Biggest Challenges Faced by Mobile App Developers

Quokka Labs
10 min readMar 7, 2022

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Mobile app development challenges

In recent years, the mobile app world has seen significant hype. Most entrepreneurs have already planned their business strategies. They understand the challenges and design solutions to overcome them. Various apps are available, and developing an app that stands out from the crowd in the market is necessary.

Many app developers face problems while designing a perfect mobile app. Mobile App Developers’ ultimate goal is to satisfy the needs of the business with mobile-friendly apps.

However, many app developers face endless problems while designing a mobile app because business owners do not convey the needs and requirements to the app developers. In reality, many app developers face many challenges, from developing to designing mobile apps to the final launch of the product. As an app developer, you should know the most significant challenges when designing a mobile app and if you recover the challenges, you can easily focus on the mobile app development process.

Various challenges faced by mobile app developers

Eye-catchy Designs

First and foremost, most mobile app developers are confused about choosing the proper app to develop. Since there are already overcrowded apps, app developers face many challenges while designing an app. When creating a mobile app, you need to understand and narrow down the basic requirements like preparing an app, budget, and more. All app developers are under pressure to design an innovative and mobile-friendly app that helps businesses stand out from the crowd.

Developers have to understand their targeted audience’s demands properly and learn more from their competitors. To attract customers, developing interactive mobile applications is a great way. With built-in sensors, apps can become functional and interactive. There is high competition in the mobile app market because millions of apps are available in app stores.

Apps for different OS platforms

When designing an app, the operating system is the main issue that every app developer faces. Each OS has a respective set of user-Interface, so app developers need to fix the one amongst iOS, Android, and Windows that is popular right now. It is vital to understand the developers’ operating system to focus on apps. Android and iOS have different target audiences, making it essential to know the application’s platform. Usually, programmers leave this decision later, ending up with all the wrong details. It is necessary to choose and develop the objects and patterns accordingly.

The market of mobile is loaded with smartphones, tablets, and wearables. It is complex for the developers to develop applications for multiple devices as different devices have different specifications. The machines operate on various operating systems with different screen sizes and resolutions. Responsive apps offer more liquidity that can easily be adjusted to other formats and different screen sizes.

Choosing development technology

The apparent challenges app developers face are the best and right development technology. Every aspect must be adequately considered, from programming languages to frameworks, while developing a mobile app. Choosing the most innovative technology to help obtain the desired results is challenging. The market has thousands of mobile apps, so app developers are confused about designing an app. App developers have to pay attention to the competitors to create an innovative app. Mobile App Developers have to develop an app to engage more audience for the business.

Selecting a main, valuable, and appropriate development technology for an application is the primary consideration for the developers. This gives you a thought of making a native, hybrid, or cross-platform application. Developing a universal and versatile application per the customer’s need is difficult. App developers should design Hybrid, Native, or Cross-platform mobile apps. At the same time, app developers need to go with the one that helps businesses to build a loyal customer base. With the development approach, you have to consider the nature of your business and plans to decide whether to go for various development techniques or even just web-based signs in mobile app development.

Developing simple And Easy Apps

The main reason behind the app’s success is self-instructive due to this few apps are most successful, and others are not. It isn’t necessarily understandable for the users if the app functionality is understandable according to the developer’s point of view. The app’s function must be clear to the users and the developers. The users will uninstall it quickly if an app is complex and difficult to understand.

Develop a simple app structure and give brief instruction, tutorials, and demo videos.

Moreover, developers should follow the guidelines provided by the particular UI platforms. Providing a short description, education, and tutorial with the app would be helpful for the users. Also, build an easy-to-operate app that can save users’ time and make them comfortable to access.

Features of the App

Creativity and Innovation in the mobile app market have regularly been boosted with tech advancements. The first impression is the last. So, it is better to work on features from the initial stage. The developers should design the apps with user-friendly features. The developers must make high efforts to connect with the users. Apart from recognizable designs and colors with integrated logos of the brand, the app must quickly attract the user’s attention with valuable features.

It’s not about the functional elements of the application and the whole application only. Aside from recognizable designs, the application should effectively attract the user’s attention with valuable features. The apps must be designed, keeping in mind the user-friendly features.

Challenges while developing

App’s Content Management

Earlier customer is king, but nowadays, content is king. Contents engage, entertain and spin your site visitors into satisfied users. Content management of the app is overgrowing. The apps must be updated with rich content, like images, animations, videos, etc. It isn’t easy to edit such content as it consumes extensive bandwidth.

As specific technical issues arise while updating content in an existing app, releasing a new version is better. Various systems are available in the market that simplify app content management. Such a system helps in optimizing bandwidth usage and to deliver reliable content.

Getting Your App Noticed

The first important thing to target is to win the attention of users. As per users’ expectations, you have to put everything in the user’s app. The expert needs to have precise app marketing and promotion knowledge through PR & media planning and social & viral marketing. Getting noticed is the biggest challenge for apps. Competition is too high; there are cases in other organizations that have fostered a similar mobile application with better features and designs. With the most recent tech advancements, designers and developers need to create the best applications according to the latest trends.

In the last three years total of 1 million mobile apps have been submitted in Apple and Google app stores. A business needs to stand tall to flourish in its industry. There is a big difference between a successful app and a good app. There are many good apps, but successful apps remain long and generate revenue after a few months or years.

