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Initial Questions for a New Mobile App Project

It can be daunting to know the first place to start after you know you want to build a mobile app. I’m here to help. I can help you focus in your project goals on what makes sense.

Ultimately only you will be able to provide the core vision for what you need. As you ask the questions below, think through the lens of what needs to be in front of users first.

Let’s Build a Minimum Viable Product

Minimum Viable Product

Source: Kunal Naik

Since building technology costs money, having priorities will save you money. So what are the priorities? As we explore this question, keep in mind that it’s always smart to build a minimum viable product (MVP) first. Rather than having a little of everything that works ok, focus on building one aspect of your vision well so that it’s a great foundation. That may mean focusing on one platform before doing both iOS and Android. It may mean we should focus on core functionality before adding extra features.

Have an idea of what’s a must-have versus things that aren’t crucial. This will help you know what you should invest in first. It’s always better to get a smaller, great product in front of users, rather than an app that has more, but doesn’t work great. Having an MVP also helps you get to market faster, which has huge advantages. If you keep launching major updates to your app every 6 months, you’ll be learning what works and what doesn’t. This saves you money since you know which ways you need to pivot your thinking. It often doesn’t make sense to work on a large app for years, without getting feedback from users along the way.

That’s the critical piece of advice I’d give any of my friends who are involved in getting an app built. Keep in mind you’re building a MVP, and not the kitchen sink when considering the questions below. Here are some common questions I get when people reach out for a quote. This should help prepare you for a conversation with me.

Let’s Play Common Questions Bingo

If we wanted to build a Bingo board with the common questions that come up during a conversation about building an app, we’d be winning lots of Bingo. If you don’t know how to answer the questions below, spend some time thinking it over and reach out if you’re stuck. We can point you in the right direction.

You want to know: “How much will it cost?”

We need to know the answer to some of the questions below before we’re able to answer this one for you. In general apps are expensive to build, and zeros are involved. Thankfully a round number can get more focused as we learn more.

So what will we ask to get to the answer for that question?

What’s the big idea?

What makes this app unique and different? What will compel people to use it? What is that one thing that absolutely needs to come across when someone uses this thing?

What kind of features are you envisioning?

What are the core thing someone can do with your app? It can be helpful to see if you can distill your app in 2-3 user stories. A user story is a high-level description of one of the things a user can do with your app. Here are few examples:

  • As a car driver I can swipe my app while paying for gas to earn rewards.
  • At the gas station, I can show my app to redeem rewards at the counter and get a free Coke.
  • As a beer enthusiast I can scan a beer’s barcode to see details about a beer.
  • As a movie buff, I can search for a movie and mark it as watched.

Does this need to be an app?

Hang with me. Sometimes people will have an app idea that may not lend itself to the app format. If you want to build an app for writers that helps them build up their typing speed, it may work better as a website or desktop app, where people are more likely to have a keyboard when using it. What’s the advantage to people having this product on the go?

Who is this app for?

What’s your target demographic? Who will be using this app? This can help decide how the user interface works.

How do you plan to make money with this app?

This may sound a big harsh, but what’s the business plan? If you haven’t considered the longterm plan for how the app makes you money or meets your goal, you may be missing a core feature that needs to be in the app.

What’s the play? Should users be able to subscribe monthly to the app? Are there in-app purchases? Are there ads or messages from you or partners? How does a user give you valuable information such as their email address so you can reach out and tell them about your next rally for saving the rainforest? Does your app help you reach your goals?

Do you have a specific timeline in mind?

Do you have time pressures tied to your app? For instance, are you building an app that helps you create custom emojis that you’d like to release on the same week that the next Emoji Movie releases? Or do you have investors or stakeholders with expectations on when the app will be rolled out?

Based on the timeline, we may recommend what would be doable within your desired time window.

What other apps are your competition?

This question helps in a couple ways. Are you building an app that already exists? If so, what is your competitive advantage? If you’re building something different or better than someone else, how will that inform the features you’re wanting?

