Mobile App Development Lifecycle: Step-by-step Process

Mobile phones have reformed the manner in which we work together at a quicker rate than we expected. Be it booking a movement ticket orchestrating convenience, requesting food, or purchasing staple goods and taking care of tabs, mobile applications assist us with managing the work advantageously and productively. In this way, the ubiquity of mobile […]

Updated 15 January 2024

Chandrapal Singh
Chandrapal Singh

Director at Appventurez

Mobile phones have reformed the manner in which we work together at a quicker rate than we expected. Be it booking a movement ticket orchestrating convenience, requesting food, or purchasing staple goods and taking care of tabs, mobile applications assist us with managing the work advantageously and productively.

In this way, the ubiquity of mobile applications is expanding at a quick movement. There are a few huge numbers of mobile applications made each day. Just a little portion will prevail in an exceptionally serious market.

The most recent figures from Statista reveal to us that there are currently 2.7 million applications in the Google Play store ( according to the latest Google Play store statistics), and Apple users have 1.82 million applications to look over – creating billions of downloads every year. 

Organizations that realize how to make a mobile item that offers an incentive to the users prevail upon an incredible preferred position in the opposition. That is the reason the information on the mobile app development lifecycle – that is, realizing how any product organization makes applications, from revelation to delivery and upkeep – is basic here.

We should view what this cycle resembles. 

Understanding the Mobile App Development Process Steps

In the event that you are thinking about building a mobile application, here is a complete guide on the subject. To make it simpler for you to comprehend, we have separated the whole application development lifecycle phases into six key stages: 

Initial Stage

When you have trending app ideas for businesses, it is imperative to invest in the amount of energy to do a legitimate market study and discover the practicality of the venture. In some cases, statistical surveying will bring about the revelation of novel ideas.

The research stage in the mobile app development life cycle isn’t just intended to find novel ideas but additionally to think of the rundown of necessities expected to fix the extent of your application venture. 

Determining App Objective

Successful applications – like most organizations say – solve a veritable issue for users. Thus, the initial phase in the mobile app development lifecycle is to characterize the key destinations or objectives of your application development. 

The most ideal method of doing so is by zeroing in on the issue of your objective gathering. That is the reason you need to begin with a Problem Statement, a short depiction of the hole between the present status and the ideal one.  

Market Research

While doing your research on industries and various domains, assemble feedback from individuals associated with your future application’s market – users, agents, and organizations offering reciprocal and beneficial products and services. Make sure your app is coming up with one of the trending app ideas in the industry.

You additionally need to distinguish your target audience, that is the individuals who have the difficulty you want to settle. This research part in the app development flowchart ought to incorporate the socioeconomics, inspirations, standards of conduct, and objectives of your purchaser persona. 

Competitor Analysis

Analyzing your competitors is a crucial part of your mobile app development strategies. It will provide you in-depth insights into what your competitors are doing and how they are gaining success with a similar type of app you are also going to build, but with unique features and different objectives.

Make sure you do it at the initial stage of the mobile app development lifecycle without impacting the overall process. It will help you optimize your pre-defined strategies and deliver better outcomes when your app is ready to be utilized. 

Building An MVP

Minimum Viable Product (MVP), is actually what it says on the mark: the item in its littlest, least featureful symbol that has recently the nuts and bolts, and just those functionalities, that exhibit your product. Most of the app development companies choose Flutter for MVP development, due to its code flexibility and compatible functionality.

Considering this progression prior to the key mobile app development process steps will assist you with conveying the specific wanted item. Ensure you adjust each main consideration and remember them for the MVP application to match the prerequisites of the eventual outcome.

App Designing Process

The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design are two critical components that decide the achievement of any mobile application. It is a very crucial part of the mobile app development lifecycle that is focused on improving the engagement of users.

ux design vs ui design

UI/UX design gives a visual medium that shows the application to the user and talks about various parts of human interaction with the application. Have a look at the steps involved in this phase: 

Aligning Key Elements

Aligning the most important and crucial elements of your app’s Information architecture is the first step. It includes the data, interface, and functionality of the app, which further will be specified and detailed. Then, the technology architecture and the technology stack will be finalized to establish the detailed app design.

Wireframing The Structure

A wireframe is a scheme of an app. With wireframing services, you can run user journey mapping workshops, visualize the final product fast, and decide what features you should work on. Make sure to include in the process of designing the app as further steps of the mobile app development lifecycle depend on it.

The wireframe will serve as a blueprint that defines your app’s structure, content, and functionality. Wireframes don’t include any visual design elements, which may be distracting at this stage, and can be discussed and refined later, during the application development life cycle phases. 

Mockups & Prototyping

Delivery of the application’s visual plan is called a mockup or a high-loyalty plan. The wireframes join with your style direct plan norms and give the interconnection between different components of the visual plan, along these lines setting up the app development flowchart. 

A prototype is a fast form of the initially proposed application. Prototypes are explicitly required if the innovation is new, ideas are untested or there is a vulnerability in the application development. Choose the most trending mobile app prototyping tools UX design requires.

While mockups are sham runs of the application, models give the “genuine inclination” or “demo” rendition of the application. It very well may even utilized as a demo of the application. 

UI-UX Designing

With your application’s structure outlined and models coursing, it’s an ideal opportunity to utilize the early feedback and will chip away at the UI and UX design. There are numerous things to contemplate here.

Make sure you have initiated one of the top mobile app UI design trends in the current scenario. Most importantly, the interface should be easy and instinctive for your objective gathering – it should be reasonable with the applications they are utilized for. 

App Development Process

This mobile app development life cycle stage covers the genuine acknowledgment and coding of your application. The development stage incorporates numerous exercises, for example, building up the mobile app development timeline, creating different pieces of the code, primer testing, and making the application that can be introduced and tried. 

