Creating an Awesome App: Key Elements for Success

You don’t want to create just another app.

You want to create something that helps your customers, grows your user base, or increases your profits.

The secret to each of these is creating a remarkable app–an app people will literally remark about.

Creating a remarkable app is the secret to designing an app that people use.

Without paying attention to what factors go into making an awesome app, your creation is destined to sit unused on the third page of your users’ smartphone app list.

But of course, that’s easier said than done.

What goes into making an app people will tell their friends about? How can you guarantee your app will be a success from the minute it hits the app store?

It turns out, there are a surprising number of elements the best apps have in common. Master those and your app is destined for greatness.

Let’s dive in!

Craft it specifically for your target audience

You wouldn’t design a building without knowing what it was going to be used for. Yet every day, app developers create software without a clear target audience.

With no insight into what the audience cares about or wants, those apps are destined to fail.

To be successful, you need to understand exactly whos’ going to use your app. Narrow down exactly who, or more specifically which demographic, your app will serve.

That will help make everything else work. Know who will be using your app, and design it for how they are going to use it.

Aspect	Before	After
App Creation	Limited to top companies	Accessible to everyone via platforms like BuildFire
Competition	Less competitive	Fiercer than ever
Target Audience	General approach	Specific demographic focus

Since mobile and smart device users utilize apps for 90% of the time they spend on their devices, you can’t afford to ignore their opinions.

Why does it help to know this information? It helps to know so you can design your app to better serve your audience.

Users downloaded nearly 200 billion apps in 2017, and that number is expected to increase by 75% by 2021.

When smartphones first launched, apps were difficult to create, and only the best companies had the ability to make them succeed.

Today, however, platforms like BuildFire give anyone the ability to create the app of their dreams. That’s great of course, because it means you can create an app quickly and easily.

But the downside is that competition is fiercer than ever. With hundreds of thousands of other apps clamouring for attention, what makes yours stand apart? The only answer is in meeting the needs of your audience.

This becomes particularly important if you’re planning on selling your app. Research shows that customers between the ages of 18-34 are the primary app purchasers in the marketplace.

If you’re targeting a different demographic, especially those in the 55+ age group, be careful about how you market your app. You may need to consider the viability of selling an app to this group, since they are traditionally reluctant to pay.

It is up to you to discover exactly who is in your app target demographic.

However, don’t ignore that the millennial demographic continues to remain a huge source of revenue for app developers. About one in every five millennials downloads a paid app each month.

Take this into consideration when understanding who will download, use, and pay for the app you create.

Another feature that many developers overlook is the language of their user base. Carefully consider the primary language of your users, especially if you’re planning on launching in a new country.

It’s worth it to spend money on a quality translation instead of an automated service. Over 72% of app users do not speak English at all or as a native tongue, and revenue increase by 26% when using this language on your app.

But if you think that understanding the audience before launching your app is enough, you’re mistaken. Every time you push a new update, you’re changing features.

Rather than blindly making changes without input, continually check in with your user base to receive feedback. The easiest way is to read user reviews, of course, but you should go deeper.

The absolute best way to get user feedback isn’t through anonymous surveys or brief reviews hacked out on a miniscule keyboard. For your most valuable feedback, you need to interview actual users.

Talk to them in person or on the phone, and understand what they’re looking for. What are their motivations for using your app? What features do they appreciate most of all?

Include these useful and necessary updates in your app. This ensures your app users will stay interested and engaged.

Oftentimes, the features you think will be most valuable end up discarded or changed. YouTube began as a dating site. You never know where your audience will lead you unless you ask it.

Design your app with bulletproof functionality

This should go without saying, but your app should work. It should function effectively, load quickly, and be free of all major programming bugs and defects.

Your app should provide a seamless experience that doesn’t distract the user with frustrating bugs or glitches.

While Apple’s app review process does a careful job weeding out apps with glaringly obvious issues, your users will give your app much more time and testing than the Apple team. They’ll find errors the professionals missed.

Since you need to produce an app as free from bugs as possible, you’ll need to accept the time sink involved in debugging your app.

While it may seem like a waste of time spending hundreds of hours looking for errors, mistakes, and bugs, it’s time well spent. Those hundreds of hours are the difference between “pretty good” apps and those that change the world.

By some research estimates, it can take app designers well over 900 work hours to create a quality, interfaceable and multifaceted app.

(BuildFire reduces the time it takes to build your app by providing templates. But even if you use BuildFire, you still need to check for app at the most detailed level possible to ensure it works properly.)

Once you know your app works flawlessly, you’ll want to adjust it so that you can engage users with its most unique and valuable features.

Even if it works well, your app has a strong likelihood of dying a slow death on the user’s smartphone. It has been shown that as many as 26% of all apps are never used again after the first use, for whatever reason.

Want to avoid this trap?

Engage users by making the features useful every day. If your app includes fresh content (and it should), you can re-engage users with push notifications.

The average American app user has about 36 apps downloaded on their mobile smart devices. Up to a quarter of those apps are used daily by such users.

To be in that top quarter of apps, you need to show your app has valuable features your user needs every day.

But it’s not just the features you have–an awesome app also depends on what you’ve carefully avoided. Let’s talk about that next.

Conquer the uninstall button

Every app owner is faced with the option to uninstall every day. Deleting the app you’ve worked so hard for is just a brief click away.

So, how do the best app developers ensure their apps don’t end up in the digital dustbin?

Simple. They look to the biggest factors that cause users to uninstall the apps, and actively work to prevent those problems from popping up.

Speed it up

Just like visitors are more likely to l

Comparison of App Load Speeds

Expectation	Action Required
Apps should load in 4 seconds or less	Trim down components to improve speed
Apps taking longer than 4 seconds	Rival other apps by optimizing load speed

Eliminate every bug you can find

We mentioned debugging earlier, but it’s worth another look.

As many as 62% of consumers will uninstall your app if it crashes, freezes or is filled with errors. Are you willing to stake over half your user base on the performance of your app?

If you’re not, you need to keep fixing and improving.

You need rigorous and exacting operational testing of your app to make sure that it works optimally and without crashing or freezing.

Provide updates for your app regularly to ensure it works smoothly.

How to make an awesome app that blows away the competition

At the end of the day, a “great app” is subjective. The features one app might leverage for a billion-dollar valuation are ultimately lost on another app.

But the importance isn’t what features are universally right or wrong in app development. The secret is using core principles to make a difference in how your app functions.

In this article, you’ve learned the core principles that ensure your app does the best it can at engaging users and including features they appreciate.

To win in the competitive world of app creation, you need to decide on a specific target audience. Look to this audience to give you feedback on the design of the app, how it functions, and what features they prefer.

Continually make changes on what they prefer and grow the market for your app based on their feedback.

You’ll need to test and retest your app before bringing it to market. Your app should do everything promised without hassles or glitches. You’ll need to conquer the most common reasons for uninstalls by making your app safe and fast.

Design Aspect	Importance
Aesthetics	Must look simple and clear, driving users to the most important features quickly.
Graphics, Sound, Animation	Take great design care in the quality to enhance user experience.

Finally, you need to build your app around a singular purpose. Create a signature and incomparable user experience that will keep users coming back for more.

Decide what it is that your app offers that unquestionably differentiates itself from competitors. Single out and focus on what it does well as a service to your users, and ignore the functions you don’t prioritize.

Every app can see improvement. By making your app awesome, you can skyrocket success, engagement, and profits.

How will you make your app awesome?