If you do have competition, what do they do that you also want to do? One advantage to not being the first on the scene, is that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You can likely glean from others what is already working in your space.

How fleshed out is the design?

Do you need a designer? Or is everything already mocked up? If you need some help with the ideation phase, we can help figure out a plan. Knowing how far along you are in this step will inform how long the process may take.

What devices will be able to run your app?

On what devices will your app be able to run? Can it only run on iPhones? Or just on Android phones? Both? What about tablets? Should the app look different for users using larger screen sizes? The answers to these questions greatly impact what needs to be built.

What other technology will accompany the app?

  • Do you also need a website?
  • Does an API need be built so that the app can access the data it needs?
  • Do you need an interface that allows you to edit or see user details?
  • Do you need analytics about the app so you can see reports of how people are using it?

Bingo!

If you have the answer to 5 of these you’re off to a great start. Keep going. If you don’t have all the answers, that’s totally fine. We can help you think through all of the questions above. These are just some introductory questions we often cover so we can start to figure out the size of your project.

Reach out when you’re ready to figure out your app’s next steps!

Becoming “Internet-Famous”

How to become internet-famous…or really how to have people talk about you, on the internet, IF you aren’t Miley Cyrus.

As you may already know, we built an app and wanted to share some of the details, as explained in previous blog posts:
The Ah-Ha Moment And What Comes After – The idea for the CaseCollage app, and Jennifer’s design experience

Building an App in 2 Weeks – App development process, Wiley’s analytical take

Roller Coaster App Store Review – App store submission hurdles (What is happening?!? Lets just have this baby already!)

Now comes article #4 in this series: Becoming “Internet-Famous” or “How to Make Friends and Influence People (Online)”

You cannot, cannot, cannot build an app and hope that people will randomly see it, download it, and shoot you to the top of the download charts. You have to let people know, and not just your friends and grandparents. If you’ve spent all your time building this beauteous, life-changing app you better be shouting it from the mountaintops. And the right mountaintops too. Here is how.

First thing to do. You should honestly have done this pretty early on. Decide who this app is for. Who is your target demographic? Is there more than one? Knowing your target audience should also be important when building your app – what will your future users want? What will make them happy? Jeremy Olson has a great (and very very detailed) explanation of how to do this, complete with making pretend users.

For CaseCollage we had two main audiences – the original idea source – tech/iphone fans who were horrified by the HON issue and the long-term users – people who love customizing their phones (tweens & designers).

Second thing. Find people who write to these audiences and find relevant press/similar items from these writers. Just like when mingling at awkward social mixers – find things you have in common. You love photos of your dog on your phone? I DO TOO. (In fact I just made this app that lets you put 35 photos of your cute puppy on your 5c case). See how I slid that app promotion in there? (It’s that easy).

Another tack? Find something the writer already wrote that can be compared with what you’re promoting – make sure your item is even better and more useful. Reciprocal linking IS THE BEST.  You hate the HON issue? Oh look, I do too and here is how we can fix it (by downloading my new app of course). And you can link back to all your old articles about cases and the 5c in this article too. Google Juice. You’re welcome.

We sat down one Saturday while the app was in review and made a Google doc with every story written about the 5c cases in the past month, and every twitter handle/email/email form/facebook page we could possibly post on that was related to these stories. We crafted a form email with quick and straight forward facts about the app and contact information. In addition to this, we pre-wrote custom intros for every single contact we had. Example:

TechCrunch – Author’s tweet –  https://twitter.com/panzer/status/37750512576783974
@panzer We hate the “hon’ too which is why we built this app – @CaseCollage. Make cool, custom inserts, cover up Apple’s mistakes. http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/do-i-like-the-iphone-5c-case-non/

