Path to Create Successful Web and Mobile Products

Technology is taking over. Every business, every home, every person, utilizes technology in some way, shape, or form. It seems almost a pleasant coincidence that while technology is currently expanding so rapidly, entrepreneurial efforts are also becoming increasingly more popular. This relationship between technology and self-pioneered business has brought with it an era of tech start-ups.Tech start-ups are the golden goose of entrepreneurship in modern society. Spanning from web design to social media, to cloud-based storage companies, the tech field is littered with opportunity. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Pinterest are each valued at over $10 billion. The industry has created over 25 billionaires on 2016 FORBES Billionaire list. It is safe to say, that a successful tech product will lead to a successful life.Success is never guaranteed, however. It is widely understood that roughly 90% of all tech startups fail. Common reasons for these failures include improper web or app design, underdeveloped tech, and, or, lack of a recognized target market.Tech start-ups are commonly seen in areas like Silicon Valley and New York City, however, the location of your tech startup is not what will make or break your tech product. While it may not hurt your company to join a Silicon Valley or NY startup accelerator, joining such programs is not necessary. Moreover, an insanely successful product can be created from just about anywhere if the proper steps are taken. Many tech developers have found that starting companies in unusual areas can be more financially advantageous because of the comparatively low cost of these areas. These founders are also finding little difference in business communication and partnership ability in these areas because of modern technology. Moreover, because of the rise of tech startups, there has also been a rise in complementary firms, such as mobile and web app development companies. Access to such company allows for easier operations and app development.An example of a successful tech startup that took advantage of strategy – instead of location – is Qualtrics, a private research Software Company. The creators, one of which is Ryan Smith – current CEO – founded this company in the small city of Provo, Utah. The company is currently worth $220 million. It is clear that these founders implemented a solid strategy that made up for the location of the business.
So, the question becomes: what path needs to be taken to create a successful tech product from anywhere?

First: Develop a Concrete Idea

It may sound obvious, but many tech products fail because either the idea was not developed far enough, or there was no market for the product. Before any physical development, or commercialization can begin, an idea must first be solidified.This process includes first coming up with a set of goals that your company, and product will embody. It is important that these goals remain constant throughout the entirety of your company’s lifespan. These goals may include relative price points, ethical restrictions, advertising guidelines, and more, but most importantly it is important to create a clear goal of the physical product (or app) itself before you go any further.

Throughout the whole process, work on the product itself may only account for 30% of your total time – with the remainder of the time allocated to sales, marketing, production, etc. It is essential that 30% of your time happen early on in this process. Early product attention is more important than sales and production focus; having a clear vision of what the product actually is makes accomplishing the rest more achievable.

Even the most fully developed products need a market to be successful, however. It is essential that during this initial idea phase, your company takes into consideration who this product is made for, and what problem your product is solving.

Second: Begin to Design

Once a target market has been selected, and a concrete idea has been formed, it is time to begin actually designing your product. It usually includes physical, web, and mobile app design. This is the stage that many tech developers think to start in. This stage is made vastly easier however if the idea phase is completed to its fullest potential.

Unless the founder has a remarkable background in tech development, it will almost always be beneficial for them to hire outside help to assist with this part of their product. It is important to higher skilled employees. Despite the importance of bootstrapping during initial business development, hiring engineers is not the area you want to be cheap in. These employees’ will bring your idea to life. It is essential that they understand the goals that have been originally set for your company.

It is also important not to decide on and go to market with the first design that is made. In the tech world, failure is a good thing. With each failure, comes new insight on how to create a better product in the future. The likelihood of the first design made being the best design is very low.

Third: Create a Prototype

The process of creating a prototype follows very closely with the process of developing the product. This phase entails bringing your original idea to life.

While the engineers you hired were trained to design tech products, they were most likely not designed to actually build them. For this reason, it is common for founders to send their products designs to prototype shops. It is also common for founders to get more than one prototype made, to ensure the best one possible is used.

