How Much Does It Cost To Design a Mobile App?
No matter how much effort you take for making an innovative and unique app, its design matters the most. It depends on your mobile app design whether users would use your app for long or find it a profitable solution for interaction. Since the entire mobile industry depends on the same, things that a design-centric mobile app development company should consider are:
- Competitor assessment
- User study
- Interaction design
- UX design
- App icons and logo designs
- Graphics design
You must figure out these important aspects and market success for designing your app. and the design does not just mean an app’s looks but its performance also. The development comes with design. Hence, alongside design, you should know the reasons behind the mobile app development costs.
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I have given the crucial stages associated with app design and the factors that impact the mobile app design cost. So, it’s time to assess how much an app design costs!
Why Do You Need a Mobile App Designing Service?
As per Statista, 25% of all mobile applications are used for one time and then uninstalled. Sometimes, poor app usability dictates this low level of user retention. Moreover, 70% of online businesses don’t succeed because of bad usability.
Want to avoid such a scenario? Then pay higher focus on mobile app design at the time of the mobile app development process. A mobile app with great UX and UI design generally offer the following advantages:
- Simplifies interaction with the interface
- Organizes the app development
- Boosts the rate of user engagement by allowing users to meet their goals quicker
- Helps convert mere users into clients
What are the Stages of Mobile App Design?
It’s quite tough to calculate the mobile app design cost without understanding every aspect that authorizes this process. The stages of mobile app designing is sophisticated and incorporates few services like research, analysis, prototyping and UI/UX. So let’s explore the stages of mobile app design.
1. Evaluating Idea and Making a Lean Model Canvas
This phase is all about defining the issues of the project completely and how your app would fix those problems. The development team needs to assess the idea and collect data regarding the client’s perspective about the project.
By creating a lean model canvas, you can analyze the mobile app design concepts. This stage also helps developers be ready before starting app development.
2. Conducting Study on App Market & Trends
Assessing your app’s market is a 3-tier process: client analysis, competitor study, and market trends assessment. Start the market study process by competitor analysis – don’t copy their tactics but figure out the scopes in the market.
This provides a benchmark that you need to cross, based on the design and features. Moreover, research the market and figure out the trends and the elements that users are interacting with most. A few mobile app design trends in 2021 include:
- Conversational design
- Full device screens
- Content-based experience
- Vibrant shades
- Simplification of the customer journey
3. Creating a Mind Map
You can build a mind map by assessing your lean model canvas. It considers all distinct needs of your app and helps you visualize the logical structure between the primary app elements. Don’t forget to stick to the app goal while making mind maps and make sections of the objects around it.
Then, you need to produce features or requirements for every section. After building the mind map, you can create Epic Lists that are more structured and comprehensive elements of the mind map. Epic Lists are required for further mobile app development.
4. Building a User Persona
The next stage of the mobile app design process is all about making a comprehensive image of the person who will utilize your app. The user persona figure must be made of:
- Social standing
- His/her demographic data
- His/her behavioral model
A comprehensive user persona helps the development team precisely figure out the issue your app can fix for this particular user. Use behavior model research to find out the issue the right way. Your app’s appearance also depends on your target user.
5. Mapping User Story
To understand better how a user persona will employ your app, performing user journey mapping is important. A user journey map pays heeds to the client requirements and business value. The precise order or user journey in the map helps designers make a perfect navigation idea.
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6. Low-Fidelity App Prototyping
You should design a navigation idea or a low-fidelity prototype for designing the navigation between screens based on the platform you will create your app (web, Android, or iOS).
Using low-fidelity prototypes helps explain complex design ideas easily and quickly. Moreover, these prototypes are amazing in testing performance and making a map of changes done.
7. Making a Refined User Experience
The stage of designing user experience is all about creating the detailed interface of the software, which helps in further development phases.
During this stage, you can make a comprehensive explanation of user scenarios and high-fidelity prototypes. You should run these prototypes on your target users and get feedback.
8. Building a UI Design
This is the ultimate phase before app development. This phase is required for making both the feel and looks of the app– its shapes, colors, elements, typography, etc.
Another crucial part of UI design includes 3 elements – Screens, App Icons, and Logos. These components then get added to the numeric value of custom app design and mobile app design.
9. Illustrations & Animations
Illustrations help communicate the general application idea or the concept of a mobile app feature. They can be of various styles, but must always line up with the entire app design idea.
The time required for making an illustration varies based on style notion, complexity, and feature for being used. Illustrations that describe unique characters and humans take the maximum time for building.
Animations are tougher to design than illustrations. These dynamic objects or images are generally made in Adobe After Effects. Two kinds of animations are notable in the world of app design:
- Illustrated animations
- Custom transitions
So, these are the factors that impact the cost of mobile app design. The style you select, the requirement of illustrations and animations, and the whole design complexity contribute to the ultimate app design cost.
How Much Does a Mobile App Design Cost?
The mobile app design cost highly depends on many factors like app complexity, the platform on which it would be created, and the country. Let’s have a brief idea of them!
1. App Complexity
Both app designing and development processes include a complexity assessment. App complexity depends on:
- Standards of customization
- The number of platforms (web, iOS, or Android) you will employ
- Specialization and needs of end-users
- The complexity of app performances
- The number of Minimum Variable Product and user roles
When it comes to talking about the cost of mobile app development or mobile app UI design, three complexity levels are considered to estimate the app UI/UX design cost:
- Simple apps
- Moderate apps
- Complex apps
2. Number of Platforms
Platforms like iOS and Android differ in their operations and appearances. An Android app must match with various formats and resolutions, whereas all should be finalized with iOS. For this reason, Android app design is costlier than iOS app design.
You also have to decide if you want an app solely for a single platform – Android or iOS? Or do you want to design for both platforms? Based on your platform selection, the mobile app design cost will be differ.
3. Cost by Location
The selection of location to design an app decides its cost. After all, the cost of app design is assessed differently according to the geographical area. This is why a task done with the same quality highly varies between a USA designer and an Indian designer.
Moreover, their working processes and the type of app designing tools employed by them are also different.
4. Expertise of Designers
Based on your budget, you can decide the cost of employing a designer. In terms of the pay scale, experience, platform, and technology expertise, there are many professionals available. Professional UI UX designers are more highly paid compared to newbie designers.
5. Quality of App Design
The quality and reputation of app designing companies also impact the cost of the mobile app design. Premium quality app design service includes precise solutions, several procedures, and many years of working experience, many designers with various visions and ideas, and an impressive portfolio.
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How to Optimize the Mobile App Design Cost
You can optimize the cost for designing a mobile app by employing these tricks:
- Strategize your project properly (Never ignore the Discovery phase).
- Hire a professional mobile app development company in Bangalore.
- Get fully engaged in the design process.
Bottom Lines
Now that you know how much the mobile app design costs, you may be thinking about whether or not to spend your time and money on app design. Spending on user experience can save up to 50% of wasted time of development and reduce the scopes that your app won’t resonate with target audiences.
The cost of mobile app design varies highly based on many factors, as mentioned above. Hence, by creating a list of all the needs and selecting features that you want in your app, you can estimate an approx app design budget and cost required for execution.
