Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Your iPhone App

By Basing Jock


Do you really want to build an iPhone 5 app? This might sound like a daft question at first. But I want to make sure that you have fully explored your target audience and considered whether it would be more suitable to launch an app on the Blackberry or Android platform.

By September 9, 2008, VentureBeat reported 100 million iPhone app downloads. Will the trend slow anytime soon? Probably not: the iPhone App Store is projected to hit one billion downloads sometime in 2009 meaning it will have hit the one billion download mark faster than the iTunes site.

I have managed many website and iPhone 5 application projects and one of the mistakes I regularly come across is managers that are too reliant on the designers. I suggest that as part of your initial brief you really look into all the different types of iPhone apps that are within your market. If there are no iPhone apps then simply look at what you like.

Consider why one flows better than another, what elements frustrate you and what ideas could you use to build your iPhone app. Apple Connect is a website used by your iPhone application developer. It is basically a website that holds the details of your app and is used to send your iPhone app binary code to Apple for them to approve.

iPhone apps, like Bank of America's iPhone application, may even make online banking obsolete as we slowly but surely begin banking from our cell phones. Retailers are also starting to get in on the iPhone action.

A professional iPhone App Testing company should incorporate techniques such as Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence Partitioning when testing an App. These techniques are typically used to test functions of the App where the user is required to input something. Again, always check first with any testing company to ask which techniques they will use to test your App.

Likewise, when MTV started showing music videos in 1980, pundits wondered wouldn't bother watching musicians on their television screens. Twenty-eight years later, generations have grown up within the MTV culture, and they expect more and more from their pop stars. Today's pop stars not only need music videos, they also need a website, Facebook page, and MySpace page. Will the next thing that pop stars need to stay hip be an iPhone app?

Already, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Moby, the Chemical Brothers, and others have participated in the popular Tap Tap games created by iPhone app developer Tapulous. Meanwhile, Pink and Snow Patrol have their very own iPhone apps. These artists could turn out to be the trend setters as more and more stars rush to get a piece of the iPhone app pie.

Next, using lots of blank iPhone images, create a hierarchical structure of your iPhone application. By doing this, you can literally show your designer how you want it all to work i.e. click here and it shows this screen or searches this item.

When you set about building your iPhone application the first thing you need to realise is that content is vital. Let's take entertainment and games out of the equation for a moment because by their very nature they are highly likely to get signed off. So let's concentrate on building a utility or business iPhone application.

Whatever you do, don't build it just because everyone else is. Build it with your customer in mind. Do your customers already view your products online, are they interested in your news, do they visit your website to access content that is not available elsewhere, can you help your customers with a problem, do you want to find out what your customers think? These are just some of the questions you should consider when building your iPhone application.

You should be able to ask the Testing company about the experience levels of the App Testers and ideally seek to use professionals with a minimum of at least six years professional software testing experience. If you're not convinced always ask to see the proposed tester's resume/CV. A quick turnaround can be important. You don't want to have to wait weeks for the green light to release your App. So ask up front to check how long the total testing time will be and how quickly any issues found will be fed back to you.

What we do know however is that your customers want information, news, products or promotions in the palm of their hand and with an iPhone app you have the perfect marketing tool from them to access your content and interact with your company.




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