3 Key Exercises for Launching a Web or Mobile Project

The success of a mobile app or website usually depends on how well it has been planned.   

The benefits of having a website or mobile app for your business are numerous and well established.

From simple use as an extension of a business card, to a medium that displays your work or a platform for selling your products – websites and mobile apps are the windows and avenues businesses use to reach and engage their customers.

In this article, we’re going to refer to web and mobile projects interchangeably. This is not because they are the same thing, either technically or effectively, but because this article is going to discuss the type of general planning and thinking that should go on before you embark on either a web or app development project.

These three steps will not only help you refine the idea for your project, but will also help you identify what kind of expertise you are going to need, and will also help you narrow down what is going to serve your business and goals best: a mobile app, a website, or both.

1. Define your goals and limitations

This may seem straightforward, but it can be a very delicate process.

• Who is your target audience?
• How many people do you want to reach with your website or app? What do you want them to achieve with it?
• How much input do you want to have in the creation and maintenance?
• What do you want it to look and act like?
• How much money do you want to spend on it?

These are all questions that you need to be asking before you do anything else. The first step to getting what you want is knowing what you want.

2.  Build your team

For many small or medium sized business owners, this step can seem like the hardest. The demands of running a company are already intensive, so taking the time to search – often to hit a dead end – for a capable web developer can be difficult.

For the same reasons, learning to create a website yourself, and then actually building it, can also be difficult.

That’s where web development companies can come in handy, but their costs will vary depending on where you are located. We might seem a bit biased here, but it is a fact that outsourcing your web development can help save costs and cut timing.

Another component of planning your team is understanding the content requirements of your web or app project:

• Will you need a designer, content creator or editor?
• What kinds of developers will you need?

These roles will need to be understood and integrated into your plan.

3. Take time to plan time

It’s often the process that gets rushed the most – with disappointing results.

Creating a timeframe that is realistic when considering the outcomes of the first two exercises is the second step in the process.

The first step is understanding how all of the different components in your web or app project are going to come together and complement one another.

• Do you need designs to inform your copy?
• Can your designer work without a digital architecture already in place?
• When is the best time of the week, month or year for your launch?
• What kind of speed can your team members work at?

Understanding the factors in your project that rely on other deliverables will allow you to map out a structure for the workflow of your project.

However, the key here is balance: it’s pretty much unheard of that everything goes to plan in digital projects, so building in some time for flexibility and agility will never hurt.

Do you have a web or app project that you want to realize? Get in touch with us to find out how Bocasay can help you every step of the way.