Fourth: Testing

It does not matter how extensive the effort put into the ideation, development and prototyping phase is, testing your product is essential. There are almost always bugs or setbacks in your tech that your team may not be aware of initially.

It is common to first test prototypes internally, among team members. However, it is also essential to launch a beta version of your tech product to trusted members of your targeted community. This last part is essential. Sharing a beta with only people outside of your target market will not result in responses that are relevant.

Fifth: Launch

Once you have successfully developed, designed, and tested your product, you are ready to enter into commercialization.This phase will include hiring a sales team and focusing much of your company’s efforts into advertising and branding. You will need to research your target market and find the best possible way to market your tech product to them. This step is not made to be quick. In fact, little under 70% of your time should be spent ensuring that the launch and market of your product are a success.

Takeaway:

Ideas are everywhere. Great ideas can lead to great companies. However, great ideas do not ALWAYS lead to great companies.Competition, especially in the tech industry, results in many failures. It is those that learn from these failures, take advantage of available resources, and take the proper steps that will fall into the top 10% of tech startups and be successful.

Source: synergyconsulting.us

Make your dreams come true with Synergy Consulting

Synergy Consulting is a web development company which was started for the purpose of helping start-ups and companies to build their brand value and helping them get advertised among the markets. With the help of industry specific marketing and modern day technology, we were able to achieve the goals set by our clients. Our client’s success is our success, and we will do anything to make our clients happy. When a client comes to us with his/her startup idea, we with our Expert Business Analysts, Developers and Managers to understand what the client want to achieve and we works with them in full potential to help them to build and grow in particular. 

A startup requires an idea and resources. People come to us with their ideas and tell us about their startup plans. We look through all the possibilities of how to get this particular startup get growing. Our NY startup accelerator was designed to take these small startups from New York and turn them into a well organized company. The accelerators work in such a way that we prepare these startup companies for the single time opportunity to show their potential and skills in front of big time investors. And if the investors liked the business plan, he/she will seed some money into their startup in exchange for equity and other benefits which come later.

We have a solid team of android app developer, and according to the client’s request, we build mobile and web applications suitable for every operating system. Our Android app developer goes through the project report first before starting to work on it. We are gaining experience in the development field as we have recently finished many projects based on several different platforms like small business applications, e-commerce applications, consumer applications, apps for real estate, medical and much more and we are getting more prominent clients day by day. 

Our goal is to provide support for those small startups which have the potential to convert into big companies and us with our strategic marketing skills, and development team helps them to build one.  

Apps and Websites can be essential for your business and can be made without huge investments!

If you have a business, then having a website is absolutely necessary to promote your service or product and capture the interest of a larger audience. The apps are often considered as an added luxury. However, if your business is big and is international, both apps and websites are a must have. The cost of setting up both website and app varies based on their complexities. Small businesses can easily do well with simple websites and apps having basic features and information. 

Does your company need a website or an app or maybe both? 

As mobile app usage continues to rise, many businesses and companies are jumping into the craze quickly. However, this needs to be taken into account that an app may not always be for benefit of your audience or even to your business. Independent services would likely to grow with an interactive website rather than an app while on the other hand; big retail services would benefit more from having an app. 

Deciding which platform to use for propagating your service and business is crucial. Following are few pointers you can take to decide on that: 

Do not invest on the wrong platform

Always do good research before investing in hiring firms to build an app for you. You may find out later that your customers prefer using your website rather than the app which would result in wastage of both your time and money that went into making the app.  However, some cases show that clients and audiences prefer using a mobile app due to its quick accessibility.

Prioritize your needs and work with them

Before hiring a software development team, you need to first analyze what technology is popular with your audience. Google analytics is a great tool for analyzing your audience and finding out the user preferred platforms. 

Responsive websites are useful if you are on a tight budget, rely solely on SEO and make frequent changes and updates to your content. 

Apps are useful when you are expecting to send and receive huge amounts of data, work with complex user interfaces and want to take full advantage of the functions of a smartphone. 

