All you need to know to create your mobile application

Half of website traffic currently comes from mobile, a trend that is growing every day and is expected to continue.

Developing a mobile application is becoming essential to meet the needs of users, who increasingly prefer this medium to access brand content, services and products. Having your favorite brand in your pocket is now a habit.

Your mobile application must offer the best possible user experience : optimized display with limited screen size, smooth navigation, features adapted to Smartphones such as M-payment, etc.

The creation of a mobile application is not only an advantage for the users, it is also an interesting investment for the companies, whether they are multinationals, SMEs, SMIs or freelancers .

The development of mobile applications is now simplified by technologies, such as no-code or low-code platforms which allow you to create your application without additional technical resources.

The question is no longer whether or not you should develop a mobile application, but how to make this project a reality . The creation of an application must be a carefully considered project, whatever the solution chosen for its development.

In this article, discover all the concepts you need to know before, during and after creating a mobile application. You will thus have all the keys in hand to create a powerful application that meets your needs (UX, Analytics, etc.).

The context of the application launch

Questions to ask yourself before you start

It is essential to frame your project to steer it in the right direction. This thought stage upstream of development may seem long and tedious, but when it is fully completed, it saves considerable time for the rest of the project .

It saves you from mistakes, adjustments along the way, extended deadlines or budget overruns.

With no-code / low-code solutions , the development and modifications of the mobile application are faster, and allow you to optimize your mobile application as you go.

The upstream framing can consist of a market study answering the following questions (objectives, target, choice of functionalities, etc.).

The advantages of a mobile application

The applications have a multitude of advantages and so many reasons to want to take the plunge. They allow you for example to:

Strengthen the brand image and your notoriety;

Engage and retain the target differently;

To increase the sales ;

Improve the customer experience by using native phone features such as facial recognition, geolocation or Push or In-App notifications;

Offer an additional business channel;

Complete your multichannel strategy (in addition to your website);

We can also cite another important advantage: better understanding user behavior . You will obtain useful statistics to better understand the priorities of your audience, personalize the relationship and respond to them in a relevant way.

You will thus obtain decisive insights to make adequate decisions allowing you to significantly impact your conversion rate.

It is of course necessary and mandatory that this user information be collected in compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). This implies in particular that users:

Give their consent for the collection of their personal information.

Know exactly when, why and how their data is being collected.

Have the right to access, modify and delete their data, in a simple and transparent manner.

You must also agree to take all necessary measures to protect this data and notify users in the event of a security breach.

The objectives to define for your application

Why do you want to create a mobile application? The answer to this simple question is decisive in framing your project. Clearly state your objective (s):

Facilitate access to ranges of products or services;

Increase awareness, improve brand image;

Increase turnover;

Improve the consumer experience, build customer loyalty;

Offer practical functionalities (for example facial recognition for cosmetic retail);

Strengthen your multichannel strategy;

Obtain an additional business channel;

Develop internal company tools to accelerate or automate processes.

To define your goal, you can rely on the SMART method, i.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound . This method usually used in marketing is also very useful in project management.

It will help you to specify your objectives in an operational way in order to ensure their feasibility. You can then integrate these objectives into the development of your application .

This reflection will result in the choice of functionalities, the development priority or the data to be monitored.

Key performance indicators

Define the KPIs to follow to measure the performance of your mobile application. There are a very large number of them, for example: