How to Create an App: Step-by-Step Guide of 2025

Key Steps of Mobile Application Development

Working on this guide, we used our comprehensive expertise in creating mobile solutions and implementing AI practices into mobile development . Through that, we not only provide steps, but also share most efficient practices used both by our team and the most outstanding world technological giants.

• 1

  Step 1. Define App Idea
  
  The first development step is the most crucial, as it defines functional and operational specification and influences the following steps of mobile app creation.

  Defining app’s idea, companies should focus on several tasks. 

  Problems identification

  First, you must identify the range of problems your mobile application can work with.

  For example, you create a fitness app that monitors the number of steps the user walks per day, calculates the number of calories consumed and burned, periodically reminds about the need for physical activity or can create a full training program.

  You can also create a banking app that allows you to process any financial operations (money transfer, online payment, bank account opening and closing) or work on an online store app that promotes convenient shopping in a few clicks.

  In other words, this task should be fulfilled to define key app’s functionality and traits that may seem attractive.

  Target audience and competitors' research

  Next task is to define the ‘ideal customer avatar’, meaning to find the category of potential customers who are most likely to download and interact with your mobile app. You should define the region, age, gender, social standing and professional interests of the people you’d like to promote your product to.

  Additionally, your goal is to thoroughly analyze the competitor's market. You should look at the most successful mobile apps in your industry, identify any common traits regarding functionality and design and adopt them.

  Note! Working on market research, some companies can lapse into mere copying of the practices used by their more successful competitors. However, such an approach leads to unsatisfactory results, when business loses its uniqueness. You should always look for a balance between creating unique traits and adopting your contenders’ best features.

  Idea validation

  When the problem identification is finished and TA and competitors research allowed you to come up witha solution, your task now is to prove the solution would work.

  The most efficient ways of idea validation are proof-of-concept (POC) and development of minimum viable product (MVP) . POC validates technical and commercial feasibility of an idea, while MVP allows to test stripped-down version of the product with minimal functionality to gather initial feedback from real users.

  Both methods allow to clearly see whether an idea is perspective or not.

• 2

  Step 2. Choose the Development Approach
  
  Once you have a clear plan on what product you are to develop, the nest step is to choose the right development strategy. Choosing the development approach directly depends on the results of app’s idea validation along with the amount of time and resources you can spend on development.

  Several options are available.

  Native vs Cross-Platform vs Hybrid

  First, you can choose between three main mobile development approaches on the criteria of which platform has the highest priority for your business.

  1. Native development

  A mobile development approach that promotes building apps for one specific platform (iOS or Android) with a usage of platform-specific tools (like Swift and Xcode for iOS and Kotlin for Android). Native app, being optimized for particular OS, demonstrates highest performance while following the platform design guidelines ensures better user experience . At the same time, native mobile development is considered the most expensive and time-consuming.

  2. Cross-platform development

  An approach that provides a single codebase for both iOS and Android. The ability to be deployed on different platforms provides lower costs and reduced time of development, though the app may lag behind native SDK updates of particular OS. However, cross-platform development solutions are the best option for products requiring UI consistency on any platform (for example, social media or marketplace apps ).

  3. Hybrid development

  The last approach implies bending web technologies with a native container. The result looks like embedding a website into native app shell . Therefore, hybrid development is the most cost-efficient approach with the lowest time of deployment. At the same time, hybrid apps demonstrate worse performance and limited access to device’s hardware (camera, GPS, etc.).

  Here is a clear comparison of all three approaches:

  Criteria	Native	Cross-platform	Hybrid
  Performance	Highest	Near-native	Lowest, WebView dependent
  Cost of development	Highest	Medium	Lowest
  Time to market	Slowest	Medium	Fastest
  UI/UX consistency	Follows platform guidelines	Customizable but may lack platform nuances	Web-like, less native feel
  Best use cases	High-performance apps (games, AR/VR-based, banking apps)	Apps needing UI consistency (social media, marketplaces)	Simple apps, Internal corporate tools

  We can also mention one more approach, when the mobile app is developed on native practices but with a possibility to shift to another platform in the future. For example, you can use Jetpack Compose and Compose Multiplatform technologies in Android-based projects to make them available for iOS as well.

  No-code and Low-code

  If your company lacks technical specialists and doesn’t have enough resources to hire an in-house or outsourced development team, the solution is to apply to no-code or low-code practices.

