In an increasingly competitive app market, only the best will succeed...
As one of London’s leading app agencies with over 9 years experience in mobile solutions, we understand that clients want their end product developed as quickly as possible. However, what clients often overlook is the importance of the getting the design and user experience right, before rushing into development where changes could be very costly.
At Red C, we start every project by conducting detailed user research. This lays the foundation for creating a successful app and removes any assumptions that may have been made by us or the client. We believe that a ‘successful’ app is an app that stands by the following principles: it solves a problem efficiently, it has an outstanding intuitive design that keeps users engaged, and it is well connected.
These three principles can be determined by specific user research, interviews and surveys, to creating personal profiles and empathy maps. Conducting research means that we gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem space and can thus help you to solve the issue your app addresses in the best possible way.
In an increasingly competitive app market, only the best apps succeed. Therefore, this process is essential to every app project whether you are an established company or a startup.
This article discusses how you can implement the three key principles for a successful app project.
Focus on solving one key issue
A successful app always executes solving one problem exceptionally well. In order to do this, you must know your problem space. This involves conducting detailed research to validate your app’s purpose before any design or development begins. The research you conduct will help refine the features and functionalities that form your end product and achieve your final goal.
At Red C, we often see clients stray from their original project plan and become carried away with additional features. Additional features may make your app more exciting in the short run, however, they take away from what your users really want to achieve in the long term.
The key to a successful app is to guide your users through one simple and complete journey without distracting them with unnecessary features. It’s key to remember that you do not want to create too many options for your users as this may overwhelm them. If users have to first figure out how to use your product, it is likely that you will lose them quickly. Don’t worry, you can always add new features in later updates - but it’s best ask your users what new features they want rather than jump to your own conclusions!
At Red C, we ensure that every project has one clear solution that can be referred to throughout all stages of production, so the purpose of the project is kept in focus.
Outstanding intuitive design
Every successful app has an eye-catching design that flows smoothly from screen to screen. At Red C, we know that you must fully understand your users in order to create an engaging experience for them. Therefore we base all our sketches and wireframes on detailed research, meaning that we can perfect your app’s UX before any development begins.
Once this stage is complete and you are happy with the wireframes, we start to apply full visual design. This involves working with you to choose a suitable font, colour scheme and icon style that will be attractive for your target users.
Connected and easily shared
Social sharing is the key to the growth of your app. In an increasingly connected world, users expect information at their fingertips in real time, thus it is important that users can share their activity on popular social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Clients often try to create social networks within their app, and whilst there are cases where this might be appropriate, most times it’s far better and cheaper to connect to existing social platform to utilise their reach and features.
Most cloud based services have API’s which allow developers to connect to them and pull and push user data. Leveraging these services can save huge development costs and can give access to powerful features and data at little or no cost. For example, we often use Twill, a messaging platform to give live chat and messaging functionality within an app at a fraction of the cost of building it from scratch. Many of our apps use open API’s to bring live news, exchange rates, prices, etc into an app that are always up to date and need no input from the client.
In conclusion, a successful app must focus on solving one key issue, must have outstanding intuitive design and must be easily connected and shareable. And these can all be determined by detailed user research.
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Red-C's ability to take our brand and creative drive and run with it was ultimately what they delivered on. The expectations were set high and they nailed it.