Connex Apps Services

At Connex Apps we will work with you to fulfill your mobile app vision. Our skilled and experienced team will work with you closely throughout your project to make sure things are progressing smoothly and steadily. Building an app takes a lot of time and effort, but we at Connex App will expertly guide you through so you will get exactly what you want.

Strategy

This is the most important phase of the process as it will define the direction the project takes and where it will ultimately end up. You will meet with our team and we will discuss your ideas and situation and why you are creating the app. In this phase we will define your criteria for success and develop a roadmap to get there. Everything else that happens in subsequent phases will be guided by the decisions made during the strategy phase. The time spent up front carefully building a robust strategy really pays off down the line in saved time, money and effort. The clearer the objectives about what the app is to accomplish will greatly enhance the chances of its success in the end. Those objectives will drive all future decisions about functionality, features, user interface, and everything else.

Also conducted during the strategy phase is a thorough analysis of your target audience. Studying the habits, likes and dislikes of your user base will influence all aspects of your app and how it is built. The audience analysis will affect look and feel as well as functionality and all other features.

Finally, the strategy phase is where we will analyze your competition in order to get a handle on what you will need to accomplish to be successful. We will figure out what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong so you can make the corresponding adjustments to your app strategy. Again, by taking these actions early on, costly mistakes down the line can be avoided.

Design

Once a comprehensive strategy and roadmap are developed, the design phase can begin. This is another phase where time spent up front will pay dividends down the road in saved headaches. Guided by the strategies developed and decisions made in the strategy phase, our expert design team will begin sketching out a user interface, graphics, sound and other design elements. Features and functions will be mapped out and defined taking into account the information from the audience analysis, success criteria, and other elements of the strategic roadmap.

Each screen, menu, button and navigation will be defined in the design phase. Although we’re still not ready to start coding yet, we bring the developers and programmers in early on to consult on technical impacts of various design decisions. If necessary, mitigation strategies can be developed before problems ever arise. During the design phase is the time to identify potential issues and make changes where required. Once out of the design phase, changes become significantly more expensive and time consuming.

Development

The main deliverable from the design phase will be clear marching orders for the programmers on the development team. With a design plan in hand, they will start converting the drawings and mockups into code. A framework and architecture will be implemented with an eye for efficient resource usage and maintainability. All the time and effort expended during the strategy and design phase begin to bear fruit during the development phase.

In this phase, coders will be working to make sure the user experience is top notch, which means things load fast, navigation is responsive, and there are no crashes. They will also be implementing tools to allow continued analytics for monitoring the app’s performance and to guide future upgrades. The app will be incrementally tested throughout the development process to avoid any surprises or problems later on.

Another critical element of the development phase is documentation of all the coding so continuity can be established as the app is launched, maintained and upgraded. Thorough documentation of decisions made about coding and architecture will ensure things continue to go smoothly during the maintenance phase.

Marketing

As you may have begun to see, the phases in building an app often overlap and are not entirely linear. You want to bring developers in early on in the design and even strategic phases, and the same is true with the marketing phase. You want to integrate your marketing plans into the strategic, design and development phases so that once development is finished, most of your big decisions are already made. You will have many of your marketing materials developed such as logos, graphics, copy, and other elements.

Based on your audience analysis and requirements, you will have defined an approach that will work for your users. Much of the marketing phase in fact is simply execution, that is to say, putting your marketing plan into action. You’ll be signing up early users on your landing page, sending emails, tweets and posting on Facebook about your upcoming app and its launch. You’ll be interacting with your users via social media and email, as well as contacting journalists and influencers throughout the blogosphere.

Launch day details will be nailed down and ready to go. Together, we will work with you and make sure you have the most successful launch day possible.

Maintenance

Depending on the purpose and function of your app, the maintenance phase will include fixing bugs, enhancing performance, and monitoring the app end to end. It can also include items such as processing in app purchases. Every effort will be made to identify and find any issues before they become a big problem that users notice. And, in concert with the marketing phase, we’ll be interacting with users and communicating with them to make sure their user experience continues to be outstanding.

Rest assured that Connex Apps has you covered throughout the lifecycle of your app. Our experienced teams will guide you and work with you during each and every phase of the app building process, from the idea itself through the maintenance phase. We will be your partner in success.