How to build a better application

Currently, the author of the famous media man Jessica E Leysin (JESSICA E. Lessin) has made its own comments on the application development industry that is now in a fast-growing phase. In Leysin's view, although some of the application development companies are newly established, they still have a place in the current Giants ' application market, but they have to comply with some of the necessary guidelines, At the same time should be careful not to enter the application development of the "mined area."

The following are the main contents of the article:

If you want to be an application developer, your best time is now.

In recent years, tens of thousands of application developers have created nearly 1 million apps for us, and the number is rising. According to Apple, developers at its app store have received up to 8 billion dollars in checks from the company. However, while the field of application development is on the surface, their days are still hard for the "later" in the field because they are often overwhelmed by the weight of large application developers.

Only 2% of the top 250 application developers in App Store apps are among the newly established application developers, according to data released by Distimo, an application-tracking company.

For developers who want their apps to be popular software in the future application market, the following recommendations may be the principles they must follow in their path to success.

Must do:

1. trade-offs

Lock your application development direction in those very useful application categories, and if you're not developing a product that people will open multiple applications in a day, give it up as soon as possible. It should be noted that opening a camera to take photos has always been a favorite thing for mobile device users, and that's why it's so popular with picture-sharing apps.

"About 80% of the application scenarios were eventually discarded," said Letterpress Brezit, a former Apple graphic engineer and the iOS platform Scrabble developer, Tweetie, a Third-party client who was bought by Twitter. So that they can focus more on those more user-viscous application development work.

2. Basic knowledge

Now, you no longer need to be an excellent programmer to develop an application. In the case of Apple, the company provides developers with a development tool called Xcode, which allows developers to easily complete an application development effort. But as an application developer, it's still important to learn programming techniques such as C and C, because mastering some basic programming languages may help you improve the resource usage or power consumption of the application you are developing. For those who are not yet familiar with programming languages, the advice of many development engineers is to "learn by doing while applying the development process." In addition, you can read related books through the Internet.

3. Don't annoy users

App search Engine Quixey CEO Tommel-Kagan (Tomer Kagan) said: "The most direct way to annoy users is a application in the loading of data at the same time only for the user to show a static picture, we recommend a broad range of application developers for their application of the loading screen to add" progress bar Or the form of animation to continue to attract users ' attention. Also, these elements make your application more playful and fun. ”

4. Improve the testing process

The difference between the application and the Web page is that the former cannot easily make changes to the program after the user has downloaded it, so the application developer needs to make the best of it in the first place. The way to make sure that this is done is to fully test the application before it is released, such as the TestFlight App Inc. 's main business is to help application developers to test their applications to the testers before they log in to the App Store.

"Developers can start testing in smaller markets (such as in Europe or Canada) because developers have only one chance to launch an application," Misha-Lyalin, chief executive of ZeptoLab, a well-known game-cutting rope developer, suggested.

5. Cross-Marketing

After an application has been developed, the developer is only doing half the work, because you also need to advertise the application. In this regard, developers believe that "with other applications to cross publicity is the best way to promote." If the same app developers have a variety of apps, they need to make sure that each app has an icon or banner to attract users to download other apps from the company. Alternatively, you can use these mobile application crossover services such as Chartboost, Playhaven, and applifier to advertise in similar applications.

Not to do:

1. obstinately

The days when app developers only need to choose between "free" and "paid" apps are gone, and now app developers are starting to mix the two business models. For example, they may publish apps in a free form and then allow users to buy them in their applications. Alternatively, they can charge users when they need to unlock more features in the application.

Child Applications Toca Boca AB developer Jack Nadin (Jack Nutting) advises developers to convert application patterns from time to time between "free" and "paid". For example, the company's Toca Hair salon application was free within 12 days of the release, helping the company accumulate a very high volume of downloads. At the same time, such practices have prompted users to buy other paid applications from companies that advertise within the app, and eventually create a lot of profits.

2. "One-stop" solution

At present, the most troublesome problem for application developers is that they often need to develop different versions of applications for different platforms and operating systems. Of course, there are already solutions to this problem, such as the application of HTML 5 development and operation in the browser, or developers can use Cross-platform game Engine Company Unity technology to enable applications to run across the platform. While these programs greatly save developers ' time and effort, they also make a lot of compromises on the performance of the application.

"The compromise design has made the device lose its place and the final application has become bland," said Chris Early, Ubisoft Shang, vice president of electronic distribution, who has always favoured the application of customized design for each platform. ”

In this respect, Unity CEO David Helgason said: "Unity of service has great flexibility, and can take advantage of the advantages of each platform." Hergessen ”

3. Plagiarism

The application world no longer needs another picture-sharing app. Under the category page of the App Store, you may be able to find many picture-sharing apps, with the top apps being the big guys in this category, and most of the apps in the back of the list are similar to the first-ranked apps.

Jack Nadin says: "The 2 or 3 apps that were originally developed to mimic other games may still have some gains, but that's all." ”

4. Frequent updates

When your application finally launches the market, your next job is to "patch" and "Update" the application. In the application of updates, we do not have a strict regulation of the update interval of the branch of Iron Law, but the professional application developers recommend developers in the discovery of vulnerabilities in time to repair the application, but must wait for their applications have a good enough new functionality when the update.

Mail client application Mailbox Developer Orchestra CEO Jianrui-Underwood (Gentry Underwood) said: "This is because the application development is completed after the encapsulation and submission process is cumbersome." ”

5. Parrot

When a developer decides to develop a new product, it must not be carried away by today's myriad applications. If your product focuses on digital content services (such as blog products, etc.), then making a Web site is perfect for the job, and you can use the time you save to create a mobile site that can be accessed through a variety of devices.

"You can spend more time and energy building an app, but the effect is probably the same as building a website," says Underwood. ”