  Both practices imply mobile app building without writing a code or with minimal coding . In doing so, companies can use a great variety of tools, such as Adalo, Bubble, Appgyver, FlutterFlow and many others, for building app’s logic, creating prototypes or generating code for further development.

  Despite apparent benefits that allow to build an app in mere days, no-code and low-code has a number of restrictions, like limited customization capabilities and performance trade-offs unsuitable for complicated operations.

  If your business wants to create an app that will stand out from competitors through unique approach in user-app interaction and advanced functionality, you can apply to AI mobile development. There are lots of ways AI can help in developing apps, from development cycle optimization to enhanced business’s positioning on the market. Sometimes, it’s even better to implement a ready-to-use solution, based on popular LLM API integration (like ChatGPT) that allows to leverage advanced AI capabilities.

• 3

  Step 3. Features Planning and Design
  
  Next crucial step is defining what exact features your app should have and how they should be presented for the user. There’re also a couple of important factors that should be considered.

  User persona and navigation

  Features planning and application design implies defining the goals and possible ways of users interacting with the app. This task is intertwined with the step of idea identification and target audience definition. You define the app idea, look at the most popular applications that followthe same idea and align it with the estimated target audience.

  Defining the user persona also helps to create efficient and convenient navigation system. Analyzing the market of potential customers, you notice the pain points and tech habits of the users, so you can focus on proper positioning of blocks, elements and on efficient user navigation.

  The main goal is to plan and design the functionality according to the expected behavior of the protentional user, where ease of access, intuitiveness of usage, clear visual cues and consistent user experiences across the app are prioritized.

  Wireframes, mockups and prototypes

  One more important task necessary for proper features planning and design is the building of the initial prototype. Prototypes visually demonstrate the estimated UX/UI of the application and allow to understand whether they are efficient or not.

  The demonstration can be presented through wireframes, mockups or actual app prototypes, and each of them has their own advantages and limitations.

  Wireframes are simple sets of images and schematic blocks which display functional elements of the mobile application. They are extremely easy to build and good at initial visualization of ideas, though they lack any details and can't demonstrate how the elements of the app operate.

  Mockups are designs that display the color, fonts and positioning of fields and elements. They demonstrate how the mobile app will look for real users on real mobiledevices and help in planning and building the UX and UI parts.

  Prototypes are the most complicated type aimed to imitate actions and behavior of the real application. They allow to see how the system reacts to the user’s actions and how the app’s operations work. Though prototypes seem to be the most efficient way of idea, features and design verification, their development takes time, so small companies and startups tend to skip it in order to save limited resources.

  Here is a clear comparison of all three types:

  Criteria	Wireframe	Mockup	Prototype
  Best for	Early brainstorming, stakeholder alignment	Design validation	User testing, final UX checks
  Fidelity	Low (schematic)	High (pixel-perfect, styled)	Interactive (clickable, dynamic)
  Level of detailing	Low (schematic)	Includes branding, typography and graphics	Mimics real app flow with animations/logic
  Speed of development	Very fast	Medium	Slow (depends on complexity)
  Cost of development	Low	Medium	High
  Limitations	No design or functional details presented	Non-interactive	Time-consuming, excessive for simple ideas

  Note. A common mistake of prototyping is that teams try to add too many details in their prototypes. According to the dedicated article made by Forbes, users pay most of the attention to no more than 20% of the mobile app’s functions. It means that the main goal of prototyping is to verify efficiency, proper performance, reliability and UX/UI of these prior functions.

  We should add one more sufficient note regarding the necessity of textual documentation. Many companies use systems like Wiki and Confluence to record all the important stages and specifications of the project ‘on paper’.

  This documentation should be permanently filled with data regarding general project info, architecture, technological stack, API interaction, etc. The main goal of such a documentation is to ensure that the project could be carried on, maintained and updated whenever necessary, so that even the fully new development team could quickly understand the specifics.

  Furthermore, such documentation represents a single knowledge base, which can become the basis for further improvements and push project teams for new versions or updates ideas.

• 4

  Step 4. Tech Stack Choice and App Developing
  
  Next stage is the development itself that involves three core components: frontend, backend and database development.

  Frontend

  Frontend part defines the outlook and interactivity of the mobile application. The choice of tools used for frontend development directly depends on the development approach you chose on the second stage.

  For example, if you decided to achieve the best performance and user experience and applied to native development, you may choose Swift, SwiftUI and UIKit for iOS or Kotlin and Jetpack Compose for Android.

