What I learned From My First Mobile App Failure

Want to develop a mobile application? It’s a common story that one saw a dream at midnight and jot down ideas on the paper to make the best out of it. Later on this dream pings in the mind and encourage to give a shape of application. This is the story of almost every app owner and same goes with me. In this post, I am going to recites what I learned from my first mobile app failure.

It is always fascinating to formulate dream idea into the mobile apps, no matter how the process goes and which tools we use. According to my personal experience, most of the newbie app owners are excited to launch their mobile application loaded with huge features.

My story starts with a couple of years before while I have a winsome idea. I am pretty much sure about the success of the application. On the day of app launching, literally, I was feeling like steve jobs launching new iPhone and everybody gonna waiting in the queue. I was lost in the thought and supposed to have a viral app with vast downloads.

In the real scenario, My application only receives 5 app downloads in a couple of months and guess what, 3 out of 5 downloads from my close friends also they give fake reviews too. So in concise, my first application not just stumbles on the app store actually, it was totally rejected by the audience.

What I Learned From My First Mobile App Failure

Excitement Kills Reality

Creating the first app brings excitement, it’s like driving with a broken GPS. You can continue driving faster only to get to the wrong destination sooner. So before I start racing, I decided to first upgrade my GPS. That simply means having a great app idea doesn’t make sense, you should make a proper plan about creating a mobile application.

I learned that having a winsome idea never profitable, all you have to do is research well. Research about idea capability, business requirement, competition on market and above all research about numbers of apps with the same ideas. A popular app always based on the idea of resolving issues and fresh approach.

If your dream idea was already taken in the shape of the app then try to improve or add more values. If there is tough competition in the market then keep the focus on the basics and offer something unique. Try to find problems around you, and create an app for resolving any issues.

Creating A Masterpiece Is Not Cool

Being a newbie app owner, I was so excited to create a bloated application so I add many features and plugins, no matter whether they were necessary or not. As a result, my application stumbles for slow performance and it turned into a large app. One more disadvantage is the increment in developing time, while you are attempting to make a perfect app by adding dozens of features.

Everyone has a desire to craft a masterpiece design, therefore, adding most features in one design for newbie app owner is quite normal. Most of the app fails due to their large size, app size with below 10 MB get more downloads on app store compared to heavy size app.

So try to eliminate unwanted & unusual features and launch the app with only vital features. You can add more features in the updated version of the application. This method reduces development time and cost, also it ensures that your idea never behind the time.

Fancy Design Never Trending

Design is the first impression in the application, thus, it should be well crafted and design carefully. The most common mistakes while developing application for the first time is going with fancy design. Newbie app owner always wants to use many design patterns as much as they can, same goes with my story.

While everything on the internet is free and easily available, i.e. theme, design pattern, plugins, and so on. Therefore, these free templates encourage app owner to create an application by own. It causes bad design because of adding too much jargon in one design. Keep your design free from unwanted templates and bulky designs that are free.

Offering many features in one app design and crafting a fancy design never profitable. As we all are acquainted with most of the popular apps have a simple design with easy to use UI. Try to make your design as simple as you can, remove all unusual graphics from design. Users love to glued with a simple and classic design.

Identify The Right Audience

Creating any dream project without proper planning is something like shooting in the dark night. Before starting the app creation, first, you have to ask yourself, why you gonna create this tiny app, purpose, vision, and above all relevant users. Identifying the relevant users always helps in curate the lovable feature in the mobile application.

Usually, popular apps always designed according to their target audience. That’s why they got attention from the early stage because of need, they are willing to resolve the issues which are audience facing. So try to identify whom you’re serving in future and jot down their need.

If the application crafted according to the users, that simply means it’s gonna be a popular application for generating productive and profitable revenues. Try to include additional features in the app according to audience needs and requirements.

ASO Is Oxygen

If your application stumbles on the App Store, ASO is the oxygen to save it. ASO is an acronym for App Store Optimization, it is kind of SEO for application. Search engine optimization is a popular term for every digital nomad, it used for the elevate any website ranking on the Search engine (Google, Yahoo or Bing), similar to ASO.

While launching my first application, I was not acquainted about ASO (hopefully, I knew) that’s why the app doesn’t get attention because not ranked on the top. It is the most underrating method of a marketing application.

According to my personal experience, All newbie app owner should learn the basics of ASO and strives to implement in the best way. I am sharing several basics of app store optimization. (trust me it works)

  • Put a catchy Keyword in the Title.
  • Add keywords in the Description.
  • Use attractive & appealing screenshots.
  • Insert informative Video in the screenshots.
  • Use the App Store analytic for audience behavior.
  • Encourage and insisting for positive reviews to users.
  • Try to create a brand identity design (Icon, Color).

Final Thought

Since this post reciting my own experience, it was like pens down past experience in a proper way. By writing this post, I don’t want every newbie app owner or developer making the same mistakes that I faced. If one of you did the same mistakes then you have to go back to square one.

Being a member of a leading mobile app development company USA, I can admit that popular apps always have great app development partner on the back side. So you should not diversify your dream application too much, but rather keep your eyes on the ball. Try to design simple as much you can.

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