Quick Guide to Launching Your App Successfully and Efficiently
Most businesses recognize the importance of app development. But waiting a year or more for your mobile app launch isn’t realistic for everyone.
Sometimes a business needs to launch an app quickly to capitalize on an opportunity.
Maybe you need the app ready for an upcoming event. Or perhaps you’re releasing a new product or service that must coincide with the app launch. It’s possible that you’re creating an app to stay one step ahead of your competition or keep pace with other competitors launching mobile apps.
There are dozens of reasons why launching an app quickly is crucial for so many organizations.
Key Takeaways
- Importance of Speed: Launching an app quickly can help capitalize on market opportunities.
- Development Timeline: Typical app development takes six months, but this guide can help you cut that in half.
- Quality vs. Speed: Balance is crucial; a fast launch is ineffective if the app is sub-par.
- Market Research: Essential for validating app ideas and saving time and money.
- Organizational Planning: Answer key questions before starting development to ensure readiness.
The average app development timeline before launch is at least six months. But this guide will teach you how to cut that timeline in half. Some of you will be able to create and launch an app in just one to three months by following the blueprint and tips for success outlined below.
Why a Successful Mobile App Launch is So Important
Your mobile app launch can make or break the short and long-term success of your application.
If you wait too long to launch the app, you could miss out on some time-sensitive opportunities that have a direct impact on app downloads and usage. Conversely, rushing through development and putting out a sub-par product could cause people to stop using the app altogether because of a bad experience.
A smooth launch with an app that’s bug-free and delivers a seamless user experience is the best way to ensure your app is successful for years to come. Prioritizing the user will keep them coming back to use the app, allowing you to maximize the lifetime value of each person who downloads the app.
Launching your app in weeks instead of months is useless if the app itself doesn’t work the way it’s intended. So you need to find that balance between a fast launch and a high-quality product.
Full disclosure—some apps simply cannot be built in weeks or months. If you’re trying to create the next Facebook, Uber, or YouTube, it’s unrealistic to plan for a three-month development timeline. Gaming apps, augmented reality apps, and virtual reality apps typically have longer app launch timelines as well.
But the vast majority of business apps can be launched quickly, without sacrificing the app’s quality—assuming you’re using the right technology and following a proven blueprint for success (like the steps in this guide).
Buildfire has been used to create more than 10,000+ mobile apps. So we know what it takes to have success in this space, and we’ve seen our clients launch apps faster than the average development cycle.
5 Steps for Fast App Launches
Fast and successful app launches are all about simplicity. The entire process can be summarized in just five easy steps:
Step 1 — Market Research
Anyone can come up with an app idea. But you need to validate this idea with market research before you start building anything.
So many mobile apps fall short of expectations because the app developer skipped this step.
Taking the time to understand your target audience and research your target market will ultimately save you time and money when development starts. You might realize that certain features or functions that you thought were important aren’t actually necessary for the app.
So you can launch the app quickly by omitting those features altogether.
For example, let’s say you have a small boutique clothing shop. You want to make an app before the busy holiday season as a way to boost sales from mobile commerce. Great idea!
One feature you’re considering is a barcode scanner. This would allow customers shopping in-store to scan the barcode of an item in the app to see more information about the product, including customer reviews. Sounds like a reasonable feature to include.
But after conducting market research, you might discover that most of your customer base doesn’t want, need, or plan to use that feature.
By eliminating this functionality from your development process, it will save you a ton of time and money—allowing you to launch the app faster and for less money.
Market research gives you the opportunity to research your current customers, prospective customers, competitors, and similar apps on the market.
You’re forced to identify what makes your app unique, giving you an advantage over other apps available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Step 2 — Get Organized
Once you’ve completed the market research stage, you need to create a solid plan. Use the following bullets as an app launch checklist and answer some important questions before you start building anything:
- What app stores are you going to launch on?
- Are you going to build your own app or hire mobile app developers?
- If hiring app developers, will you assemble your team or work with an app development company?
- Have you considered app builders and mobile app development platforms?
- What is your app development budget?
- When do you need to launch the app?
- Are there other stakeholders that need to be consulted?
- Do you need to raise money or pitch the app idea to investors?
- How is your app going to make money?
If you don’t have answers to these questions, you’re not ready to build and launch the app yet.
For the purposes of this guide, I’m not going to go too deep into each of those questions.
Instead, we want to focus our efforts here today on launching a high-quality app as quickly as possible.
But we have tons of great resources and how-to guides that will help you get organized and prepare yourself during the app planning stage. Here are some relevant articles to the questions listed above: