Features Of Mobile App Design

Mobile apps, an established mobile design agency, have ceased to be the prerogative of large companies and brands for several years now. However, with the increase in mobile traffic, when it competes on an equal footing with desktop traffic and sometimes even defeats it, the app is becoming almost as obligatory an attribute of business as a personal website or an online store.

No one is surprised by an app on a mobile design agency from a city roll delivery service, a regional cab company, or a fitness center chain. Therefore, the relevance of clever and modern design goes to a new level.

Why You Need a Mobile App

An app established by a mobile design agency can solve different problems, depending on who it’s created for. Usually, they are developed either for their employees or customers. First, let’s look at the first case.

For Employees

Following the trend of business automation, you can order a particular app on a mobile design agency for your employees, which would perform strictly specific functions and take into account the specifics of your business. As a result, the app established by a mobile design agency saves your employees’ time and save time = saves money for your business.

What an Employee Mobile App Could Be:

A chat or messenger for internal communication within the company will ensure that no outsider gets access to it and that employees don’t waste time communicating outside of work and with other people.
A catalog of goods and services with detailed information on each item and the ability to place orders and make customer purchases immediately.
Tracker to track the movement of employees; relevant to courier services, drivers, sales representatives, etc.

For Customers

And this is already one of the sales tools. If you convince the customer to install the app, it can become a much more effective source of revenue than the website and social networks.

If the person went to your site, looked at the products, did not buy anything, and just closed the page, you will have difficulty catching up with him. So, yes, you can set up retargeting, but that won’t necessarily bring results. Another thing is an app on a mobile design agency. With it, you can regularly send personalized push notifications to the user with promotions, special offers, and just reminders about yourself.

Mobile App Design Tips

However, for an app on a mobile design agency to reach its full business potential, it must be user-friendly, pleasing to the eye, and understandable. Proper design can help with this. So we’ve put together a list of tips and rules to help make the design practical.

Design Tips

On the first screen, show the principal value. It is crucial to engage users and keep them coming back to your product from the first moment. Include on the home page your key benefits that help sell your product. Highlight the key features. There shouldn’t be much text — a minimum of water and a maximum of usefulness.

Also, be sure to add a specific call to action. Ideally, you should not add abstract appeals to the button — “start,” “try.” Instead, better make them clear — “choose a pizza,” “find an office,” “book a table,” “order a specialist,” etc.

Simpler — Means Better

Do not complicate the interface design’s numerous details and elements, even if they seem beautiful. Mobile devices, even tablets, do not have such a big screen as personal computers and laptops, so they only distract attention, and it’s hard to focus on the main thing.

The design should be such that the user should perform as few actions as possible to achieve their goal: a minimum of pressing buttons, a minimum of reading text, etc. Creativity is good, but only as long as it doesn’t interfere with the user experience.

The same, by the way, applies to functionality. There is no need to overload the product with functions that are unnecessary for it. It’s better to do the bare minimum required, but make sure it works smoothly.

Use the Proven Techniques

It so happens that users are used to specific rules in the design. For example, it’s essential that familiar buttons are tight and that icons for standard functions are the same everywhere. It should be taken into account when developing the design. Why reinvent the wheel if proven techniques already work well?

Suppose you make a super beautiful design, but it will be incomprehensible to the user. In that case, it’s a pittance because the main criterion of quality here — not visual appeal, but usability and positive user experience.

Tune in to Your Audience

It is desirable to know your target audience to adjust your design for them. Consider all the parameters you know: age and gender, preferences and interests, most popular other services. Knowing this data will make it easier for you to model the user journey and determine their expectations and desires for the interface.

Answer the question for yourself: why does the user go to the app? Based on that answer, develop your design. Figuratively speaking, if a person goes there to order a meal, the functionality for this action should be located immediately on the main page.

Pay Attention to Fonts

We dealt with working with fonts in detail in the article “How to choose fonts for the site. However, fonts are essential in standard websites and the interface of services for the phone. In this case, it is better to choose fonts without serifs (such dashes at the end of the letters) because fonts with serifs are often used in long texts, and this content is usually negligible.

Fonts should be in harmony with the overall design to complement it and emphasize it. Steer clear of handwritten and overly creative fonts — use simple options with legible characters.

Give Feedback on User Actions

Any action you take in the app on a mobile design agency should respond: open a new screen, report a successful activity, report a bug, etc.

Synchronization with the Site

If you can’t put all the content on the app and you redirect the visitor to your leading site in different situations, this transition must be comfortable for him. The mobile version of the site and app on a mobile design agency should be similar: the same color scheme, the same arrangement of elements.

Add Emotion

To increase the visual impact on the visitor, add emotionality to your design. You can do this primarily with the help of colors. Different colors are known to associate people with other emotions. Take advantage of this to cause visitors to have the correct associations.

Test And Again Test

Be sure to test your design on different people, preferably close to the target audience. What looks good to you might make users uncomfortable. Work through all the allowable user scenarios to avoid mistakes.

Compatibility

Make sure your app on a mobile design agency works correctly on most devices and operating system versions. If you don’t have a super complex product, it’s perfectly possible to make older smartphones support it, too. The wider the compatibility, the wider the reach of potential customers.

Shorten the User Path

Ideally, User Path should solve any task in the service with no more than three clicks. If it takes you more than five clicks to achieve a result, then your design is terrible. Good design is ergonomic. It means that a person spends a minimum of effort to achieve their goal in it.

Adjust the Type of Keyboard for the data you enter

If you’re asking a person for their phone number, you don’t need to open a text keyboard with just letters when they click on the field.

Sign Interface Elements

To prevent the user from getting confused, additionally, sign each icon. Otherwise, he’ll have a hard time finding the information he needs. Instead, he’ll blindly poke at all the sections and get annoyed.

Designing a mobile app is much different from designing a website. Here it is essential to consider the peculiarities of a smaller screen and the narrower goals of the user. We advise sticking to minimalism and carefully working out the user’s path in design.

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