  All the tools provide fast, easy and properly controlled frontend development for high-performance products, like mobile games or AI-based apps.

  On the other hand, if your choice is to use single codebase within a cross-platform development you can apply to Flutter and React Native frameworks, which were used for development of the most popular mobile apps like Google Pay, Facebook and Instagram .

  Overall, frontend development is the part of the development process responsible for a user-facing aspect of mobile applications, like UI elements (buttons, layouts, animations), UX (navigation and responsiveness) along with client-side logic.

  Backend

  The backend part of mobile app’s development is responsible for proper connection between interface and databases, businessand tech logic, system’s performance, security and scalability.

  There’s a great variety of programming languages and tools used for backend development like Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Node.js , and the right choice depends on the scales of your app and availability of related specialists.

  If the resources of your business don’t allow you to hire an in-house development team, you can apply to outsourced development . Silk Data has a lot of experience in IT consulting and outsourcing, and our developers will use all their skills and expertise to provide you with the most efficient solution.

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  Database

  Mobile app’s database development is the task for data architects and developers who are responsible for system’s data organization, optimization along with ensuring database’s security and scalability.

  It also refers to the operations required withinthe mobile app, like queries processing and data transactions.

  The tech stack depends on the type of database and can be presented by MySQL and PostgreSQL for relational databases (with strictly structured data, for example, user profiles data) or Mongo DB for databases that contain flexible and unstructured data.

• 5

  Step 5. App Testing
  
  The final stage of mobile app development refers to the testing of the final product.

  Note! The application’s testing is a process that goes alongside all the other development stages from idea verification to final pre-release stages. We have thoroughly discovered the essence of software and application testing in one of our previous blogposts and highlighted the importance of permanent product quality control.

  The large process of application testing is typically divided into three main sections: functional, non-functional and specified testing.

  Functional

  The main purpose of functional testing lies in validation of mobile app’s functions’ compliance with initial requirements. The functional testing is also divided into sub-types, each of them responsible for a particular aspect of mobile app’s performance.

  For example, unit testing allows to test separated app’s components like menus, lists, buttons, fields and their reaction to user’s actions. At the same time, system testing allows to see whether all the components properly work together as a system.

  Non-functional

  The second aspect of mobile app’s testing is responsible for approving and ensuring its security, scalability, and high-performance capabilities along with application’s convenience for users.

  Testing of the above-mentioned aspects is carried out by imitation of user traffic or cyber-attacks, putting the system in non-standard conditionor checking its performance on different OS and mobile devices.

  Specified testing

  Specified testing refers to the specific cases where functional and non-functional types are not enough.

  For example, if your product is an AI-based mobile application , you’ll need AI and ML testing practices based on the usage of special tools, like TensorFlow and MLFlow. Altogether, they’ll ensure AI model’s logic, detect its vulnerabilities and identify periods of downfalls.

• 6

  Step 6. Deployment and Post-Launch Maintenance
  
  Finally, the process comes to the app’s deployment and launch on AppStore, Google Play or both. However, the work doesn’t end here. Now, it’s time for permanent support for your product which includes lots of tasks regarding technical and commercial maintenance.

  System monitoring

  One of the main tasks for you as for mobile app owner is to closely look after the work of your product.

  A dedicated team of specialists should monitor its performance and track bugs, downfalls and other issues that can negatively affect the user experience and satisfaction. In addition, any mobile project should have ‘crushes’ library, where all the data about app’s downfalls and performance problems are gathered.

  The best way is to use the capabilities of AI-based predictive analytics that will notify about the possible problems and their outcomes by analyzing historical data regarding the app’s work.

  Feedback gathering

  In order to quickly track the problems and see the directions of the mobile app’s further improvements, you should pay close attention to the user’s feedback.

  The customers reviews are a good source of information about the problems which can occur while interacting with an app and which were neglected while its testing.

  Moreover, users can leave feedback regarding the desirable features which can become the basis for further mobile application updates.

  Updating

  Next task is to plan regular updates of your mobile app. According to Statista, 95% of apps on Google Play are updated yearly .

  The release of new versions is crucial for the product’s quality maintenance andimprovement, as updates imply bug fixes and new features added.

  What is more crucial is the fact that annual updates are necessary even just to ensure that applications support the latest OS versions. For instance, Google Play may delete apps that do not support new versions of Android from their apps catalogue .

  However, you don’t have to seek frequent updates, as it can lead to additional problems when the new versions’ quality has been sacrificed for speed.