Digital Marketing

Checklist for Making an App

Do you think you have the world’s next big idea, or a way to provide further customer service to your clients? If so, you might be thinking about creating an app, but before you do so here is a checklist of questions to consider.

1. Who is your target audience?

The very first thing you need to consider when creating an app is who is it for? If you understand your audience, it becomes easier to know how they will see and interact with the app. The more you know about your targeted users, the better you can tailor everything from the functionality to the interface making the whole experience much more agreeable to your clients. Don’t know who they are? Try using Google Trends, Flurry and Quantcast to get an idea.

2. Why should people want to use your app?

Your app needs to fulfill a need for people, whether that’s pure entertainment, gaming, or better serving your clients. A good question to ask is, does the app solve a problem? For example, does it provide an easier way for clients to use your website or access their account information on mobile devices, does it provide comic relief when someone’s waiting for a flight or at the doctor’s office? If the answer is yes, then keep moving forward.

3. Which platform should you use?

Does your target audience use IOS or Android? This is important to know because they have different requirements. So think of your user first, try and figure out which platform they are more likely to use and then take it from there. Remember if you want to release your app on multiple platforms, you want to tell the developers this from the beginning to reduce future development costs.

4. How can you monetize your app?

There are four primary ways to monetize an app: in-app advertising, requiring a payment for download, giving a free standard version away and then offering an upgrade for a premium, and subscriptions. We will explore these avenues more in next week’s blog so stay tuned.