How-to’ Guide on Developing Social Apps - Prevalence of social networking has opened new doors of opportunities for the social media apps. Here is a handy guide that includes benefits and features of social apps.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other popular social media apps are manifestations of a single thought: To bring like-minded people under one umbrella. Today, these apps have defined the scope of social networking, but it does not mean that there is no room for new players in this domain. Yes, the niche of social media is one of the most promising and continuously evolving. Technological advancements keep on opening the doors of new opportunities for transforming unique and innovative ideas into awesome apps.
All You Need to Know about Developing Social App
Any business under the sun has to build and maintain reputation online, and a social media app provides this facility. On one hand, businesses can stay in touch with existing and prospective customers through social apps, and on the other hand, these apps assist them to develop a brand in the mobile world.
Business Benefits of Social Apps
Let us have a glimpse on some obvious benefits of social media apps for your business:
Expand Reach
As an entrepreneur, you can stay in touch with people through social media platforms. Be it getting a feedback or resolving a query, everything is possible in a real-time thanks to social media channels. A social media networking app paves the way to strengthen business relations with the customers, and you can expand your online reach through increasing a loyal customer base.
Improve Engagement
In the mobile-driven age, customers use handheld devices for every activity from search to purchase. A social mobile app facilitates people in purchasing decision by using the device features like camera, GPS, etc. In a way, it can increase the chances of conversion by improving engagement.
Establish Branding
Social branding plays a vital role in the success of your business. Social apps allow you to establish social branding as you can showcase the business on various social platforms. Also, the app users can expand brand awareness through the activities like sharing and ‘liking’. In a way, a social media app enables you to increase the brand reputation.
Build Community
Social media network brings like-minded people nearer and keeps them together. You can build a community of your loyal customers through a social media app. The community helps you expand the business by attracting new people.
Get Insights
Mobile apps provide useful insights on user behavior. You can get and analyze the user’s data to understand their wants. This analysis assists you to offer more customer-focused services that eventually results in increased sales. How to Leverage the Advantage of In - App Advertising
Now, you may wonder about the features need to be included in a social media app. Now we will have a glimpse of the important features:
Top Features to be included
- Easy, rapid, and secure sign-in and login
- Simple and easy-to-connect interface
- Real-time messaging and group chat
- Advance settings for more privacy control
- Push notifications
- Media content sharing
Now comes the development process. Similar to other mobile apps, social media application development process also involves five steps.
1. Ideation
This is the first step in which either you go to the mobile app developer with a creative app idea or the expert app developers give you an outline of a social media app according to your requirements and market trends. The step involves careful analysis of scope and needs along with a research on the competitors’ apps.
2. Design
This is the most important aspect to ensure the success of your social app. It consists of five other steps namely sketching (build quick and basic structure of the app), wireframing (build the structure of social media app as per business needs), prototyping (build working model for better understanding), and UI/UX designing (build user-friendly interface and app skins for improved user experience).
3. Development
Though design and development processes run hand in hand with the social media mobile app development life cycle, the development process starts after the prototyping of an app. It includes building back-end and figuring out storage solutions. The mobile app developers take care of various technical requirements, user guidelines, and aspects of SDKs while developing apps.
4. QA
The quality testing does not only aim to find bugs in the app but also to test the app for user experience. When it comes to social apps, the special attention is given to the UX because the app is used by a lot of people of different age groups from various locations. The QA involves both manual and automated testing.
5. Deployment
Finally, it’s time to publish your social media application. The submission on App Store is a bit difficult as compared to that on Google Play. Your app requires an inclusive deployment process to get accepted on the app stores. What’s more, it needs the promotional material like video guides and content-rich description to stand out from the crowd.
Also, your app needs aggressive marketing efforts especially during the initial stage to get more downloads. It is fair to mention that even if your social media app has a wonderful look and feel, you need additional marketing efforts to stay firm amid growing competition.
Development Cost of Social Media Apps
The costing of a social media app largely depends on four aspects: Platform, features, backend, and complexity of an app. For example, you can have an app for iOS, Android, or both platforms. Also, you can get either a custom-made app built from scratch or a clone to an existing application.
India, as an emerging mobile app development hub, has the less app development cost as compared to the US and Europe. Here, a social networking app development cost starts from $10,000 and goes up to $50,000. If we talk about per hour rate, the US-based designers charge between $50 to $150 for an hour, whereas, Indian mobile app designers take $20 per hour or more as per the complexity of an app. However, support and maintenance cost is additional, but many mobile app development company offer competitive rates for providing technical assistance after developing a social networking mobile app.
Veteran mobile app can deal with multiple app genres while developing engaging and exciting mobile applications. They have a hands-on experience in building media sharing and social networking apps. It is better to consults renowned and reliable mobile application development to get better insight.
