for your first release, just in case.

The good news is that most of these questions can be answered in minutes rather than hours or days.

Some are super important and aren't reversible, so give these questions enough thought to ensure you set off in the right direction. Post in the comments below, and sign up for the Pocketworks newsletter for regular mobile tips.