Thing number three. After you’ve gathered all of these leads, you’re going to want to send them something they can use. If a writer comes upon any sort of hiccup at all, no contact name, bad screen shots, a confusing/unclear letter – they will hit the delete button. Tech writers receive hundreds of submissions a day – you need to feed it to them. More is more. Give them so many options, it will be a piece of cake. In our press kit – which was available as an attachment in all of the emails we sent, and at the top of our app website (also important) we included:

  • Another copy of the press release in .rtf format – no program required
  • The app icon in multiple sizes and formats – .jpg, .png, .eps
  • The app name/logo in multiple sizes and formats – .tif (transparent), .png
  • A bagillion screenshots – plain and in phone mock-ups – in high-res format

Some great resources I used on what to include in a press kit and how to write a concise & useful press release can be found here.

In total, I wrote 27 custom intros to pair with our form e-mail and press kit. It was quite a bit of work – about 4-6 hours worth. Then, once our app was approved. Wiley sat down and sent all of the items (again another 2-3 hours of work).

While this seems like a lot of work after you should be “done”. It is very much worth it – and gives you something to do while you’re going mad during the app review process. These items, press kit, research, and website/media kit make you seem like a professional developer and company with well thought out and worthwhile apps.  Within 3 days we had received the following press:

If you read a few of the articles you can see how direct snippets of the press release and screen shots were used, as well as the video we made (thanks to our awesome friend Chris Paz)

It worked!

[responsive_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7sXbno-Qvk”]

This was great for a first week push. We’ll go into more detail about what to do after the initial shipping high in the next post.

 

The Ah-Ha Moment….and what comes after

Two Wednesdays ago – Apple held their keynote.

The public got to hear about what developers had been privately talking about ever since WWDC. New iOS7, drastically new design, new phone colors, new cases, new everything. After all the news stories, podcasts, dinner conversations, and tweets – I will be glad if I never have to hear about iOS7 again. (side note: I do not worship at the foot of the giant golden apple like some members of LunarLincoln).

Something that I had been very vocal about, since seeing the beta iOS on Wiley’s phone weeks ago, was the lack of forethought put into the new OS.  The day-glo colors, the hyper thin fonts, the icon redesigns – some of it seemed…first draft/rookie. There were a lot of changes, and I’m not sure every single aspect had been vetted to a Job-sian standard. Now, the general public may not be as finely attuned as I am to these things and will never bat an eye at the changes, but one thing everyone DID notice was this:

Screen Shot 2013-09-30 at 10.33.27 AMSeriously? There are at least 5 quick fixes to this issue. – No circles, Fill in those circles, Move the circles, Move the regs, Don’t get into the case industry.

But, whats done is done. Aaaaand, why not benefit from other’s missteps?

Here comes the ah-ha moment….can’t someone just cover up the “hon”? What if the circles were frames…what if…we built an app to fix this.

IN A WEEK.

Obviously, we didn’t do it in a week. WE DID IT IN TWO. BAMMMMMMM.

I do not suggest ever building an app in two weeks if you value your free-time, sanity, household cleanliness, or personal relationships with business partners. That said, our app is currently in review and I feel pretty damn excited about it.

Things I learned when building an app in a condensed timeline:
– You don’t get to “sit” on your design. Don’t let it ruminate. Don’t edit it with the clear eyes of the next morning. Nope – slap that crap together at 11pm
– You have to edit on the fly a lot. How many times have I rebuilt the photoslider? Or resized/recolored icons – do not ask.
– To quote the Real World, you will “stop being polite and start being real” (And NO we do not need 10 tutorial screens (but I will make you one, if you just shut up uuuughhh))
– You will have to compromise on concept. Our platonic ideal is about 2 more updates down the road, but 1.0 isn’t half bad.
– There is a lot more design to an app than just UI. We need an icon, a facebook cover image, a twitter background, a website, a landing page, some mockups, a press kit. Oh hey, what about a video?
– You will lie to yourself again and again about what “almost done” really means.

We’re almost done you guys! Hopefully, the powers that be will look at our app, approve its excellence – even if it is poking at their failure – and everything can go public. Now we just have to wait and see.