10 Step Guide How to Make an App in 2022

Coming up with the perfect name for your app can prove to be a bit of a challenge. Some time ago, I wrote this helpful article that lists out some great tips for naming your app and talks about its significance in the larger scheme of things.

Your choice of color scheme depends on multiple things the foremost is the brand image that you want to build. Let’s list out all the factors that you must keep in mind while choosing the right color scheme for your app.

• Brand image, brand colors (if it is already in place)
• Product line or any USPs
• Target market and your client persona

• App Icon, background and splash screen

One of the biggest advantages of creating an app is that you get to put yourself on the screen of your target customers. Your app icon is what they will see every time they look at their screen. If you have a logo for your company, you can use it as an app icon and if you don’t have one, it is time to create your own logo with the logo maker from Appy Pie Design! The background you choose for your app is important, you can choose a block color, images from Appy Pie, or simply upload one of your own!

Last, but not the least – the app splash screen. This is the screen that comes up as soon as the app is launched. This is the introduction your app users get, to your app. The platform has some great options for you to choose from. However, for an app that is truly yours, you can head to Appy Pie Design and create the perfect graphic for your app.

• App layout

The layout of your app essentially means the way all the elements in your app are laid out. This is more than just aesthetic. The way things are organized has a great impact on the way your app will be used by your customers or users. There are multiple ready-made layouts available in the design customization section where you can choose the layout that you believe will be perfect for your app and for your target audience.

• Fonts & colors

Your mobile app needs to communicate your offerings clearly to the app users. What you write is important, but how you write it and how it looks is important too! In this section, you can decide the colors for each section of your page, like the header, the layout, and the page. The colors and the fonts that you choose for your app define the readability of the content that you place on your app. While choosing the colors and fonts, you must make sure that everything is easily consumable (readable) for the app user.

Phew! That seems like an information overload. Take a moment to watch the video below and learn how to make an app without getting overwhelmed

After learning how to build an app, in case you have any problem figuring out how to install your Android app or your iOS app on device before moving on to the next step, watch the video below for instructions.

Most popular app features on Appy Pie

At this point in time you must ask yourself – how to make an app with the perfect features for your clients. Finding the right features for your app, is key to creating a successful app. No matter how brilliant your idea is, or how beautiful your app looks, if your app doesn’t have the right features to help your customers complete the actions you want them to take, there is not much of a point to it all. Is there?

Here is a list of the most popular features that you can add to your Appy Pie app.

• Directory

This is one of the most popular features on Appy Pie and can prove to be of great one for your app. Using this feature, you can create listings for location specific businesses and give them the exposure they desire. This feature acts as a business on its own, where you can tie up with local businesses and list them on your app in exchange for a fee or commission. Your app users can easily find information they need and contact the businesses they find a fit. Incorporate this feature with the One Touch feature on Appy Pie AppMakr and your app users would be able to contact the businesses without having to navigate out of the app.

The video below is a friendly guide to help you add the Directory feature into your app, easily, and yes, without any coding.

• Blog

A blog is a great way to get your ideas out there, and there are multiple kinds of blogs that you can create. You may be a subject matter expert in technology, entrepreneurship, finance, cooking, photography, or anything else under the sun, blog is the right way for you to distribute that knowledge for the thousands of people looking for this information. One catch here is that if you have a blog on a website, your readers will need to type in your URL every time they want to read something you wrote or you will have to rely on them for opening the newsletters or emails you are sending out. This is why the blog feature is of such great value! Once you convert your blog into an app, you offer your readers an opportunity to make all the valuable information you are offering convenient to find. The biggest advantage you have here is that you effectively make space on their beloved smartphones, increasing the chances of them staying loyal to you.

Check out the video below to help you convert your blog into a fully functional feature laden app that keeps your readers aware of all that great content you are putting out there!

• Events

Are you planning a concert? Are you on the organization committee for the next seminar or even the mixer at school? Anything from a crazy frat party to a big conference for professionals comes with a million things to take care of. The tiniest of details can make it all crumble apart. As an event organizer, it only makes sense to rely on something that will never fail you – an app with the brilliant Events feature. This feature helps you plan the itineraries to the T so that there is no room for error. Combine this feature with Push Notifications and Calendar, and you can make sure that all your app users are updated about any change or new piece of information.

It is easy to create your own app with the super useful event feature on Appy Pie AppMakr. Check out the video below, to find out how!

