In the past 3 years, our crew helped more than 30 startups to launch their first app.
While doing so, we noticed that most of them do the same mistakes. Young startups often lose 6 months and dozen of thousands of dollars by not knowing where to start and how to create their roadmap.
Launching an app is no rocket science. By following a few simple steps, you can make sure you avoid the most critical product mistakes that make many projects fail. Buckle up!
Step 1: Challenge your idea
You probably got the idea of your app from your knowledge of a specific industry or from your own needs. You hinted this app will solve a problem for many people or companies that will then become your user base.
It’s very important that you start by checking if this assumption is true. Do it before designing anything. Do it before writing a line of code (or paying someone to do it). Nothing worse than discovering you have spent 1 year developing an app nobody wants to pay for.
It’s actually pretty simple to do. Write down your idea, do some black and white hand-drawing of what the app could look like and go see people of your targeted user base. If your app is for restaurants, go talk to 10 restaurant owners to understand if your solution really tackle their problems. If it’s for teenagers, go outside of a high school at 4pm and check what they think of it.
This step will make you adjust the product to the real problem your target has, or define a better target for what you had in mind.
Step 2: Simplify to the core
Most successful apps began with only one feature working perfectly instead of 5 features working badly. Snapchat launched with only ephemeral pictures, without filters, chat or stories.
Simplify your app to its core by using your experience of Step 1. Remove everything except the one feature that people seemed really interested about.
By having a really simple app with only one feature, you’ll be able to iterate fast on it and discover quickly how to make it better. You’ll cut 80% of useless development. And communication around a simple concept is way easier too!
Step 3: Build a Prototype
It’s time to prototype your app. At this step, you’ll need to design both the onboarding (experience of the first 2 minutes inside the app) and core feature of your app.
We recommend that you use Sketch or Figma for this, but keep it simple: no logos, colors or over-detailed elements. If you lack product skills, you can hire a UX designer or Product specialist to do it.
Gather these screens in Invision to create an interactive experience people will be able to test.
Step 4: Test with users
Find 4 people among your targeted audience to test the app, 1 hour per person. Facebook groups are a good way to recruit them (offer $20 Amazon gift cards).
Make them go from discovering what the app is about to using the core feature for the first time. You’ll need a Product person here as well, or you can learn how to do it by yourself with this book.
The main goal is to spot misunderstandings. Note each time a user struggles to understand what the screen is about, where to tap or why it would make sense for him/her to do a certain action. You can film the test to rewatch some parts.
Step 5: Make a new Prototype
Identify the 5 problems users struggled the most with during the tests. Rework you prototype accordingly. Schedule a new testing session to see if your changes made your app easier to understand.
We recommend you repeat this as long as there are major misunderstandings. On average, we do this step 3 times before launching a product.
Don’t code anything in the meantime. Don’t spend time on branding or graphic design either. At this stage, you still might discover things that will make you change your app dramatically and this would make you lose all your work. Or worse, you’ll be reluctant to do the needed changes as you already invested time and money, and your app will be doomed.
Step 6: Design missing screens
Now that you’re sure that your product is well understood by your users, you’ll need to design the few screens that are missing for the launch. Stick to the core feature and add only what is necessary: settings, profile, sign up, log in.
Gather all your flows in an architecture map like this:
You can now launch branding and code.
Step 7: Add a branding layer
Find a great UI (user interface) and branding freelancer or agency.
Make them create the overall feeling of the app: logo, colors, fonts, buttons… Ask them to add this feeling to your black & white screens.
Step 8: Code the app
At the same time, your CTO or development agency/freelancer can begin to work on the code. Backend development comes first so you don’t really need the UI to start.
As you already tested your app with user research and prototyping and have a precise architecture map, you will escape a lot of costly back and forth during this phase. Yay!
Step 9: Setup your analytics
Metrics are key to understand if your app works and to take good decisions. Implement Amplitude or Mixpanel to be able to track them. Track your main feature and your onboarding experience.
Step 10: Launch!
Forget the idea of a big launch with a huge marketing campaign.
Spending money in advertising is useless without good retention metrics as most users will leave the app after a few days.
Launch using only word of mouth at first. Your first users are a way to create an effective feedback loop that you’ll use to boost your app’s metrics.
There are 3 ways to do this:
- Send emails to your users asking for a Net Promoter Score.
Hi I’m Max, cofounder of X. Thanks for using our app :) On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend it to one of your friends?
2. Call a dozen users per week, mostly in two categories: the ones who sticked to your app and the ones who quit early.
3. Keep on organizing usability tests (Step 4).
Step 11: Track your Metrics
Now that you have a few users, metrics begin to make sense.
You should track actively:
- Activation: Percentage of users using your main feature at least once.
- MAU Growth: Growth rate of the Monthly Active Users, the users who open the app during the month.
- Retention: Percentage of users coming back after 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months and 6 months.
4. Virality (k-factor): Average amount of users who download the app after being invited by an existing user.
5. ARPU: Average revenue per user, amount of total purchases by a user within the first month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months.
Step 11: Optimize for your Leading Metric
Find a type of user behavior correlated with activation, retention, virality and monetization rates at the same time.
If the user has this behavior, he will stay longer in the app, spend more money…
This will be your Leading Metric.
Some good examples:
- Facebook: Percentage of users adding 7 friends in their first 10 days.
- Twitter: Percentage of users following more than 30 accounts.
Make your app evolve quickly to optimize for that metric by repeating Step 3 and Step 4.
Spend less time worrying about the launch date and the marketing around it. Make your Product evolve as often as possible, and stay deeply connected to your users to stay in the right direction. Your app will change a lot, but will go faster and faster towards success. Let’s go!
If you need help with Step 2 to Step 10, you can hire experienced Product people of our crew. Contact us at hello@mozza.io and we’ll get back to you shortly!
Thank you for reading this article! Clap if it was useful to you so other people can see it too ❤️
Maxime Braud is one of Mozza’s cofounders and UX designers.
Thanks to Adrien Montcoudiol and Lucas Didier. Pics by Space X.