Front-end Development

The front end is the thing that your end-users interact with. Mobile applications frequently comprise of intuitive user interfaces that utilize the association with the back-end for overseeing information by means of APIs.

Utilize our frontend javascript framework guide for better development.

At the point when an application needs to allow users to work without a network (like in disconnected mode), the application may require reasonable APIs to download and store information locally. This is the first step to be incorporated during the mobile app development process steps.

mobile app development frameworks

API & Feature Integration

Choosing the set of crucial features is also a necessary step in the mobile application development phases. The feature set can be categorized according to the purpose of your mobile and the objectives. Apart from them, there are some common features that should be present in the app, such as:

  1. Login & register
  2. Social media sharing
  3. Search Console
  4. Push notifications
  5. Reviews and ratings

Moreover, the functionality of the mobile app can also be improved through APIs. They play a major role in improving the overall user experience through flexible utilization. The most common APIs are:

  1. Content management systems (CMS)
  2. Analytics
  3. Social media notification system
  4. Payment gateways

They all are very significant according to their roles and hence provide a unique way to utilize the mobile app. Integrating the best features like the top digital wallet trends will help users enjoy the app seamlessly.

Backend Technology Integration

Data-based and server-side solutions become basic for supporting elements of your mobile application by interfacing with an organization. You need to follow an essential mobile app backend development guide to achieve success in your project. This step will play an important role in the mobile application development phases.

Designs and changes could be expected to help the ideal mobile application used on the off chance that you are utilizing a current backend framework. The worker-side items created during this stage should be designed and tried with different parts of the application.

App QA & Testing Phase

Testing is done to comprehend the imperfections in the application and to determine them. However, it might cause the application to glitch or cause other specialized issues. Including this stage is very crucial in the mobile app development lifecycle.

Mobile App Development Lifecycle

It is executed by a different group and has models and documentation to design and execute the cycle. Have a look at the steps it involves: 

Usability Testing

As portrayed by the name, this sort of mobile application testing is firmly identified with looking after adaptability, convenience, and benevolence in your application climate. Mobile app usability is identified with guaranteeing that your application is anything but flexible to utilize and conveys an outstanding user experience to the crowd.

Functional Testing

In this kind of mobile application testing, a mobile application testing guide centers around the practical conduct of the application. This suggests considering if the application is working well-suited according to the ideal objective and if each application’s usefulness conveys the outcomes expected on putting various qualities as information.

Performance Testing

This is one of the crucial aspects of application development, which essentially follows testing speed, simplicity, and quality. It is completely focused on mobile app performance metrics that play a major role in app optimization during the process.

App Launch Process

The launch stage denotes the start of the market period of the application. This could require the arrangement of a mobile app launch checklist. You can do a simple launch with a group of targeted users or distribute it in the application stores as a beta form for early user experience.

Pre-launch Marketing

Pre-dispatch application promotion can be compelling to get the best results. You can specify the starting of your application in web journals, online media posts, and email pamphlets to command however much notice as could reasonably be expected. This step can initiate the success of the mobile app development life cycle.

This cycle can make publicity in your intended interest group and keep them refreshed about your application dispatch. Give continuous updates to the bought in the target audience and pre-plan the launch occasion so they can go along with it also. 

Submission on App Distribution Platforms

The principal thing you need to do before you distribute it is to ensure you’ve designed the delivery to follow all the current mobile app distribution platforms policies. 

Compose an excellent depiction accentuating the offer of your application, and treat it as the focal point of all showcasing materials. Make high-goal pictures of your application for application stores, just as an excellent composed depiction, and other showcasing materials. 

Post-launch App Stage

The mobile app development process steps don’t just stop at the launch stage. It is continuous to revolve around the maintenance phase as you need to take care of every update required to keep your app at its latest version. Have a look at the steps involved in this app development flowchart.

This step is the “lifecycle” part of the “mobile app development lifecycle” that people tend to forget about. What turns mobile development into a success is constantly maintaining the application beyond its initial release.

App Store Optimization

The goal of the mobile app store optimization guide is to drive more traffic to your application’s page in the application store, so searchers can make a particular move: download your application.

The ASO cycle likewise requires a vital comprehension of your objective client base, including the watchwords your potential clients are utilizing to discover applications like yours.

Upgrades & Maintenance

There are a few exercises, you need to zero in on during the support and maintenance stage like fixing the bugs and different issues, reacting to the input, and highlighting demands from clients, just as changing the framework to deal with the developing prevalence. 

App Promotions

The achievement of a mobile application development life cycle is significantly reliant on the marketing strategy. If you are thinking about how to promote an app, the vast majority of the successful applications follow the most adopted branding trends in the market.

Build and execute an application promoting plan to drive application revelation, increment natural introduces, and improve client commitment, ideally by working with specialists to decrease cost overheads. 

The mobile app development lifecycle is a never-ending process, and every process should be handled carefully. With proper planning and execution, companies can make this asset impactful as well as successful in the industry. 

How Appventurez can help to deploy the Mobile App Development Lifecycle?

Initiating the development of your mobile app first needs strategic planning. Here at Appventurez, we deploy the most crucial mobile app development life cycle phases that include every major and minor aspect. We aim for the desired outcome while following the qualitative measures and making sure to produce the most reliable solution for the business.

Chandrapal Singh
Chandrapal Singh

Director at Appventurez

Director and one of the Co-founders at Appventurez, Chandrapal Singh has 10+ years of experience in iOS app development. He captains client coordination and product delivery management. He also prepares preemptive requisites and guides the team for any possible issues on a given project.


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