Top 5 Most Common Mistakes That App Developers Make

1.Developing for Too Many Platforms

Android,iOS,Windows: Where should my app go? While any app developer will find themselves forced to confront this question, often they fail to comprehensively dissect each option at their disposal.

Android and iOS hold a majority of the market share. Today, Google Play has over 2.8 million apps while Apple comes in second with 2.2 million apps.

Often most developers attempt to develop for both of these major platforms at once — others even try to include the Microsoft Store in the mix. It’s an understandable dilemma; ideally, we want our app available on every platform at the same time. However, from a development standpoint, doing everything at once is often a mistake.

While iOS may be extremely popular in the U.S., Android reigns supreme globality, often in much larger margins than in the U.S. So if you intend on publishing your app in multiple countries, consider Android over iOS. When you make any platform decision, make sure you’re thinking of every possibility and alternative. If you fail to do so, you may run the risk of severely limiting your audience.

Also, consider choosing one of the major platforms first, based on your target audience’s mobile device usage, and then roll out your app to the other platforms a few months after the initial release. By doing so, you will not only save time and money, but you will also avoid major issues with your app during development and at release.

2. Building an application for “everything”

You may be tempted to develop an application that solves dozens of problems at once.Being a software developer, you may want to build an application that performs dozens of functions. You may want to build an one that’s an alternative for other applications. It may sound like a good idea ,have one application that is able to do everything you need — but the problem is that the more complex our program is, the higher the percentage of app errors we get, especially if you try to deploy all functions at once.

Try not to build a Swiss army knife-type application, especially if your app development experience is not that big. Keep your application simple, especially if you’re trying to build the minimum viable product or MVP. However, it does not mean that your app should have only one feature. You need to find the balance between the number of features your app will have with your programming experience. In other words, make sure your ideas correspond to your programming abilities.

3. Absence of Marketing

However the main job of a developer is building app but unfortunately your job does end here. Releasing your app or game on relevant app store is not enough because the app is not going to sell itself. You need to market the app and advertise it to your target audience.Promotion is a very important stage.

If you do not tell people about your application, then nobody will know about it. If you are not lucky enough to have a separate marketing team then you need to invest in ads.

So, you need a marketing strategy. Many niche blogs, where you can promote your software, are available. Again, you need to understand who the potential users of your application are.

The next step is to determine what websites they visit and where you can promote your software. Another great option is to give a free copy of your application to an editor of a popular blog.

Your website is, of course, an option to inform people about your software. Keep it up to date and post news regularly. However, the website will not attract many visitors in the beginning. Some time is necessary to make your application popular. Describing your application and focus on advantages. Try to inform your website visitors when your software can be useful. It is always good to tell people what functions you are going to add. The great majority of Android apps display ads to make profits. Some of them even display ads of other apps. AdMob is the official advertising platform from Google that can help you with that. It also helps you understand the traffic and performance of your application.

You can buy ads from other apps so they would present your app inside their own. However, this strategy is not for everyone because of the cost involved. Social media like Facebook, Twitter and others are a great way to promote your app so thousands of people can discover it. The best thing about social media is you can use it for free.

Another good example of application promotion is customer stories. It demonstrates how users solve different problems and achieve certain goals with the help of your application. The best case is an article, when a well-known studio mentions your application.

4.Avoid beta testing

Beta testing is an important stage and here you want to get as much information as you can from users of your application. The main thing you should understand is that you create an application for someone else and users of your software should not be confused by its user interface.

Let people try your application out and get as much feedback as you can. Feedback will guide you and tell you what users of your application expect from it. In addition, beta testing is a great way to test your application on different hardware and OS setups, which is key to understanding if your software works correctly.

Use app-analytics tools such as Flurry ,Google’s Universal Analytics,Firebase analytics to see how your testers are using the app. The more people you can have beta test your app outside your own office, the more prepared you’ll be to send your app out into the real world.

5. Not releasing updates

Developers should consider their application as something that’s not perfect; as something that always requires improvements to make it better. It is hard to create a perfect application that will work flawlessly without any errors and have all functions that a user needs. But it is important to understand what users of your application expect from it.

Regular releasing better updates also increase user interaction and more available users.So,try to update current version in a regular basis is the best practice in app market.