Building an Android App: 3 Killer Principles to Consider

Android apps are continuing to remain hot as the so-called difference in respect of earning potential for Android and iOS is continuing to decrease. But still, the vast majority of Android apps do not earn enough as they are often not built without pitfalls or non-user centric design. While there have been too many talks on building a great Android app, it is important for every Android app including the small single function apps or Android instant apps to focus on the fundamental principles. Let us introduce here three killer principles every Android app should practice. 

Developing app for your target audience

This is rather a principle and not a technique. Though everyone claims to build an app for their users, they end up taking users for granted. First of all, you need to know who are your target users and then should know their preferences and user behavior in detail. Follow these simple steps to make sure your new Android app is built for the users.

Create user persona based on your existing customer and audience in other channels.

• When creating user persona, you can also take help from the analytics and insights on social platforms. By analyzing your audience behavior and engagement level, you can quickly know who can be your target users.
• You can also analyze the competitive apps and their audience to have a clear idea about the audience you need to address.
• When you have at least a gross idea about your target audience, you can then ask create a questionnaire and survey to know about the app they are going to prefer and the respective reasons for them.
• Building a user-centric app may require several rounds of fine tuning and updates before coming with the app engaging your target audience easily.

Avoid common drawbacks concerning app performance

Android as a development platform comes with a few common pitfalls that often lead to major app drawbacks. Knowing where most Android apps fall short of app performance, you can make optimize your app performance. Let’s look at the common mistakes that terribly affect the performance of an Android app.

• App is consuming too much battery: This is one area that every app should take into consideration. No user likes to run out of battery power by spending time in an app. If this continues, there are chances that users will delete the app.
• App not tested across different screen sizes: This is a common and much-discussed issue which is still a problem for many apps. There are practically thousands of Android devices presently in the market including smartphones and tablets. The app should be tested to meet the requirement across various screen sizes.
• The app is not syncing across devices: What is the reason for success for all major note taking and document creating apps? Just think of the Google Docs and Evernote to have an idea. Both the app syncs across devices in real time and offers easy editing when offline and updating the changes when online. If your app lacks quick syncing across devices and saving preferences offline, as per present standard your app will cease to be a lucrative option.

Follow best practices in design

The design is clearly a winning element for any web, mobile or digital interface. The importance of design in boosting user experience of the users is so much that, the term ‘design thinking’ has once again gained new weight in the context of mobile app development and design.

Yes, in respect of design Google has a very elaborate guideline but still in comparison to the Apple App Store the platform lacks strictness in respect of preventing badly designed apps to feature in the Google Play Store. This is the precise reason why you can find an array of apps with below the average design in Play Store.  Do you want your app to see among this underperforming lot? If not, you need to embrace best practices in app design. Ultimately quality design will be a decisive factor for ensuring user experience.

• If you want to make your design user-centric today, the thumb rule will be designing for the thumb. Just because most users handle their smartphones single-handedly, you need to help them navigate with their thumb. Your app should provide all clickable elements and buttons within reach of the user's thumb. If you provide a crucial button out of the scope of thumb, it may hamper business conversion.
• Designing to ensure great onboarding experience is another major consideration for a mobile app to excel in user engagement. As soon as the user comes on board, he should instantly know where to go and what to do to achieve the desired results. You can create an overlay describing the functionalities within an app. Or else, you can help them find the necessary things by offering suggestions in the right time or context.
• Before anything else, your app design must be quick loading and should not deter the user from accessing the needed information. The navigation should work lightning first and all functions should perform instantly.
• The minimalistic and stripped-off design works great and most apps these days are willing to follow this design philosophy simply because it grabs user attention easily and facilitates easier traction. Even if you do not incorporate authentic minimalistic design in your app, it would be wise to use a lot of white space around on-page elements and contents and keep the on-page elements to a minimum.
• As for boosting the chances of business conversion always make sure that the CTA buttons are placed at the right place and are optimized with good color, contrast, and size to ensure easy finger tap.
• It is important to integrate the device level functionalities allowing seamless interaction and activities. From allowing calling, message, mail, open a link in the browser to using the device camera or accessing the media files, all aspects should offer a seamless and unobtrusive user experience.
• Lastly, the app should be designed to take fewer tolls on the device memory. Minimum memory consumption or additional support of cloud-based storage can enhance the user experience and ease of use to several notches.

To conclude, we must mention the importance of testing before submitting the app to the Google Play Store. Besides taking help from automation testing, you need to test the app across an array of Android devices to make sure it works seamlessly in each one of them.