A Step By Step Guide To Launching An App

You’re on this side, because you’re curious about the fascinating idea behind launching an app. While everyone mumbles the age old saying “Curiosity killed the cat” I would like to invite you, my dear friend to take a jet trip with me as we brainstorm this question. (After all, we never did see the witnesses to the case, did we?)

Now, while there may be a lot of courses, seminars (and other bunch of stuffs I would rather not think about) involved with launching an app, we would like to focus on the first and most important aspects to be taken into consideration before launching an app.

What To Know/Do Before Launching An App

Imagine trying to, let’s say build a house. What is the first thing you want to do?

• Get the land
• Lay the foundation
• Hire workers

Though option B and C are valuable points, they are not the first things to do, which is to get a plot of land. This step involves a lot of thinking and planning like; what’s my budget? What’s the location? What am I building on the land? If it’s for a business, is my client percentage high in this topography? This technique is relatable to launching an app, as getting a land is equivalent to setting goals before launching an app.

1. Set Defined Goals

There are thousands of apps online and one of the ways to make yours stand out, is to not just have goals but defined ones too. It is important to know what you plan to achieve with the app, who your audience are, does it appeal to them? Ignoring this step, leads to misconception which in turn leads to irrelevance of the app. Breaking this down with a scenario, what comes to mind when you see a burger sign in front of building? Food, right? Before reading the rest of the description of the price list and everything, the first thought is ‘food’. Your goals are like the first sign people see they look at your app, they are expression of what you have in mind to sell to the public.

2. Have A Branding Strategy That Works

Like the instance I gave with the burger, the visuals of the app should be able to interest your customers to take the next step of knowing more. Over 50% of people downloading an app, don’t have the time to read through the use of a particular app, they just look at it, probably nod and say “this is what I want” and you ask yourself, how do they do that? The graphics logo of any app you want to launch must bear an easy, defined explanation of what you’re selling. Also, the colour theme is important in app launching, colours are also expressions and it is necessary that you use bright and attractive colours as well as dark depending on theme that complement the logo.

3. Study Your Industry And Competition

It is important that you have keen knowledge and understanding of the kind of industry you branch into and how it works. This is a key strategy before you commit to launching an app. Researching your competitors will allow you to discover precisely what your competition are doing to increase the number of persons using their app and why they are still using it.  This means you need to add something to stand out against your competitors. Before launching an app, it is wise to evaluate your competition to see how you can be different. If a user comes across your brand-new app among other, more developed and trusted developers, you have to make yours so unique that they download yours instead.

4. App Pricing Strategy

Now this is a very tricky aspect as the reason behind launching an app is to make profit. Thus, deciding on the price of your app is a huge decision that will affect the potentially successful app launch. Determining whether your app will be free or not is likely a decision that comes early on in app development so you have to consider whether you’ve chosen correctly. According to Buildfire, free apps are by far the most popular in the marketplace, people always gravitate more toward an app that has no price fee on it. Most people will refuse to take a chance with your mouth-watering offer without knowing what it is first, and how it benefits them. Therefore, finding the right users and acquiring them affordably is crucial to app revenue.

5. The Right Marketing Plan

How are you going to capture the attention of your target audience? The marketing strategy is very important to launching an app. You have to figure out how to get the word out. Don’t just put faith in the technological advancement of the app to help you sell it, you have to get a marketing plan that works. Strategy helps you get and sustain your potential customer’s interest through a series of content and posting relating to your app. These marketing strategies include; advertising on social media platforms, which would help tell the story of your brand better. Also, guest posting is another content marketing strategy that can give your upcoming app gain more visibility, with guest posting you can highlight the features of your app while inserting links that would drive traffic to your content page. Platforms like Google news, HARO and Reverse Google image search will help you find out the reporters covering the app of your competitors and those that belong to your app niche.

6. Create A Landing Page 

With a landing page, you can communicate effectively the values of your mobile app and it would serve as an avenue to get content for press releases. The emails captured using the landing page would help you drive reviews and downloads at the time of launch. The goal here is collecting as many emails as possible up until the app launch date, that is the more emails you have the more people are likely to have an app download when you send out your official app launch email.

With this said, the last and most important step is to know the right launch date for your app, the timing matters a lot to ensure high app success. You need to consider crucial variables like your market busy periods and your competitors as well. It is important to consider the context of your app, however, there are some stats you can find that indicate which time and month are best to launch.

7. Ready For App Launch

So now my dear friends, going through this article should point you in the direction of the type of questions you should be asking yourself. With all these new insights, I trust you would be comfortable enough to say “Yes! I’m ready to launch my mobile app” and we are happy to have inspired you.

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