Creating your own app can seem like an intimidating process, but it doesn’t have to be. With these nine steps, you’ll have a functional app in no time! In fact, each of these steps can take just 30 minutes to complete—with the exception of researching and finalizing your idea, which should really take up most of your time. By following this quick guide on how to create an app, you can have yourself an app without investing too much time or money into the project!
Before you start building your app, it’s important to understand how you want people to interact with it. You can build a game or a utility, or something else entirely—whatever you choose, be prepared for a learning curve if you haven’t coded before. Many designers create multiple wireframes and mockups before moving forward with their app-building project.
Getting your users right is one of, if not, the most important things in designing an app. It may seem obvious that you need to be clear on what kinds of people you’re creating an app for—but it’s crucial that you understand why those people will use your app, how they think and how they interact with their smartphones (i.e., What features do they use and when? What apps are part of their daily routine?
First, define what problems you’re solving. How is your app going to make someone’s life easier? What time-saving benefits will they get from using it? For example, if you’re creating a recipe app, you might look at existing apps and think of ways they can be improved.
Whether you’re building a mobile app or creating a website, you need a concept—and in today’s design-centric world, that means thinking visually. The best way to translate your idea into something real is with an old-fashioned paper and pencil. Sketching out your app or site in rough form will help you sort out functionality and potential issues down the road—all without writing one line of code.
If you’re looking to create an app, a useful first step is designing how your users will interact with it. At its most basic, that process involves mapping out user journeys—the path a user takes through your app—and creating wireframes of each screen.
Once you’ve found a developer and created your app concept, it’s time for development. A typical app takes somewhere between three and six months to build—and that’s an optimistic estimate. The project timeline can depend on multiple factors: how many features your app requires, whether or not it uses augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR), if you need marketing materials like videos, etc. In general, there are a few key stages of development
Before you put in a lot of time, effort, and money into your app, it’s essential that you spend a few minutes or hours in beta testing. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is—if it isn’t user-friendly, people won’t use it! It takes very little time to build a prototype (we did ours in 24 hours) and another short stint for friends and family members to try it out. Collect their feedback (what works?
When you create your app, you’ll want to test it before deploying it. Feedback from users will help improve your app—so take advantage of it. Keep tweaking and modifying until your app is as good as it can be—and then deploy it with confidence! Just make sure you’re working on an updated version of your app; never release a second iteration of an older app.
Before you can launch, you’ll need a few pieces of information—and, luckily, they’re easy to find. You’ll want a valid government-issued ID (for Apple), your bank account information, and your Social Security number. If you already have a business banking account in place (and if not, set one up now) then your financial information will be ready to go.
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