How to Build a Good Social App?

Social media market is rather attractive for both startups and well-established companies from business perspectives. With millions of users gone mobile, social mobile apps can generate high revenues. Technologies are developing rapidly making it possible for new products to take their place in the niche replacing some dominant players. Having a new and unique idea for your future social application is your first step to success and users' appreciation.

If you already have a web version of your network, you can come up with an add-in mobile application. If not, we can help you build the app from scratch bringing your every idea to life. This article will describe some crucial aspects of the development process as well as features your users are expecting from the product.

What Do Customers Expect from a Social App?

Every time you create an application of any type, for any OS and any target audience, you need to listen and hear your customers. If you are unable to meet their expectations with your product, it is doomed to failure. Social apps are nit an exception. Here are some fundamental features your users might be interested in the social application:

1. An app connected with other social networks. The full-fledged interaction with the app is the guarantee of success. You will hardly find a person eager to complete annoying and time-consuming registrations. Most of them already have profiles in existing social media. All you need is to connect your application with them delivering a fast and easy access to a new network.
2. A space for self-expression. Why do we use social networks? We want to attract the attention of people around. We want some more space for self-expression. We want the world to know about our achievements, hobbies, interests and more. We ready to share images of our breakfast to get the appreciation of the audience. It is absolutely natural. If your app does not provide the opportunity to self-express, it is nothing but a failure.
3. Friends and communities. Social networks are the best playground to make new friends or enter different communities for various interests. You need to think of an algorithm letting your users invite new members or start the conversation with only one click.
4. Updated newsfeeds. Content always rules especially when it comes to social platforms. Users require regular news updates to keep in touch with the latest events that refer to their interests. At the same time, they should be able to track statuses of their friends and notice any changes in their timelines.
5. Simple interaction. The main problem of social apps that fail is the fact that users quickly get bored with them. If you want to avoid the same scenario, you need to think of some efficient ways letting people interact with other platforms through your application. Those platforms may include dating services, networks for sharing images and other content, websites and apps that provide real reviews and comments. Bookmarking sites or social publishing platforms ma also be a good idea for interaction. The key to success is to provide an interest-based platform that will match your users' preferences and likes.

Now you are aware of what your users may expect from your social application. You can think of some unique features to deliver that experience or follow the example of some leading social networks like Facebook. Just make sure your customers have everything they may need to be engaged with the app and not to leave it after several visits.

Secure Communication

The availability of private communication is one of the prior features you will need to implement in your app. You may build a platform that delivers the most thrilling users' experience. If it does not have decent and secure communication means, it will fail. A social network is not only for self-expression and sharing content. It is also about private communication.

The best bet is to use already built-in services that have proved to be safe and efficient enough rather than building a messenger from scratch. A single process may cost you a fortune. Moreover, no one will ever guarantee it running smoothly on various devices with different OS.

Finally we have a brilliant idea for our application. We have defined the main features and options we want to see in the application. We have focused on a target audience. It is high time we started the development process. It contains some vital steps. Have a look at the structure of the social app development process.

Stages for Social App Development Process

The information above is actually the completion of two first stages of the creating process. We have defined the man purposes and created a list of essential features for the future app. Now we get to the next stage where developers need to built the MVP version of the product. It is actually the prototype to make it clear how the service will look like. It is the best time to make any changes or replacements. If everything is fine with the app, we can start the development and design process.

1. Developing a winning strategy. A crucial stage that involves a thorough study of the idea as well as in-depth research of the field. Have a look at your main competitors in the niche. What do they offer? What are their weak and strong sides? What can you offer to stand out from them?
2. Design. This stage includes several steps. Sketching lets you see some clear outlines for the product. It makes it possible to define the logic for further development process. Wireframing is the essential part of design stage. It helps developers to visualize the skeleton of the app as well as its structure. Prototyping means creating already working version of the product to see how users will interact with the app. App skins design is the final stage of this process. It includes the implementation of UI/UX features.
3. Development. After the design stage is completed, developers start implementing features, options and functions your app will have.
4. Quality Assurance. Testing and quality assurance are the last but not the least stages of the development process. Engineers check if the app runs great on different types of devices with different dimensions and characteristics.
5. Publishing, promotion and marketing. Make your app recognizable to attract as many users as you can.

Now you know how to develop a social media application for mobile devices from scratch. You can hire our professionals to bring your application ideas to life. Contact our support team.