Guide To iPhone App Development

Turn that great idea into a iPhone app. Here’s a 5 step guide….

“iPhone App Developed For £99”:  Have you seen the ads that say they can develop your iPhone app for an incredibly low price?  Have you ever wondered what the catch is?  Let me tell yo….. …most of these guys are just after YOUR IDEA!  They have little or no intention in developing your app.  If your idea is a good one, they will inflate their final development quote and try to make it unaffordable.  That way they win if you go ahead with the development or if you decide not to proceed.

There are thousands of app developers out there but very few have a clue what to develop.  Hence the plethora of apps that add absolutely no value at all to anyone.  NEVER, EVER tell a developer your idea before you are sure they are genuine or you have a non disclosure agreement (NDA) in place.  CyberNexus will be pleased to sign a NDA before we enter into any discussions about your idea.

You have a great idea “but” empty pockets?  Most app ideas come from smart phone users who do not know how to create an app and/or don’t have the cash to create it..  Some may have savings to invest but want to lower their risks.  CyberNexus offer three development options.

  • You pay all the development costs and the app is yours to do what you wish.
  • You pay for a percentage of the development cost and you share the app ownership with CyberNexus.
  • You pay nothing and CyberNexus pay you royalty on the app sales.

Now you have an opportunity to turn your idea into reality with little or no cost. All you need to do is contact us.

Not sure which option is best for you?  Read on….

Guide to App Development

Overview

Creating an app is not rocket science.  The steps are simple but you need to know what they are.  Sure you can buy a book, attend a course or use one of the many web based app development programs that claim you don’t need any coding or technical skills.  I’m told that these solutions have worked for some.  I’ve not met any of these people, but can assure you that for the majority it’s a complete waste of time. The main purpose of all these solutions is to sell the book, course or ‘minimum term monthly’, yes ‘monthly’, subscription to the online developer service. In reality there is a very high possibility that after buying the product or signing up, you will realise it’s not as easy as it seems and eventually give up. Of course by then you would have already spent your cash! If you really think you’re going to develop the next £1m selling app after reading a £30 book, I wish you the very best of luck but before you visit a bookshop can you answer one question for me?

Would you like to know what’s involved in developing an app?  I’ve distilled it down to 5 Steps; if you find it difficult to follow these 5 steps you need to ask yourself if you have what it takes to read an entire book on the subject..…

You will need to pay apple £99 a year to be able to download the xCode development platform and publish iPhone apps.  You will also need to buy a ‘Pentium’ chipped Apple computer with ‘at least’ the Snow Leopard 10.6 operating systems.  This will cost anything from £800 to £2k.  If you have a windows background you will need to give yourself a few weeks to learn the Apple way of doing things. This you can do with or without a book.

In this example we are creating an iPhone app.  For creating a non iPhone app item 6 is not necessary.

Design the app: Draw the characters, backgrounds, screen, buttons, icons etc and specify the app logic. This is normally done by a graphic designer or artist. These guys charge £45 upwards for their time. If you can draw and have a black belt in Photoshop you can do this yourself.. Can you draw?.

Develop the code:  This is what an ‘iPhone developer/programmer’ does.  iPhone developers use a development platform called ‘xCode’ to turn the design into a working app.  This is the only bit that books, courses and online developer services cover. They don’t tell you about the rest of the stuff you have to do.  Why would they?  If you knew what was involved you are less likely to buy the product or service they are offering.

Polish:  Designing an app on paper is one thing but using it for real is another.  This process is about refining the buttons, screens and icons and app logic. Making sure that what you imagined actually works in reality. The more experience you have as an app designer the less likely you will need to make wholesale changes during the Polish stage.

Field test:  Ideally you will publish the app to a limited audience to get feedback.  It would be a PR disaster if your app was published with bugs and crashed intermittently.  This process is about ensuring these issues do not happen.

Final Polish:  Here we apply the fixes identified in our field test.

Apply for iTunes Store listing: Yes Apple need to approve your app before they add it to their store.  This is where you find out how good your developer was.  A good developer will develop your app and ensure that the code meets with Apple’s ‘code development standards’.  Apple will reject any app that doesn’t meet their standards and your developer will have to make the appropriate changes.

You will need to develop a website to support your new app.  The website will need to do 3 things;

Link to the iTunes Store

Rank highly on search engines results.

Sell your product.

The iTunes Store format is not great for selling an app. Your app needs to be promoted otherwise it will disappear amongst the thousands of apps currently available. You need a website with sales text crafted to sell your app. The website should also point your customer to the apps iTunes Store entry for them to purchase and download the app. In addition to knowing how to build a website you will need to know something about ‘search engine optimisation & marketing’ (see step 5). Can you write compelling sales text?

I wont spend much time on this step. Suffice to say that marketing your app on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, forums, fan clubs etc. is essential.  For example, posting a link about your wizards’ game app on a popular Harry Potter Facebook fans page will have an explosive effect on your sales.

Every day millions of people are searching the internet for things they want to buy.  All this traffic is routed via search engines.  Google, Yahoo & Bing are the main players.  You need to make sure that these search engines index your website in their database.  You also need to make sure that your website is high ranking so that when the search engine displays their results page your website is at the very top of their results page or as close to the top as possible.  There is an art to doing this and CyberNexus have perfected it.

So there you have it.  A guide to app development.  I hope you found it useful.    Now you will be able to read the many, many adverts for app development products & services with new ‘informed’ eyes.

Here at CyberNexus we employ top app & website developers. Our product sales & web marketing guys are amongst the very best in Europe. We have the entire skill set to design, build and promote your app.

It makes no difference if you are 10 or 90 years old, a one man band or multinational corporation.  If you want to create an app CyberNexus is a company you have to check out. All you need to do is contact us.

Whatever you decide to do, you make sure you have a fantastic time doing it!