The selection of platform for your business should derive from user needs and what they prefer to use. Having both app and website may be a good idea for some cases but it all depends on user habits and preferences. Investing unnecessarily on an app while your customers and clients clearly prefer an interactive website is a bad business idea. 

Developing apps- cheap or costly?

The price range of developing a good and informative app can depend on a number of factors, among which the investment is labor is the main money pit. An off-shore company or a development company that uses outsourcing to develop apps will cost you much less than a domestic developer. In the same way, an independent developer for hire would cost less than a big and established firm. Thus the cost of making a app really depends on how you want your app to be and really setting out your priorities straight before you go in and contact a developer. Establishing a budget is essential for any investment and here are a few steps you can follow to carefully devise up a budget that would benefit your business growth:

1. Always figure out your priorities 

There are three factors that go with making an app- great quality, fast production and cheap costs. The important thing to understand is that you can only have any two of these attributes. A developer that offers great quality apps in less amount of time with little budget should be considered as marketing spam. Thus, laying out your priorities is important. If you want a great quality app then you have two budget options before you- either you opt for quick development which will cost you more or you opt for cost saving process which would take longer. 

2. Location 

Location of the development firm determines the budget of the development process. Off-shore development of the app is cheaper than hiring on-shore engineers and development firms often capitalize on this fact by charging on-shore rates while they are outsourcing the software development to offshore companies. Although using both offshore and on shore resources can work in the benefit of budget when the development firm uses on shore engineers to work on the main design of the app while using off-shore resources for designing basic parts. 

3. Creating an estimated budget

Keeping the current state of industry in mind, you have to take into account the fact that the final cost of the app will be more than your estimated budget. You can make your own estimation or hire someone to make it for you. The person you hire for the job should have knowledge about similar apps or should have previously worked on them. 

4 Methods of app development

There are two methods of app development that are currently used- one in which entire documentation and plan is laid out and the entire process follows that, the other requires no pre-set plan, and developers figure out the codes and related information as they carry out the process. With a laid out plan of the process, there is a little flexibility, however you have an idea about how the app will turn out to be or what will be the costs from the beginning. 

Agile development process is more flexible, but costs can go up as the development progresses. 

Here is the basic run down on app development:

The app costs are largely based on its defining features, the complexity of the algorithm and the platform for which it is built. 

Apps that are simple and run only on one platform will cost less than apps running on multiple platforms whose cost can reach up to six figures. 

The cost of the app also depends on the company building it, in terms of being built by offshore companies or established on shore agencies.

Also you should always take into account other costs, app updates, marketing while making a budget for your app. 

How much should a website cost you?

Websites are integral part of and business or company. A company with an interactive website will get more audience than a company who doesn’t have one. The cost of making a website varies based on the needs of a person. A simple website with less resource will generally cost less than a complex website that runs on its own hosting server. 

Since developing websites are simpler than building an app, there are two ways you can go around doing it:

Doing it yourself: this option is more applicable for small businesses and independent businesses. Making a website yourself requires more time but you do not need to have knowledge about coding and design. A simple website can be made from scratch with less money but offers few to no flexibility and customization.

Hiring professionals: if your website is a source of most of your audience numbers then you need to have an interactive and complex website with enough customization tools. Hiring a professional in this case is more suitable but will cost you some money. 

The main aspect of website programming is the host and domain name. A catchy domain incorporated with SEO, keywords and brand identity leads to increased traffic on your website and hence will be shown more in search results. Hiring professional web designer and  firms will ensure that your website is able to attract customers through SEO. Yes, it will cost you more, but devising a budget for the website programming and designing will help you meet your financial goals. 

If you are looking for an independent way to build up your website without any professional help, then there are lots of online we template sites that offer readymade web designs at a very low cost. You would just have to select fonts and designs and not do any coding. This option will save you huge amounts of money but if you have a big business or is a multinational company, then this should not probably be your method of choice.

