Mobile applications have transformed the startup landscape. By providing increased accessibility, enhanced customer experience, improved marketing, and taking content creation/consumption to a whole new level, startups have begun to reap the benefits of mobile applications efficiently. With the right approach and execution, startups can leverage good engineering talent to develop globally renowned mobile applications like TikTok to gain a competitive advantage and succeed in the digital marketplace.
However, building the right application is not an easy game especially in 2023 when there are a ton of applications on the boom. Tech standards continue to be raised by multiple platforms on a day-to-day basis, which makes it necessary for startups to precisely identify their target audience and how they can attract their users through a touch screen.
This article focuses on how you can build an application like TikTok for your startup, what are the necessary steps, and how you go along the mobile application development process.
A step-by-step guide to building an excellent application
Your research plays a vital role in building the perfect application for your users. However important your fundings are for the creation of the application, without a perfect vision and a motivated team, there are few chances of it being delivered to the real world.
Budgeting and Cost management
As a startup, it is very important to determine your development goals. Building an application is not an easy task and, requires a team of excellent software engineers. Therefore, determining your development cost and maintaining a budget for this purpose is a must as you do not want to lose all your money over one part of your business.
Studying behavioral trends in your audience and prioritizing important features can help you build initial cost models and pave a straight path for the type of application you are headed for.
Fundraising assists in building the brand image. If you look at TikTok videos, some of them have donation stickers. It is a call-to-action feature for organizations to raise funding. It can help you raise extra funds for application development and give a good head-start to your startup.
Hiring an effective application development team
A software development team is the core of your mobile application development. You need to make sure you’re hiring excellent developers and software engineers to develop the best application for your startup. Some features that make your application stand out are:
- User-friendly interface
- Offline access
- Push notifications
- Speed and execution of the application
- Security
These features can be accomplished if you hire a great software team of talented individuals from different fields of software engineering that include:
- UI/UX designers
- Front-end engineers
- Back-end engineers
- Project managers
- QA specialists
- Database specialists
- Android/iOS developers
Application Design
UI/UX design is an essential component of the software development journey. It helps you to bring your vision to life.
The design step allows you to brainstorm multiple ideas, identify the target audience and primary services, ideate, ideate, ideate and finally settle on suitable features and components for your application. Then you can move forward with the visual design of your application as per your user’s needs. You can interview some of your customers to identify their needs and wants from your application. This can save you time and a lot of trouble later on in the development process.
TikTok marked its popularity in 2022 mainly due to its very easy-to-use interface that allows users of all demographics to understand and operate the application easily.
Choose a Tech Stack for Development
A powerful tech stack is key for developing excellent applications. With the right coding skills and a suitable tech stack, one can build an application as powerful as Instagram/TikTok. Make sure the tech stack you choose makes your application dynamic, powerful, fast, and responsive. A few examples of some of the most popular tools are:
- Figma/Adobe XD for wireframing, prototyping, and design
- MERN/MEAN/HTML-CSS stacks for frontend and backend development
- Jira and Confluence for testing
Furthermore, you can use different data science tools for analytics like TensorFlow, etc.
Marketing your application
Ultimately, it all comes down to your marketing strategies and techniques. Once you’ve successfully developed your mobile application, tested it, and deployed it, now comes the time for you to market it in the best way possible there is. There’s no point in it lying on the play store idle. Try to incorporate different strategies like
- Paid advertisements
- SEO optimization
- Blog posts
- Social media marketing
- App reviews and ratings, etc.
By using these marketing strategies, you can grow your app’s user base and increase its visibility in the app stores. Remember to monitor your marketing efforts and adjust your strategies as needed to achieve your goals.
Hire the best software engineering team for your mobile application
There are plenty of marketplaces out there that you can hire developers from. However, very few offer vetted engineers in a short period of time. You may look into marketplaces like Fiverr, Gaper.io, Turing, Lemon.io and Andela.
Conclusion
To create an application like TikTok, it is necessary for you to conduct research and analyze the trends that flow in the community of users. Study those trends and try to make the best out of them. The best approach to end up with an excellent vision is to brainstorm as much as possible, stay abreast with what iPad and coming trends might capture a large audience, and come up with something unique that backs up the idea of your mobile application.
