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    How long does it take to develop an application?

    By PIXA Studio on July 9, 2021

    How long does it take to develop a mobile application is an important question that a business owner needs to answer. They can start to build mobile applications for their own products/businesses. Developing a mobile application not only helps businesses reach a large number of users and potential customers but also makes customers know more about their products/services.

    This useful article will help you explore the basic process of making a mobile application. Find out how long it takes to make a complete app that users can use as soon as possible.

    Building wireframe for the application

    Building wireframe for the application

    Building wireframes is determining the hierarchy of the design, you have to work with the developers to build the wireframe layout in the simplest way, easy to use, but the most important thing is to follow the way that your users want to solve their problems.

    Framing is important because if the information placement is not known, there will be no further steps in the application development process.

    Furthermore, a wireframe helps app owners to identify how users interact on a mobile app. So, researching customer behavior or customer insight of a mobile application is also much easier.

    Basically, you still have to describe your desire and deliver the content of the application to the agency who develops your app. For like:

    • Content of the header, the footer, the sidebar...
    • Content of each page
    • Your desire for the interface function
    • Your desire for user interaction on wireframe

    This process schedule will depend on how fast that you and your developers work with each other. Usually, it takes at least a month for this process

    Interface design for the application

    Interface design for the application

    Once you have the content and detailed layout for the wireframe, it's time to start designing the interface, which will be the first step of creating things that your user will actually see. However, those agencies don't specialize in interface design, so they can’t provide this service. If you don’t have your own design staff, working with freelancers is also a good solution to create the best interface design.

    By the way, working with freelancers won’t guarantee the complete time due to geographical distance, time zone,... You should pay more attention to this.

    Also depending on the complexity of fonts, buttons, image layout,... Estimates for completing a mobile app interface design are from 3 weeks to 1 month.

    Check out the interface

    According to some research: a user-friendly app works better than a well-developed app with a nasty look and feel. Your application has a perfect interface on 1 device but on another, it isn’t easy to use. This can happen due to the difference in the screen size of the device or the operating system,... cause a bad impression for the user, then they could leave.

    Therefore, checking the interface of the application is extremely necessary for your business to track processes.

    You need to check some of the following characteristics of the interface of a mobile application:

    Display resolution

    Some of the common resolutions that are considered while testing the application interface are as follows:

    • 640x480 pixel
    • 800x600 pixel
    • 1024x768 pixel
    • 1280x800 pixel
    • 1366x768 pixel
    • 1400x900 pixel
    • 1680x1050 pixel

    Display size

    You must test the application interface on different devices with different resolutions to ensure that the design displays are aesthetically pleasing. Also, you need to test how the app looks on horizontal and vertical screens of different-sized devices.

    Font, font size, color

    Whether the font, font size, or color of the application doesn’t affect on the functionality and the smoothness of the application, you must focus on these factors. For example, the design and fonts of pages in the application must be consistent. Customers who look at the mobile application will recognize it as your product or your business. Building a beautiful design and matching colors is also about building a user-friendly experience.

    Various UI components

    This is the appearance and size of some of the navigation buttons, titles, icons, images, text fields, checkboxes,... on the display.

    In short, completing the steps to test the application interface will take about 2 weeks.

    Develop a mobile app

    Develop a mobile app

    This step can be done meanwhile the interface design is in process.

    If your company or a third-party agency is creating an application interface, you should have detailed instructions on the functions that you created. Programmers will rely on this design to generate background code and develop functional code.

    If the background code (is created by your own team) or the instruction on the application interface is unclear and useless, it will reduce the programmer's productivity.

    How functional code is developed will depend on whether it's a native app or a cross-platform application.

    Some app development agencies like Pixa Studio will provide you with an estimated time as soon as they understand your application requirements. Estimating the time helps you plan the introduction of the application to the customer, or application related.

    Pixa Studio uses Java and Kotlin programming languages to program applications for the Android operating system, Swift, or Objective-c for the iOS operating system. For cross-platform apps, Xamarin, PhoneGap, flutter, and react-native are popular programming languages they use to program functions.

    Depending on the complexity of the application, this step can take from 3 months or up to 6 months.

    Test the functionality of the app

    Test the functionality of the app

    The design of the application after completion needs to ensure the required functionality and consistency. Because mobile applications can access a lot of personal information of users, if an error occurs, it will greatly affect your brand, image, money, and legal issues.

    This process doesn't take your time if the functions are complete and run smoothly.

    Functional testing includes user interaction testing and transaction testing. Some factors should be examined:

    • Conversion speed between pages
    • Memory requirement
    • Battery drain
    • Check functionality to ensure that the application does not "crash" when the network connection is lost or affected

    Launch the beta version of the application

    Some developers make a new app or feature to users before its official release. These beta programs are often called the "early access and test programs" or "Beta versions". Registered customers will have the opportunity to experience these features and give feedback to mobile application developers.

    This process will take a long time, from 1-2 months for developers to collect enough customer reviews and make changes before releasing the official version.

    In general

    To develop a mobile application, a business will spend 3 - 8 months. But the important thing is that if there is good coordination between the businesses and the agencies, it will create a complete application in the fastest time.

    Fast or slow development also depends a lot on the reputable application company, for companies developing applications that have homogeneity in developing applications for smartphones like Pixa Studio, your mobile application will be released quickly.