Minimizing Battery Consumption

The ideal app delivers performance and doesn’t consume too much of your device’s battery. But for some developers, creating a feature-rich product that doesn’t eat up your battery is more accessible said than done. Experts recommend testing apps through test users until developers can reduce issues that drain battery life without compromising app performance. We must ensure that the design performs well on all the available mobile devices during the initial stages, besides developing a successful app and providing a superior customer experience.

Most app developers face the challenge of ensuring world-class app performance — a perfectly running application without bugs that consume little space in the device without affecting battery life. A good-performing app can provide a good audience or customers. After you have crossed the hurdle of testing, you can have an opportunity to create an excellent mobile app. As far as the app’s performance is concerned, it differs from the designing and developing issues.

Ensuring excellent User Experience(UX)

When developing an app, making sure the user enjoys using it without faults is one of the most critical processes and crucial application development challenges faced by UX designers and programmers. This can often be difficult, as it needs to meet the best usability practices, or it won’t be used as much as competing apps having better user experience.

User experiences are one of the biggest mobile app design challenges when making an app. Ease of use and loading times are just factors that are imperative in users’ eyes for them to carry on using them; otherwise, they may go for another mobile product.

Lack of proper Resources and Platforms

Resources and platforms contribute more than anything in the app development process — the reason behind the lack of this is the more unskilled person who will bring more problems. You might have an excellent innovative app idea, but it will go in vain if not converted into commercial capital. The cost of action for an app always depends upon the nature of the app.

For some entrepreneurs or developers, monetizing the app and managing resources and finances will be challenging. If you don’t figure out a channel for investing in your app idea, you have to take the loan or joint venture your product with someone to raise funds, which causes significant issues if the app flops again. Managing your funds can be a challenging task to produce a profitable return on investment.

Security Assurance

Security issues worry developers and are yet another real challenge in mobile app development. Security can be a challenging thing that mobile app developers face. App developers need enough work to address the issues that may arise during the development process.

The application should be free from malware issues or make software or hardware disintegrate. With the cyberattack at its peak, it is vital to focus on the security protocols of mobile app development. Mobile app developers need to find all the loopholes and ensure that the application is safe and secure from any malware or viruses.

Marketing/Promoting the app

App marketing is more important than app development. In a competitive era, daily new apps come on the market with similar features, and merely a better app development is not enough for the competitors. Developers need to focus on app marketing and promotions too. Developers can take the help of experts to promote the app. Developers don’t care about marketing the app because of the difficulties while taking it to the market.

However, it would help not forget that a successful app combines 90% marketing and 10% development. It will help if you go for the right tools and platforms to assist you in marketing. This is challenging for mobile developers at a completely different level and requires business savvy to succeed. One can develop an app with an excellent interface, graphics, and functionality, but they will not get the investment returns if they don’t do better marketing. Another commonly faced challenge for building a mobile application is money. It is essential to have a pre idea of the overall cost associated with your mobile app. It is not a single time investment. Apps sure need money for any future value addition and updates.

Marketing and promoting the apps is a significant challenge the developers face after developing the app. An app becomes successful if both marketing and efforts are marked. As per data, only 5% of development efforts and 95% of marketing are required for app development. The right tools selection by developers for marketing the mobile apps in the best possible ways. Many app marketing tools and agencies are available for selling the apps, such as MobileDevHQ, Applause, Smore, etc.

Strive for Customer Reviews & User Experience

Developers need to design a user-friendly app to make the app more visible. Developers should look at their competitor’s app and reviews that give them away to create something unique. Also, focus on minor issues immediately and resolve the user’s query. While developing applications, always keep one thing in mind, you are making it for your users, not yourself. It is good to know all the in & out related to your mobile app.

Your customers should never find any difficulty navigating your app. Don’t make your app complicated. It may lead to negative customer reviews. It can easily affect the number of downloads and also active users. To overcome this, we can include helpful resources in app stores, including videos, images, and doc files, to help your users. Always use icons and thumbnails, which can help you to improve the user experience.

The easier it is, the greater the understanding will be. Every user wants a fast and correct solution as they aren’t willing to spend more time.

It is also one of the most challenging things. However, it can easily be solved by simply making it convenient and thinking from the user’s perspective, and review of the app regularly.

Wrapping Up

Just as the world is not tiny, the same in the case of mobile apps, you have plenty of things to choose from before starting. Remember, any business needs to begin on the right foot to be top in any industry. There are various frameworks and platforms to select by developers. Sometimes, it is difficult for developers to choose the correct option. It would be best if you were sure about your developmental approach and set development timelines right from the beginning.

With the ever-changing technology landscape, mobile app development is getting tough for app developers to keep up with the market trends. Exceeding the challenges with innovative technological insight and a flexible skillset gives app developers a robust competitive edge to create a vast app user base. They must uncover the obstacles to be successful in the competitive market. There are boundless opportunities available to build a better user experience for the mobile app. The end-user app will be more successful if you overcome all the advanced developmental sprints. If you find any of the challenges in your app development project, our Ql experts can help you overcome them.

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Quokka Labs

Quokka Labs is a Web/Mobile App Development Company in India. Founded by a team of Technology enthusiasts, our goal is to create digital products of the highest