With smartphone use estimated to reach 6.5 billion users by 2029, the appetite for apps is only growing. That means there are a lot of developers trying to build the next big thing. With so much competition, there’s more pressure to stand out. That can lead to development mistakes that impact app quality.
That can cause places like Apple’s App Store to reject an app outright. If it does manage to get in, poor user reception can quickly snuff out any chance at momentum. That’s why it’s important that developers learn to avoid making critical errors that impact their chances of success.
Let’s look at some of the most common mistakes developers make when developing applications.
When developers get what they believe is a great idea for an app, they often dive right into coding. While you may feel rock-solid about what you’re building, it may not be what the market wants. If that’s the case, users will either ignore your app or delete it after only one use.
In addition to failing to understand what users want, many developers don’t take the time to look at what the competition is doing. For example, you may decide to build a gaming app meant to challenge the enduring popularity of Candy Crush. Instead of candy, you choose to go with different fruits.
However, if you research games already available in the App Store and Google Play, you might discover a bunch of popular Match-3 games with fruit as a theme. The experience you provide may not be as immersive or seamless.
Other critical items you can miss through lack of research include:
Your app may get hacked because of coding vulnerabilities, putting user information at risk. Once word spreads, you could be banned from popular app stores. In addition, users may preemptively reject future apps you build because of the bad publicity.
While it’s good to strive to use best coding practices when building your app, it’s important not to get too caught up in perfection. What you have to remember is that even the most popular applications undergo evolution from their initial start. For example, Google continues to improve and update its popular business application suite.
Instead of trying to achieve perfection, focus on building a solid, secure foundation that you can improve over time. Try to create a minimum viable product (MVP), a version of your app that contains all the essential features needed to work.
Use that to attract early adopters willing to provide you with feedback on its functionality and performance. It helps to use PreEmptive protection solutions that alert you to any vulnerabilities that could put user data at risk.
Testing is critical to discovering bugs that could impact user experience and even cause your app to crash. If users constantly encounter glitches, they may view your app as unreliable and leave poor reviews. You can also end up with navigation problems like broken links and unresponsive buttons.
Not testing your application and failing to perform research can lead to design choices impacting the user interface. For example, if users want to access their account details, they shouldn’t struggle to locate that feature. Essential elements should be easy to locate and work as intended.
Try to keep the navigation simple and intuitive so users don’t become frustrated. Make icons easy to recognize, and label buttons clearly. You should also compress images and optimize any backend processes for faster performance.
Try to avoid the temptation of overloading your application with features. They end up distracting from the core purpose of the application. If you’re building a locator app, there’s no need to add anything unrelated to that simply to show off your coding skills. Too many features also increase the risk of introducing a bug impacting app performance.
One thing you shouldn’t shortchange is security. PreEmptive makes sure that the components used to build your features remain protected. You don’t want to leave openings for a hacker to exploit.
Creating an app that works on all platforms opens the potential for more revenue. However, you must ensure the necessary code updates don’t slow down your application. The resulting codebase is typically more complex and requires a lot of platform-specific code changes. If you’re using a framework like React Native or Flutter for development, you’ll need to tap into third-party libraries and components to make the app work on different platforms.
Users like what they like, so developers should pay attention. A complaint about a button not working or lagging could indicate other problems, especially vulnerabilities that could cause a data breach. Listening to user feedback helps you pinpoint trouble areas and close potential security loopholes.
The running theme throughout all these potential mistakes is failing to account for security. You can have the best-looking app in the world, but one vulnerability can render all your hard work for nothing. To avoid leaving your app vulnerable to being reverse engineered, use one of PreEmptive’s tools to keep your source code locked up tight.
Security should always be a top concern regardless of what kind of app you’re building. PreEmptive tools integrate directly with popular DevOps tools to protect you at every stage. These tools also help developers adhere to best coding practices and prevent bugs from third-party libraries causing vulnerabilities.
In addition to thoroughly researching the app you’re building, try to avoid other common mistakes. Avoid making your app overly complicated with too many features, and keep usability in mind when designing the layout. You should also implement testing at every development and release stage, and listen to user feedback.
Check out the benefits of PreEmptive for yourself by requesting a free trial.