Mobile applications have become an essential part of nearly any business today, but it’s not so easy to build a successful one. The most important part is a good and reliable team, which will be 100% involved in the project, but even the best team will not be enough if their process is wrong. Everything starts with design and development, so it’s worthwhile to follow a few good tips that will simplify both phases and make your life easier.

1. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel

There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from existing apps, designs, and interface solutions. There are some resources that enable you to get started without installing tons of applications:

• http://www.mobile-patterns.com/
• http://pttrns.com/
• http://inspired-ui.com/
• http://www.mobilepatterns.com/
• http://www.appreciateui.com/

2. Find your target user

It’s important to be up-to-date with current trends in the mobile market, know which platform is selling more, which platforms are problematic, and which is the most stable. There are a lot of reports, like those prepared by the Gartner Institute, but it would take a lot of time to analyze them all. Luckily most of them are available as a aggregated data on Wikipedia:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system

3. Prepare interactive mockups

It’s much easier to collaborate on electronic versions of mockups than on sketches made on paper. There are a lot of free to use tools. Some of them are even web-based and enable easy sharing:

• https://gomockingbird.com/
• http://www.justinmind.com/
• http://balsamiq.com/

4. Pay attention to feedback

Comments from users are a great source of information. Reading comments on existing apps will let you know what users like and what you should avoid to not annoy them. Also tracking habits of your future clients is important. In this case, it’s worth using one of these tools:

• http://www.google.com/analytics/
• http://www.flurry.com/flurry-analytics.html
• https://mixpanel.com/

5. Test!

We all live in some kind of “beta” world. It’s so easy to update an application on thousands of devices within minutes that a lot of companies forget about focusing on quality and release apps that are not well tested. Before you release the app to the public, use some tools to help you to distribute it within your coworkers or friends for testing and early feedback:

• http://testflightapp.com/
• https://rink.hockeyapp.net/