How Long Does It Take to Build an App in 2021?

In recent years more people choose mobile devices over desktop format, many businesses consider developing an app or websites. It sounds simple and many people would like to build an app.

Mobile app development has become a must for every business nowadays. They are predicting that in this competitive stage where most people spend their considerable amount of time on mobile, it is basic to appear before them in digital form. The conflict arises when they put their step forward to build an app. Since, for most of them, the whole app development ecosystem is incongruous. They don’t know the cost, technology, and the idea about the timeline for a mobile app development project.

The timeline is very important. Most of the clients ask us about the project completion time and app development cost on their first question in calls. Since these late changes make app development more difficult and take more time for completion, it costs more to the clients. On the cast side, some clients had always been clear on their necessities and had seen their final project delivery on time with optimum cost.

Steps to build an app

Time taken for mobile app planning

The first thing is to decide an app idea and who is your app develops partner these two things are primarily important. You must take some time to create a brief about your mobile app idea. It will allow your developers to understand your customers, define the business target, and decide necessities while designing the app. Creating an accurate brief for mobile app development takes some time.

Build an app - planning

Design sprints (2-3 weeks)

Designing an app is also taken time, Once you start your app development project and then after your company starts working on the design process. If you have a clear cut idea about the design of your app development company then it will consume less time.

Mobile App Design

Contrary, if designers have to work on designing from blemish and deliberate the idea, then it may take far more weeks in this process. This is the next step where they start wireframing.

It helps them understand how a user will handle through the app and how many screens a specific mobile app will have. These wireframes are sent to developers and clients for approval and the design method moves one step further. Designers create icons, background, logos, and decide on the font for the app on this stage.

Development (11-13 weeks)

One of the most time consuming yet essential parts of the app development is the development stage. Spotless coding is the keystone of any app’s success. And to have that error-free code, accurate planning and timeline should be discussed before hopping onto the coding. Developers usually work on “Dart” or “Discovery”. They divide the parts of the project as per their ability and start their work. There are two kinds of developers Backend and Frontend. 

App Development

Backend development

Now, whilst backend developers code and promote the systems, the work on the frontend side has already been started. The reason behind not starting the front end development before backend development is decreasing the overall timeline for the mobile app development process. 

  • Data storage: Commonly, app development companies quickly start at the database stage and work forwards.
  • User Management: At this stage, users’ registration process, authentication, and password management are addressed here.
  • Server-side logic: It characterizes the flows promoted by the application server and the process of approaching the user’s request came from UI.
  • Data Integration: Developers assassinate processes and logic to extract, transform, and distribute data across one or more data locations from a variety of sources.
  • Push Notification: The work is done for sending notifications to the user’s device from the server. Remember not every app needs this feature.
  • Versioning: It allows the back end developers to work on a new version without disturbing the existing one.

Front-end development

  • The server is in establish and the structure of the database is a fix– the development team starts working parallelly on the frontend side or the mobile application itself. 
  • The front-end developers generally maintain the tasks that enable functionality from 6 to 8 weeks. Programmers use frameworks like Swift, Objective – C, and Java to make separate versions for the App Store and Google Play.
  • In the frontend, caching is make for temporary data storage. generally, the application’s data is stored in the caching to decrease the loading time of the app thereby removing the necessity of calling the server.
  • The internal testing is done at the frontend part to make sure that everything is alright and working properly.

Testing (2 weeks to 3 weeks)

Once the development part is over from the developer side, testing the app is a very essential part, because we make sure Whether the app is working as expected or not. Testing is discovering bugs and glitches that could threaten your app performance if not properly tested.

Usually, Quality Analysis works on fundamental testing called “Alpha testing” to eliminate some elementary bugs and complexity during this stage before undertaking to the next level. The beta testing is done and the app is made accessible to a few selected users. At last, the final testing eliminates all the imperfection from the mobile app and the app goes to the app stores for public use.

Deploying to the app store (Up to 1 Weeks)

Yah finally, you have developed an app. The Next step is to go to the market. There are a few steps to be followed for displaying your app for the users in the app stores. Apple play store and Google play store have a more harsh submission policy. if you don’t want your app to get rejected, you must follow the terms and conditions of the app store. Additionally, it will also create extra time to your project timeline.

How to shorten the app development timeline

If you want to launch your app as soon as possible and go live in the market before anybody capture your idea. Let’s drop some light on that and know how to decrease the timeline for establishing a mobile app.

Create MVP for your app

Minimum Viable Product allows you to test your app in the market with only its lots of functionality. If your idea is innovative and early adopters like your idea, you could always go further and add extra cool features to make your app more impressive and profitable.

The MVP timeline for app development is lesser compared to fully displayed mobile apps. So, it is recommended to head for MVP app development, if you are not sure or want to go to market ASAP with your product.

Go for cross-platform

There is an approach to decrease the total time for app development and that is Cross-platform app development. Cross-platform development permits developers to code an app only once for both the platform. Almost all the code is recyclable and similar. So, you can develop an app in less time without agreeing to user experience.  Apart from that, you could develop your app on several platforms. like Google and Facebook have come up with their cross-platform technologies called Flutter and React Native commonly, the preference towards these platforms has increased.

White label solution of clone apps

With these white-label clone apps, you can simply get an application similar to famous apps in the market in a week or so. In these services, the data layer of the app remains the same, but it is possible to edit the frontend. You can personalize your UI of the app according to your ideas. So generally, you receive a ready-to-use app, to which you can slab your own brand identity.

So, to decrease the app development time white-label apps can be a perfect option. Apart from these techniques, make sure while you are discussing your project with the developers at a starting stage, be clear on your idea. Because late additions of the different performance will disturb the development process and extend the app development time.

Conclusion

Developing an app is a difficult process. Some complex applications will have more advantages and functionality. Also, the design will be more complex. Some simple app takes only 2-3 months to build. This blog will help you to plan and manage the timeline to build an app development in 2021.