As you browse the app stores, you might marvel at the sheer volume of mobile apps (roughly 5.6 million, according to recent estimates). Yet, there’s a prevailing notion that building an app is somehow out of reach – that your organization or company needs a skilled faction of coders and development experts to pull off the gargantuan task. Ask yourself a simple question: if millions of others did it, why can’t you?

Yes, building a winning app is challenging. It’s even more challenging to compete viably with the crowds of competitive apps on the market. But as long as you have fully-fleshed ideas, the right development strategy, and the determination to promote and perfect your vision, you can do it.

Let’s boil the process down to its essential steps.

Ideation and Brainstorming: Just Your Business, a Notebook, and Some Ambition

The first step requires no actual coding. It involves your business’ best thinkers, a notebook or digital document, and the willingness to create something magical. Here’s the basic structure of the ideation/brainstorming process:

Concept: This is your big idea. It may be an extension of your existing company, a new activation, or a separate entity. In any case, you’ll want to describe your concept in detail.

Target Audience: Who is this app for? What do they like? What are their preferences, spending habits, tech fluency levels, objectives, etc?

Value proposition: Determine what sets your concept apart from competitors, and the unique value you can deliver in the marketplace.

The Look: This is the fun “back of the napkin drawing” part, where you can fiddle with mock-ups, wireframe sketches, MVPs (minimum viable products), and more.

Development Options: A No-Code App Building Platform or Custom App Development

Next, you have a big decision to make: Do you hire a custom app development team to create your product from the ground up, or do you create it with an app-building platform? There are merits to each option.

A quality no-code option, like the app building platform by The App Labb, is a turnkey, inexpensive way to get a great product up and running. Great app builders have intuitive design features that enable you to configure an app with relatively little experience, and the resulting product should be widely customizable.

Custom app development, on the other hand, gives you that extra level of control. It costs more, but you get what you pay for in an engaging, feature-laden product entirely personalized to your business needs and target audience.

There’s no right or wrong answer. Click the link above to evaluate the options in detail.

Spreading the Word: Marketing Your New App

Let’s assume you’ve done your market research – either as part of the ideation process or with a custom app development team. You know your target audience and where their eyeballs naturally gravitate. The next step is to market your new app in a way that makes sense for your business.

If you’re creating a retail app as a mobile arm of your brick-and-mortar business, you might advertise in-store with QR codes that lead to the app download or with exclusive in-app promotions, etc. If you’re creating an app to launch a novel digital service, consider marketing your app through channels like social media, targeted banner ads, and – later – mobile app retargeting for snowballing engagement. You might also reach out to relevant influencers, host a launch party, write a press release, and embark on an SEO/ASO campaign (search engine/app store optimizations).

Once your app is live in the stores and running through the marketing machine, you can almost sit back and enjoy the ride. A continually successful app requires vigilant updating, optimizing, and fixing to remain competitive – but that’s a topic for another article.

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