• Education

Just because you are restricted to a certain geographical area, it doesn’t mean that you have to restrict yourself to the students who can reach you. Let students from all over the world benefit from your teaching by adding the Education feature to your app! You can add a dictionary, give video lectures, create e-books and sell them through your own app with the education feature. This will make education more inclusive, accessible, and easy to consume.

If you are getting bogged down by the perceived complexities of building an education app for your students, here is a simple guide on getting things going by creating an education app of your own!

• Map

With the Map feature in your mobile app, you have the ability to guide your app users to your place of business with detailed step by step directions. Consider this scenario. You have your doctor’s office all set up and have a great app to help people book an appointment instantly with you. However, when it comes to reaching your clinic, people just don’t seem to be able to find your place. Not only is it inefficient and quite frankly frustrating for everyone involved but is quite a disaster from the business point of view as well. Once you have the Map feature all set up, the app users can use it to get accurate directions without leaving your app and reach your place of business bang on time!

We have a step by step video, just for someone like you, who wants to create an app with the map feature in it. Time to get started now!

• News

The world craves information, whether it is about the stock exchange, the latest political move, industry reports, or even the latest celebrity gossip. As a reporter, there are times when you just cannot wait to let the world know of what is going on in the world. Not only do news agencies filter out information sometimes but may also publish your story without giving you a credit. You don’t need to depend on anyone now! Create your own app and use the News feature to get your stories out there, in your own name! This app will help you highlight the issues that you care about, without the interference of a boss, an editor, or a board.

If you have something worth sharing with the world, your audience is waiting for you to give them all that you can. Watch this simple and easy to follow video below and create a news app now!

• Chat

What if you could come up with a way to bring all your favorite chat apps in one common space? If you add the Chat feature to your Appy Pie app, your app can be used for chatting on any of the popular instant messaging apps like Skype, Snapchat, WeChat, WhatsApp and more. This means your app users will not have to alternate between the multiple chatting apps they use to communicate with their friends and family. How convenient is that?

Check out this video and see how easy it is to add this brilliant feature to your app without writing even a single line of code!

• Coupon

This is quite an amazing feature and gives you a great advantage. Using the coupon feature in your app, you can generate coupon codes and promote your offer so that more of your app users and customers are encouraged to redeem them and use your app. Coupons make it easier to promote deals, your offerings, and your app on all marketing channels, including social media.

If you think you will have to spend days, or even hours creating coupons for your customers, here’s a video that’ll change how you think.

• Messenger

This is one of the most important features. Once you add the Messenger feature to your app, you let all your app users interact with each other digitally! Not only can your app users create groups for chatting but have one on one chats as well. Combine this feature with photo and video feature and you will have an app that lets your app users share photos and videos with each other or in groups. Create a safe communication platform for people and keep them engaged.

We have a couple of videos that will help you understand how easy it is to add the Messenger feature to your app.

• Social Network

The Social Network feature lets you create your own social network where the app users can create their own network by posting updates along with photos and videos. Social networks are immensely popular today and you have the opportunity to create one. Use this opportunity to create a social network that has all the features you wish the apps today had. This Social Network app could be as exclusive or inclusive as you wish it to be and you can give it a personalized touch by adding features that make your social network app stand apart from the rest.

Find out with the videos below, how easy it is to create your own social media network app using the Appy Pie AppMakr platform.

• Donate

Whether you are raising money for a local charity, or are a charitable institution, make it simpler for those with a good heart to reach out to you and make their donations. It can be limiting for people who live far away but would like to contribute to the charity of their choice. It is a busy life, and just because your benefactors cannot come down to visit, does not mean your organization and the cause should suffer. Add the Donate feature to your app and make sure that the good work continues.

It takes neither time nor any knowledge of programming to create an app with the donate feature in it. Check out the video to get going now!

• Fitness

Are you a fitness enthusiast? Most people have a busy life today, and not everyone can make time to go to a gym or get a good trainer. You can add the Fitness feature to your app, add all the valuable information about different workouts and equipment that can be used for different parts of the body and help your app users become fitter. Apart from this, you can also add diet plans for your app users to follow and a calorie calculator to help them stick to their workout regimes and achieve their fitness goals.

Find a great and efficient way to help people reach their fitness goals with your own fitness app. Watch the video to see how simple it is to create your own fitness app.

• Hyperlocal

Finding a good professional when you need a gardener, a plumber or any other service provider can prove to be a pain. On the other side, it can be a challenge for these professionals to find jobs in the areas they can serve. Adding the Hyperlocal feature to your app lets you and other professionals like groomers, welders, and others create a profile or listing so that they can be matched with the right jobs. Not only do you get to charge a fee from the professionals who are listing up on your app, but also can earn commissions for every job that is completed through the app.

