In one of its ads in 2009, Apple had said, “There’s an app for that!”
Today, in 2020, there’s literally an app for almost everything available at two of the most popular app stores; Google play store + Apple app store.
The market for mobile applications has increased substantially in the last decade and is expected to continue its rapid growth in the coming years.
Any business, small or big, today needs to have an effective and engaging mobile app design in order to capture the audience’s attention towards their brand.
Ironically, though, when the design of a mobile app is great, the users don’t really pay attention to it; as they are busy enjoying the great experience of using the app.
So, if you are planning to launch a mobile app for your brand and wondering how to make it a success, then check out these mobile app design Dos and Don’ts before starting anything else.
These Dos and Don’ts can be treated as an extensive list of mobile app UX guidelines that every designer needs to follow.
Do
- Research; Conduct a thorough market and industry research to understand your target audience, their likes, and dislikes as well as study your competitors.
- Prioritize essential features; Too much of everything can lead to confusion and frustration in the users. Set feature priorities by focusing on improving the experience of the core objective.
- Offer rewards for feedback; Practically speaking, a mobile app design is constantly a “Work-in-progress” job. The more genuine user feedback and reviews you get, the better you can make your app’s overall experience.
- Provide clear navigation; Helping users navigate should be a top priority for every mobile app. After all, even well-crafted features or the most compelling content is useless if people can’t find it.
- Make it finger-friendly; Especially, with regard to the mobile app designs, it is essential to create finger taps big enough and with sufficient spacing between two tap targets.
- Ensure text legibility; Creating legible content in the form of text should be one of the top priorities for every mobile app designer. Therefore, it is important to not only use legible font type and size (11 pts is said to be ideal for mobile apps) but, also pick a typeface that works well in different sizes and weights to maintain legibility.
- Always test; Even the most well-crafted UI and well-thought-out UX will ultimately contain some unseen flaws when put into the real world. That’s why it’s so important to test your mobile app design with real users on a variety of mobile devices to make sure it both looks and works great.
Don’t
- Go overboard with interaction; Use interactions are important for your mobile app. However, you need to be measurable about it and see to it that you are subtle with them. Remember to prioritize clarity over visual appeal.
- Let the users wait; Having a slow operating mobile app is sometimes even worse than a badly designed one. Users simply don’t want to wait for more than 4-7 seconds to see the content in your app. You should always strive to give the impression that your app is fast and responsive.
- Try to make it a web experience; A mobile app has a different purpose from the website of your business. So, it is imperative that the experience you give to your users through the mobile app design is not the same as that of your website UX design. For ex: hyperlinked texts.
- Divert them to mobile web version; Users can be easily frustrated when an app takes them to the mobile web for more content or to complete a task. This increases abandonment and reduces conversion because users might simply not return to the app. A good way can be to use an in-app browser instead.
- Ask for a rating in the first use; Give your users some time to go over your app design and make extensive use of its features before asking them to rate it.
- Blindly follow the trends; Avoid following the latest design trends blindly. To avoid constantly changing your design and brand guidelines, create a more evergreen design that needs to be updated every 3-4 years instead of every time the design goes out of style.
- Create dead-end pages; App flow defines how a user moves forward in an app to accomplish a certain goal. Creating dead-end pages means installing blockers in the otherwise fluent user flow. Dead-end pages can confuse users and lead them to perform unnecessary actions before frustrating them.
To conclude…
So, these were some of the essential mobile app design do’s and don’ts that every business owner and mobile app designer/developer must take care of.
If you are looking for professional help with designing an effective mobile app, we can help. Simply send us your requirements at support@graphicszoo.com