What are the ingredients for a successful app? But you can certainly improve your chances of success by following the right principles. Before building your app consider who your ideal user would be. Are you building a game for a certain demographic? Is it for people in a particular country or region, or do you want your app to have global appeal? Knowing your user before you build your app will help you make strategic decisions from the beginning. We spoke to Polish app developer Szymon Klimaszewski whose has become one of the most downloaded health apps from the Google Play Store. He set out to build a blood pressure monitoring app that was quick and easy to use. He expected the app to be popular with older users and this influenced his approach to design. For most people the app is very intuitive and quick to use. Tuyen Nguyen, Mobile Developer Advocate at Google, stresses the importance of knowing the market: Developers should identify what makes their idea unique, and ask themselves what problem they're trying to solve. By focusing on these two things, they'll be able to concentrate on delivering a quality app that provides value to their users. Tuyen Nguyen Mobile Developer Advocate, Google Does your app offer something new? Artavazd Mehrabyan is the founder of PicsArt, an app development company with a passion for photography. Their wildly successful is the most popular photo-editing app on Android with over a million ratings. He set out to build a feature-rich photo app unlike any other - and with that came risks. There was the perception of mobile as a limited platform with limited capabilities. At the time, photo apps were fairly simple and were being created to solve one or two tasks. But we believed they would become more powerful in a short amount of time, and we started development on our photo app in 2011. By combining multiple tools into one single photo studio it was risky, because we were developing a bigger application that takes a longer time to download, and we never knew if users would accept it or not. But it offered users something new, and eventually led to tens of millions of downloads. Toni Fingerroos is the founder and CEO of Fingersoft, the company behind , the globally popular racing game with more than 100 million downloads across all platforms. When he set out to create a racing game it was extremely important to him to build a brilliant user experience; he concentrated on refining the physics engine which controls how the vehicles move and respond. I realized something important as I went through the process of building Hill Climb Racing, I realized that everything should be kept simple. Everything started working much better from that point on. A well-honed user experience can be the difference between failure and success. AdMob research shows that 72% of US smartphone users believe an important characteristic of a good quality app is one which opens quickly, and 70% thought that ease of navigation was important to the overall app experience. Some examples: Here we consider established and emerging methods of funding. Established methods of funding are the traditional sources of investment such as self-funding and business loans. Newer, non-traditional methods include crowdfunding. Our rundown examines the merits of each one. Self-funding If your app has minimal costs then self-funding can be a preferable option. Many developers have success with no outside investment. Park Young Ok, creator of , a game with more than 10 million downloads on the Play Store, is an example. An investment of that kind can make developers or development teams stressed out. This is why I have never seriously considered seeking funding. Bank loans The traditional route for a regular small business is perhaps a less well-trodden path for app developers. This can be attributed to the infancy of the app economy and perhaps the lack of familiarity that banks have with the various business models. Friends and family What better way to measure the worthiness of your concept than by asking close ones to invest? True, these should be the very people whom have faith in you regardless, but their willingness to match that confidence with cold, hard cash will say a lot for your idea. Angel investors Angel investors should be able to offer something valuable in addition to financing: market expertise. When seeking an investor look for those that specialize in app development. In this relationship the investor will likely own a share of the business and may take an active role in important decisions. Venture capitalistsNewer app developers may not immediately think of venture capitalist funding as an option, but VC funds have seen app developers as serious investments for a while now. At what point did you decide your app required funding? At the time, things were working because we had our day jobs so we could pay for the servers. But we had problems juggling our jobs and working on the app. We wanted to take a safer approach so we considered other options. Their start-up was part of an incubator and they encouraged me to join an incubator program and also seek funding. Previously I thought VC funding would be only for really big things, but after that trip I realized that all kinds of apps can get funding. He introduced us to venture capitalists and we struck up relationships with people who went on to become our investors. This can lead to partnerships and give you conversations with lots of experienced, smart people who can provide you with sound business advice. Also, aside from the security, once