Bring together all services on one common platform – your very own hyperlocal app. Check out the video below and start now!

• Church

We move from our hometowns for a variety of reasons. It could be a job, higher education, or something completely different. This, however, does not mean that we will have to disengage from the Church entirely. As a priest, it is unfortunate to see dedicated church goers fall through the cracks simply because of the distance. This is why, the Church feature on Appy Pie’s no code app building platform AppMakr has emerged as a popular solution in the community. Not only does this mean that your Sunday sermons will be attended by everyone irrespective of where they are, it also means that you would be able to send important communication to each member of your congregation with just a tap of the finger. Whether it is about announcing the next bake sale, a fundraising drive, a call for donations or tithes, an app can take care of it all.

Spread the Good Word far and about. It is a fairly simple process to create a church app with Appy Pie AppMakr. Watch the video below to find out how!

• Food Court

As a restaurant owner, at times it can become a little difficult to manage every takeaway and delivery on phone. It may lead to delivering wrong orders, missing out on orders, and eventually seriously disgruntled patrons. You can provide the perfect solution to this conundrum by creating a mobile app with Food Court feature that can be clubbed with a delivery management system that lets you add restaurants in the vicinity. These listed restaurants can then add their menus and manage their food orders. The customers can track their orders in real time, the delivery personnel have the option to accept or reject the pick-up. You, as the app owner get the super-admin dashboard where you would be able to get a bird’s eye view of all the processes taking place within the app.

Here are a couple of videos that will help you create your own Food Court or Restaurant app in minutes. Watch the videos and you will be amazed by how simple it really is!

Developers who skimp out on this step have often suffered heavily for it. It may seem that you are saving up on some precious time by skipping this step, but the problem arises when an untested app goes live and is infested with bugs and suffers through countless crashes which may have been avoided altogether.

Alpha testing is mostly a simulated or in some cases actual operational testing carried out by potential app users or independent testers at the developers’ site.

Beta testing consists of releasing the beta versions of the app to a limited audience (not a part of the programming team), also referred to as beta testers. Beta testing your app is crucial if you want an app to function well and we have a succinct 10 step process to help you through it.

Based on the results of the testing process, the app may need a little bit of a change and once you have done that, you are ready for the next step, going live!

Now, just going through the steps mechanically may not be enough. The Apple App Store can be pretty tough on your app and you may need a bit of a guidance to get the app store to approve your app. Some time ago we created a little guide for our users that can get the App Store to approve their app and it might help you as well!

Additionally, we have also put together a set of 10 tips to avoid your app from being rejected by Apple App Store. Apple App Store has, in recent times become quite stringent about the apps it approves and this article can help you avoid the fate!

Publishing your own app can sound daunting, which is why, we have this helpful video to take you through the process in a smooth manner. Watch the video and find out how!

This is where Marketing comes in!

Marketing is not the villain we have chalked it up to be. Even the best of the products needs the help of marketing to get it in front of the right audience. There are millions of apps on the app stores, you need visibility and marketing is the way to go ahead!

Marketing is not a linear process where you move progressively from one stage to the other. In fact, there are high chances of you making errors while employing even the best of time-tested marketing strategies. Here, we have put together a list of pre and post launch mobile app marketing pitfalls that you must avoid at all costs.

Below are some really helpful videos that can help you in your efforts of app promotion. Watch them and find out how you can put your app on the global map!

One of the easiest ways to do this is by sending your app users an email and ask them nicely about how they are using your app. Don’t ask them if they like your app, ask them how they are using the app. When you ask directly if they like your app or how it can be improved, answers may be either vague or opinionated and that’s not really going to help!

The best way to get the feedback from your users would probably to watch them using your app. This way you would be able to identify the app interactions that are not going the way you expected them to. This is a great way to measure up and compare your expectations with the real-world results. In case there is a mismatch, you may either need to tweak your expectations or change your app to fulfil your expectations.

The idea here is to experiment with different actions and gauge their results. It is only when you have thoroughly tested out your actions and measured the results that you would be able to figure out what works the best for your app.

Why should you make your apps accessible?

Every journey starts with a single step and we have seven for you! Though we are listing the seven steps out for you, you need not follow the order in which we have listed them out. On the completion of all seven steps you would have built an app that would definitely be more accessible, developed an understanding of the benefits of app accessibility, a vision of the steps that you’d need to take further, and a clearer vision of the journey ahead. So, here we go!