Bottom Line 

Both websites and apps are integral to businesses and services that rely heavily on online marketing and online services. The costs of making apps and websites differ on individual preferences and how they are made. Small businesses or individual services might not benefit from having an app but require a highly interactive website. On the other hand, large businesses such as online retailers are better off with both an app and a website. However, with the recent advances, people are more inclined towards using mobile apps for a better and faster accessibility and hence businesses are trying to transform them accordingly. A cheap and quality app and website sounds unreal and probably is. Thus, prioritize your needs and then invest carefully!

Software Development Life Cycle- A complete process to create an app

Nowadays, most of the people want to depend on technology for their everyday needs. So, it is not unusual that in this tech savvy world, software systems are increasingly gaining popularity. However, for developing an app, there is a need of some precise and careful steps.

Software Development Life Cycle involves a number of steps in a systematic way with the purpose of creating an app. Every software development expert follows this framework in their project. It involves detailed planning on the process of developing software. There’re different models for creating software system-

• Waterfall Model- It is such a model, in which each of the phases is completed prior to starting the subsequent one. While every step has been done effectively, the experts reassess their project in order to know if it’s possible to do other tasks.
• Incremental Model- In this model, the software engineers involve a number of cycles for development. These cycles may be split into some smaller sections. Such sections are easily manageable and experience some phases, which include design, requirements, testing and implementation. A functional software version is developed, at first.
• V-Shaped Development Model- It mainly emphasizes the implementation procedure in an organized way. It has some similarities with waterfall pattern. However, much value is given to the process of testing. The experts write down the testing methods before starting to compose the code.

Different methodologies are also used for the improvement of software quality. As it is not possible to do it without skills, most of the entrepreneurs plan for outsourcing the task of designing or developing an app. Here are the 5 steps we, SYNERGY Consulting is suggesting and we follow these with all our clients.

Planning and knowing the requirements of app users-

This is the foremost step in the project of software development. At this point, the app developers try to comprehend all the needs of their clients and their specific desires. They also discuss about the possible issues, which may come up during the process of development. While assessing all the needs, the developers and project managers also present you with some strategies in order to reduce the potential risks. They record every requirement in a clear way and also show it to you at the time of consultation. The app developers also attempt to make out whether it is possible to incorporate your requirements into the proposed system. The experts may ask different questions to their clients-

• Who would make use of the product?
• What type of data is to be added to the app?
• How would the users utilize it?

Some other aspects, taken in into account, at this stage of inception, are-

• Competitive benefits – The developers want to know whether similar applications are present in the market. If the planned product has similarity with other others, the experts try to distinguish it.
• Integration of infrastructure – It is essential to understand if the present infrastructure is to be integrated properly with the product. This is important for the enterprise apps.

• Value – The anticipated value that may be offered by app to the users
• Mobility – The compatibility of the app to the mobile platform

It is only a basic plan to take advantage of the available resources. However, the experts consider several other factors, including benefits, time, and cost for creating app. Usually the app developers need few months for full development of the product. But, it may vary, according to the project.

Designing the product- UI development and graphics-

At this stage, app developer think of the design of software, depending on the requirements, specified by the clients. The software, which is to be designed, may be new either to the particular company or in the relevant marketplace. Or, in some projects, the existing app is improved by making some changes.

User Interface creation is the foremost step for designing software, no matter whether it is a mobile app or web app. Many people think that development of UI is just about the setting up a website or dealing with JavaScript and HTML. However, it is intended to create the desired interaction of users efficiently.

UI development process is conducted with four diverse steps-

• Research
• Branding
• Development of prototype
• Production

With this structure, there is an increasing need of interaction between app development agency and the clients.

At the time of designing mockups, the UI experts closely deal with a team of UX specialists to classify the interface (Visual design or graphics and Wireframes). The team for UX development tries to be creative while working on visual structure and wireframes. However, they do not know about the possible limitations and challenges. That is why the co-operation of UI experts simplifies the procedure.

Wireframes are exposed as the complete screen design that comprises some sketches in black and white. It displays each screen of the app; however, the process for graphic designing does not start here.

