The Most Common Mistakes That Beginner App Developers Make And How To Avoid Them

The app development industry is incredibly lucrative, and many businesses, both small independents and large corporations can profit greatly from this business. There are many different types of apps out there being released daily, from educational and informative apps to games and entertainment apps and everything in between. Unfortunately, as with every industry, plenty of inexperienced and new developers fall victim to some of the more common mistakes in the app development world. The best way to deal with these mistakes is to understand them and avoid them. To help develop your understanding of the things that can go wrong during app development, we’ve listed some common mistakes so you can keep yourself on course and reduce the number of potential pitfalls in your path.

Not Planning Properly

The first mistake many developers can make is simply rushing ahead and failing to plan their business and projects properly. Of course, it’s understandable for people to want to jump into this industry headfirst and start creating some great software for people to enjoy, especially because of how profitable this industry can be. However, failing to plan ahead can bring your business to a screeching halt when you run into a problem that you just cannot fix. While planning won’t guarantee an infallible business model, it can definitely reduce the risk of you running into these issues. An in-depth mobile app business plan should include everything from market research and budgets to the development process and launch plans. You’ll want to spend plenty of time on this to ensure things go as smoothly as possible.

Allowing Feature Creep
One problem developers run into, whether for a big triple-A game title or a small independent app, is feature creep. This is where you will continuously discover new features you want to add to the game and prolong the development process. This is especially common when you aren’t limited to a specific timeframe. However, while delays are to be expected with the squashing of bugs and handling of unexpected setbacks, delaying a release so that you can add features that weren’t originally planned is just going to kill the hype for your product and frustrate your fans. This is especially problematic if you’ve drummed up a lot of interest via marketing and social media efforts, only to spring delay after delay onto your audience when you could have just released the app and updated it with new features later on.

Not Considering Security

A big problem for new developers is not taking the security of their apps seriously. Today, while security systems are becoming much more advanced and reliable, so too are hacking methods and software exploits. Due to the increased connectivity of software to things like the cloud, there are much higher chances of data breaches and other security threats. Vulnerabilities in apps can be exploited by hackers allowing them to gain access to sensitive information. This can be counteracted using things like application security testing, such as the types described in ForAllSecure’s guide. Software testing can put your app through its paces and flag up any potential security risks in the design of the software, allowing you to work to patch these issues and decrease the risk of a successful cyber attack after you release the app to the public.

Failing To Develop A Good UI

One of the more important aspects of software development, especially things like mobile apps, is the user interface. A hard-to-navigate interface with confusing buttons, hard-to-read text, and broken features are an issue for a few different reasons. First of all, your users are going to get frustrated and disappointed by this, as they’re not going to have a pleasant time trying to use your app, no matter how great the features are as a whole. Alongside this, it’s going to look very unprofessional if your app isn’t visually appealing and the user interface isn’t as clear as possible. If your business ends up looking unprofessional, this could impact your sales and reduce your potential profits. This is why it is critical to ensure that your customers will have a great user interface to use, improving the overall user experience.

Not Communicating With Their Team
If you’ve worked with a team before, especially if you’ve led a team, you’ll understand the importance of communication. Unfortunately, even with this understanding, proper communication isn’t always guaranteed, and many things can slip through the cracks. A lot of the problems that arise during the development process can easily be chalked up to a breakdown of communications, such as people being unaware of who is working on which part of the project. This can lead to certain things being left unfinished or people making critical mistakes. Reduce the risk of this happening by ensuring that you and your team over-communicate and don’t leave things to chance. Consider using project management software, too, so that everyone can be as clued up as possible on the progress of your project and understand who is working on what.