If you’ve ever found yourself seriously thinking about building a mobile app, but have no idea where to even begin, this post is for you! In a world where it seems like everyone has an app idea, the truth of the matter is that there is plenty of room for innovation and new ideas in the marketplace. But to take your idea and make it a reality, you’ll need to keep the following in mind.

First: Market Research

At Oak City Labs, we’re passionate about market research and strongly believe that it is the key to your success. Before writing the first line of code, it’s important to make sure that your idea is fully thought through. And while market research is definitely the most strategic route to take when your app is still just an idea, it’s also the route that can end up saving you money in the long run.

To take that first step in getting your app idea off the ground, begin by doing some free research. That’s right: FREE! Using everyone’s trusty friend Google, you can find information showing you what your app idea’s total addressable market (TAM) could be. Along the way, you’ll find competitors and possible features. You’ll also start to refine what your app idea is and what makes it unique. We also encourage those in this stage of the process to talk to people and conduct Voice of the Customer surveys and, ultimately, create a value proposition statement. The goal with all of these steps? To help you refine your app idea, discover what makes your idea unique and set you up for success as you begin the process of building the app.

Next: Partner

After doing your fair share of research and being confident in your decision to move forward with building your app, it’s time to find a partner that can help bring your idea to life. When looking for a development company, we encourage you to prioritize the following:

  1. Reputation: How experienced is the development team? How many apps or custom software projects have they led or developed before? What do their clients have to say about them?
  2. Relationship: How are they planning to communicate with you throughout the project? Will there be weekly check-in calls? Will they help you flesh out your idea strategically, advise of feature prioritization, consult with you on growth strategies and more?
  3. Results: Are they going to be able to solve your problem? Is this partner able to help you achieve the results you’re looking for?

We created Oak City Labs to answer a lot of these questions – to give you the missing pieces to transform your app idea into a real, quality product that makes a difference. Our team has spent decades in diverse roles across multiple leading tech companies. From this experience, we understand how to deliver on all facets of the app creation process – from the technical considerations, to project management, to product-market-fit, and all the important questions you might not think to ask. We’ve learned these lessons so you don’t have to.

We know how all of the pieces of development fit together so we bring a fully informed approach to your final product. By building strong client relationships – guiding you through every step, valuing your feedback, and collaborating on the process with you – we craft the well-designed, marketable app that you want to build.

Then: Build

Assuming you’ve properly validated your app idea and selected the best strategic partner, it’s now time to begin building your app. The process involved can include everything from wireframing and user testing, to visual and interaction design depending on your specific needs.

At Oak City Labs we make sure to have a full feature list in place before beginning development. Then we prioritize the feature list to ensure that the most important things are built first. If budget or time becomes an issue, we always want to ensure that your high priority needs were taken care of in the beginning.

As development proceeds you should expect lots of testing through frequent beta builds provisioned by the development company to your device. And you should expect lots of testing on their end too.

Don’t Forget: Marketing

It would be easy to wrap up this post with the next step and call it a day. But the truth is that successful apps won’t take off and have a hope of succeeding if there isn’t a marketing plan in place. While your app is in development (and, quite honestly, long beyond that), you should be working on and executing your marketing plan. From a website to social media, and even press kits, your marketing plan can make or break your app’s chances for success.

Finally: Launch (& Rinse and Repeat)

It’s the finish line! Well, sort of. At the completion of the build and testing phase of the project, it will be time to launch your app and we’ve created a whole checklist to make this process successful here, here and here.

Once that first release hits the store, you should celebrate! What an accomplishment! But keep in mind that it’s really just the beginning. Following the launch, your app will need to be nurtured on an ongoing basis if you hope to grow your audience (and therefore your business!). You’ll need to address bugs, add new features, adapt to new technology challenges and much more.

As with any business idea, there’s a lot that goes into going from an idea to a bona fide product. At Oak City Labs, we love helping entrepreneurs make their ideas a reality. If you have an idea and think we’d be a good partner for you, we’d love to chat!