Wireframe may be considered as a significant aspect since it enables clients in concentrating on the interaction of users. It’s a cyclical procedure, and while the clients have approved the layouts, visual designing project is initiated. App branding is the major focus in this process. The experts deal with subjective areas, like colors and related styles. For instance, if it is Android application, they develop OpenGL graphics and input some interesting things that response well to the touches of users. If you want, they can also animate views with the application of transitions.

After receiving the documents for designing the system, the process is usually divided into different modules. And then, the coding works are started. As the codes are quite intricate, the software makers try to be much careful. It is one of the lengthiest tasks, accomplished by the developers. The software engineers consider the result of designing project as the main input to start coding. The major function at this step is to make conversion of design into important codes with the use of proper programming language decided in designing phase. The strong code, used at this point, may be helpful to decrease the hassles, faced at during maintaining or testing the app. No matter, how minor the mistake is, this can cause trouble to the app creators.

From the perspective of business, it has been seen that the possible cost to test or maintain an app is quite higher, in compared to coding process. Thus, most of the experienced software development experts believed that it’s better to give much importance to coding.

Proto type and click through creation-

Prototype can be considered as a simple software model of with specific functionality. This prototype may not relate the particular exact logic, applied in actual app or software. Prototyping enables users in assessing the proposals of developers prior to implementation. This is also useful to comprehend the users’ needs, which haven’t been taken into account in the design of the product. The best option is to develop click through prototypes that have high fidelity and have intricate models.

For more complexity level, more amount of time is needed for the execution of structural alteration. Only the best app developer is able to update complex software prototype at the time of designing it. It is also possible to use the present prototypes once again to develop the true system, regardless of technical feasibility.

In short, the developers generate a clickable presentation by connecting high fidelity models, wireframes and sketches. They are also able to share it and view it through any browser for showing instant demo. 

Development and beta testing-

For the complete development of a software system, the developers make use of different tools, like compilers, debuggers or interpreters in order to develop proper codes. Besides, they also apply their knowledge on programming languages (such as, Java, HTML or C++). They decide on this language, depending on your software type and your requirements.

After the development of software, a Quality Control team is engaged in this process to have a trial of functionalities of the software. When the developers create precise and accurate code, they test out the product to ensure that they’ve met all requirements.

Beta test – This is the most important test to allow the app work in a flawless way. For a successful beta test, some factors, which are considered, include- cost of test, shipping, test participants and test duration. Developers deal with open or closed version beta. The closed ones are usually released for specific people. However, open version are for common public or any interested person. The main aim of this test is to send your app to the actual end users to know if there are issues or flaws while running the app.

In addition to Beta tests, other assessments, done by developers, are-

Unit test- It is a minor testable element of the app, such as, classes, functions, interface and procedures. It’s a methodology, where every coding unit is tested in order to know their suitability. Usually, app developers perform this task to ensure that coding goes with the design.

Integration testing-

 It checks the interfaces of elements and contacts with various parts, including the hardware and OS. This test is done after the integration of two diverse components.

System testing-

The experts test the performance of the product, depending on requirement level, risks and resources of system. It is, in fact, the ultimate test to validate the software. Special testers deal with all the aspects, related to testing.

All the tests are done until the app becomes acceptable to the users. At the same time, validation and verification are also important for successful operation.

Going live and launching the software-  

When the above steps have been covered, it is the time to implement the app. If the app is new, the experts deploy the repository of codes and database. However, later, any change may be done, if needed. In order to track everything, the software development companies use some tools. The database may be exported to the purpose of deploying on another server. In case of app codes, it is better to create zip code for the deployment of your software.

Launching a software system in the market is exciting to the product owner and developer. However, the experienced developers always try to be careful while marketing and distributing the app. An analysis the target market is essential before launching the app. If the app is to be distributed on any social platform, it is important to know the best one that brings you maximum number of leads and customers.

Thus, these are some important steps, which are always followed for creating a desktop or mobile application. So, hire the best software developer to develop your personal or business app.