Increasing interest of the current generation in mobile phones and their love for the idea of online browsing have completely changed the way business is done today. From small businesses to big enterprises, they all are shrinking down in mobile phones in the form of applications and not mobile websites. Users find it easy to access information or do shopping through apps than mobile sites. This has made mobile apps more and more popular.
The need of internet enabled mobile apps gave birth to Android application development. No matter whether you have retail, finance or any other business type, mobile apps have become a need of the present time. Every business must develop Android apps for their mobile users so that more and more people can access their app and reach them for sales or information. These apps provide users with the convenience of access on-demand.
Designing an application for Android platform involves different design and development practices. Let’s find out some of the best practices in designing and developing mobile apps for Android.
DESIGN FLEXIBLE LAYOUTS
There are hundreds of devices that work on Android, which vary in screen sizes, ranging from small mobile phones to large TVs. Therefore, it is necessary that application you design should be compatible with all screen sizes so that people with different Android devices can easily access it. But merely supporting different screen sizes is not enough. You might have to face different challenges and possibilities for user interaction in order to satisfy and impress users. Your app must go beyond supporting different screens. It must be optimized for providing the excellent user experience for all screen sizes. You must take care while coding for an app that-
- Support Different Screen Sizes
- Support Different Screen Densities
- Implement Adaptative UI Flows
DO NOT CLONE
Never clone your iOS app for Android as both the platforms have their own native UI elements and can have a major impact on user engagement and conversion rates. You can’t expect your iOS app to work similarly on Android devices even if you dress it up like an Android app. Aesthetics of both the platforms are different along with navigational design and behavior triggered by Android icons. Both Android and iOS have designated style guides that developers need to follow while creating apps for iOS and Android devices. Moreover, the paths followed by Android user and iOS user is different, and if your design lacks the criteria of accommodating these differently, then you will never achieve the same performance levels across these two ecosystems.
DON’T FORGET ABOUT OFFLINE EXPERIENCE
If you really wish to see your app rising, make sure you build it with a theory that it will remain offline for most of the time. Many times the user doesn’t have an internet connection. There could be so many things that can happen, resulting in no internet connectivity. So, it’s always better to think while developing an app that your app has to work offline. It is not necessary that your entire app should work offline. You can make a list of features and estimate that which feature requires support offline.
MAKE THE APP INTUITIVELY SIMPLE
While developing an app, you need to make sure that the user interface (UI) is simple and understanding, so that users need not to struggle while browsing the APP. Developers can add welcome screens/Startup screens for a better understanding of APP.
In this article, we have mentioned a few practices that could help developers develop a nicely functional business app that will definitely attract users. Moreover, easy to use and nicely functional app will positively satisfy users and help your business grow successfully.