The definition of a successful launch, especially in iOS app development, is releasing a high-quality app that has received many favorable reviews, is experiencing little to no user complaints, and has ideally surpassed the executive team’s expectations. We want to share some of the best practices used for successful launches today, with an emphasis on the development end. For startups, founders, CTOs, or their first QA hire, I hope this collection will be useful.
Table of Contents
1) Feedback Mechanisms in general
No matter the app, receiving input from sources other than your development team or other employees is a top priority. I won’t be wrong if I say, no developer, and certainly no designer, wants to confess that pairing some colors wasn’t the best idea. Sometimes the team may try a little too hard to impress the stakeholder and will allow undesirable ideas to creep into the app design.
A badly implemented feature in app development will result in a negative app review. This is why it’s crucial to get outside perspectives involved as soon as feasible.
2) Appropriate Facebook Group
Build an app-centric team Facebook group and share development updates, prototype details, survey results, and any other possible ways for users to provide input. You can acquire a reasonably diverse range of viewpoints by restricting the users to trustworthy coworkers, long-term clients, and blog or mailing list subscribers. Additionally, you can reasonably be sure to get the views of influential users, individuals who are knowledgeable about app development or the sector the app is built on, and who will offer useful comments.
All of the following stages, with the possible exception of the early core requirement stages, should receive feedback. Team brainstorming can serve as the basic foundation for the requirements and design of an application. This is so that the process doesn’t get derailed in the beginning by having too many participants. But soon after, power user input and survey results can and should be used to confirm the findings of these preliminary sessions.
Forming such a group discussion early on can help you succeed because it will enable you to validate features, interview potential users, and gather input on the functionality of the programme. By pointing out any errors or problems with the user experience, these feedback groups will immediately confirm your work or help an errant programme get back on course.
3) Think About Beta Users
Selecting a solid beta user base is crucial when the programme is farther along. Drawing from an established pool of power users from the aforementioned Facebook focus groups will make choosing your beta testers much easier.
You want your beta participants chosen before the actual app is developed and MVPs are being given. These testers can serve essentially as a free QA staff for a small business, which can be extremely important. Also feel free to get detailed advice regarding a dedicated software QA team of testers for your project.
No matter the method utilized for beta distribution, it is crucial to get input from actual users before the software is released. Users that take the time to investigate and browse the app on their own devices will often find several flaws with the way it looks and feels. Additionally, beta distribution can aid in ensuring that more device models are evaluated.
4) Device Fragmentation Testing
A successful launch depends on your application being fully tested. It should ideally be evaluated on a variety of devices, not simply those accessible to the immediate team. Having a minimal number of iOS or Android smartphones is a major problem for many small firms. Frequently, only two or three gadget models are tested. While these might be able to imitate OS fragmentation, they rarely do a good enough job of simulating the hardware variations present among devices. It can be difficult to install a robust, dependable software given the variety of manufacturers of smartphones and tablets, especially those for Android.
Users that test an app in beta do it naturally and in accordance with how they anticipate it to work. If properly written, automated tests can do tasks that would normally take a QA team of 10 several days to complete in a matter of hours.
Automated testing platforms typically assume you will supply the hardware. In other words, you can perform a tonne of in-depth testing, but only on the hardware you already have. With the right testing platform and a variety of test devices running in the cloud, you may find solutions to all of these issues. This can assist in putting smaller businesses on an equal footing with more powerful competitors.
Automated testing is strongly advised before release. It may ensure that your software is extensively tested on the platforms that your company believes are essential to its success and it can significantly speed up development. Naturally, manual testing is still required because there is no substitute for testing the user interface and experience.
5) Start With Trial Launch
You might want to do a limited launch or staged rollout first when everything is set to launch but you are worried about the response or have nagging concerns about future bugs. Technically speaking, your beta distribution may be seen as a limited launch, but this is not the topic at hand. A staged rollout for an app often entails only making new features available to a portion of users or limiting your distribution to a particular area, state, or nation.
Staged rollouts are supported by Google’s developer console, allowing you to restrict the number of users who can download your app. With a staggered rollout, you may reduce the burden on the servers while also getting input from a representative sample of users. However, a staggered rollout enables customers to rate and review, so it’s crucial to watch out for low ratings in order to identify and address problems before the bigger release.
6) A Different Location Test Market
To initially pretest the app in a secondary, less crucial market is a popular tactic employed by larger corporations who want to either publish a massive worldwide release or a strong PR push in the U.S. Instead of focusing on its target market, the app developer may choose to launch in places like the Philippines or Kenya in order to gather input from more objective customers.
This method, also called as a geographical rollout, is frequently used. It’s crucial to choose a nation whose market is comparable to that of your intended market. Geographic rollouts provide the development team the chance to test the app one final time, as well as with the support staff, to look for any potential back-end problems, or to just look for any features that are not getting good feedback.
7) Support Testing
From a PR and marketing viewpoint, there are various pre-launch factors to take into account. Support and documentation is one of them. The secret to success is having assistance available when your app launches. For instance, if your software offers features that can have a learning curve, a support team can counteract any negative reviews brought on by poorly explained features. Similar to this, it’s critical to have complete documentation and support available both within the app and on your website.
You would be unethical if you did not thoroughly evaluate your support services and documentation while conducting geographic rollouts to test user response to your application. This is a golden chance since your support system, whatever it may be, may address queries from new users as well as those who have gone through beta testing and prototyping and are already familiar with the concept of your app. Prior to release, you must be aware of any flaws in your support procedure.
The time of the launching of your app is another factor. Although this is frequently presented as a PR or marketing issue, it is also a very genuine technical and logistical issue. It is fine to implement a geographical rollout for testing and feedback. To do it accidently is entirely another. It’s critical to understand the limitations of some of the Play Store and App Store default options while getting ready for an international launch.
For an app to succeed, support and documentation are essential, especially if it has numerous features. In order to guarantee the best experience and the best reviews, support must be available as soon as your app is.