1. Learn about accessibility: It is important that you develop an understanding about the various kinds of disabilities and the ways in which they impact the users’ ability to use the app.
2. Quick accessibility check: As you are looking into ways to make your app accessible, you might already have a moderately accessible app in your hands. Hence, it would be wise to run your app for a quick accessibility check. In case your app is entirely inaccessible, it probably has something to do with the technology that was used to build it. In such a scenario the app should be reviewed by a professional testing body who might be able to offer you advice on a practical way to move ahead. However if the app is accessible but not as much as you would like it to be, then these steps can definitely help you improve it.
3. Publish an accessibility statement: The intent of publishing an accessibility statement is to announce your commitment to accessibility. This statement will help you define this very intent of your app to be made available and be usable by the greatest number of people irrespective of their abilities or disabilities. It is possible that not all the elements of your app are as accessible as you’d like them to be, but that’s quite OK. Let the statement reflect that you are working to improve the situation and would appreciate feedback from the users or experts in the arena. This will help you prioritize and categorize the changes that are still needed.
4. Provide a ‘Contact Us’ feature: Conducting quick tests and enhancing them on the basis of the testing you do on your app can’t be enough for you to be sure that your app is accessible. There would always be a scope for improvement and the genuine feedback from the real users is of great importance in this regard. When you include a ‘Contact Us’ feature for the users, they can reach out to you with ease and let you know wherever there is a scope for any improvement.
5. Ensure reading sequence is logical: It is important that the experience of accessing and utilizing the app be simple and convenient for all the users including those who would be using a screen reader. This means that the information on the screen should be read in a logical sequence including input fields, the images should have a description, all the controls within the app must be described correctly, and the acronyms or any special symbols must be implemented in a way that they can be read correctly.
6. Create a user interface that is easy to operate: The user interface and the user experience are prime factors in determining whether your app can be a success or not. Though accessibility encompasses a number of different factors, understandability and operability are two of the most important aspects and form the foundation. It is important to keep the layout simple and sparse in the interest of accommodating a variety of devices and operating systems.
7. Ensure text formatting can be altered: This is especially relevant for the apps that have a great amount of text placed on the screens like eBooks, eMagazines, ecommerce apps that have detailed product descriptions etc. the user must be able to adjust the font size, font type, font color, or the background color to make the content legible.

With Appy Pie’s no-code app builder, you can create Android and iOS mobile apps for a variety of businesses in different sectors including healthcare, education, entertainment, finance, ecommerce, restaurants and much more. Appy Pie has a vast range of features such as store, photo, video, social network, food court, etc. to help you build your desired app without any hassles of coding.

Appy Pie’s DIY platform also provides a number of video tutorials that will help you learn how to create an app and add the features easily, along with an experienced customer support team to back you up in case of any issues or queries.

Here is the step by step breakdown of the process that puts to rest the question that’s haunting you – how to build an app using AppMakr.

It begins when a user initiates a request to build an Android or iOS app, on Appy Pie. Next, the Appy Pie server gets this request and checks validation or other build requirements. The server then connects with AWS DevOps system through API Gateway endpoint. Now, the API Gateway puts forth a request to AWS Lambda Function, which checks the request and updates it to the database. At this point, AWS Lambda connects to the suitable DevOps service as per the platform preferences. This means, AWS Lambda will connect to AWS Pipeline for .apk (Android) and to Azure DevOps service for .ipa (iOS).

After building the app, the relevant DevOps service connects to AWS Lambda function and updates the app to our database DynamoDB. AWS Lambda now connects to the Appy Pie server to update the app build. Once the app build is successfully completed, you will receive an email with information about the app and in case of any error the developer or the client will be notified to take necessary action.

At the end of the process, you get apps that are ready to go live on app stores of your choice without having to worry about maintaining native SDKs. Appy Pie AppMakr does all the work for you and builds your app in the cloud using the most up-to-date SDKs for the platform you chose to publish your app on. The best part is that we can help you create apps that are supported on multiple platforms. This means no matter which app store your target audience prefers, you can tap them with great efficiency. The platform lets you build apps in minutes, reducing your time to market and giving you the worm that only the early birds get!

Take the quiz

Now that you know the entire process of creating an app with Appy Pie AppMakr, let’s see how much you have really learnt. Take the quiz below and if you get the right score, you can earn a certification in app development from Appy Pie. What is the hold up? Get going now!

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