The significance of mobile app design in the app success is bigger than we assume. Therefore, some app designing guidelines and tips to create engaging mobile app can help app designers to make it alluring.
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10 Tips to Create an Engaging Mobile App
However, mobile application design and development stands a little bit apart from the desktop and web applications for many reasons including screen size and constraints of mobile devices. The success attributes of a mobile design consisting of the usefulness, intuitive, trustworthy, and integrity.
These attributes translate the design into the fulfillment of UX, usability, and performance to woo, retain, and convert customers at last. We have produced ten good tips to achieve such high-end goals. SERP.Co, one of the renowned digital marketing agencies, suggests 10 pertinent ways to create a perfectly innovative and engaging mobile app.
1: Designing Clear and Seamless User Flow
Due to screen size constraints on mobile devices, users can focus on only one task at a time. It implies designers to remove the design obstacles to achieve users’ goals. In due course, some useful hints are:
- Divide big tasks into smaller portions
- Highlight only primary actions and hide all secondary ones
- Offload the repetitive tasks by enabling autocomplete functionality
- Ease the intricate tasks like reducing the length of texts by introducing a picture instead and cut numbers of images by using GIF animations with optimized file size
- Consider mobile usage on the go and allow state saving feature for re-engagement
- Avoid unusual and interruptive actions such as rating app or running a survey for a new user without getting her accustomed to the app
- Use the latest technologies to reduce the burden on For instance, fix the user location using GPS capabilities of mobile devices on a Map and leave filling of destination in a direction giving app
- Avoid registration process and allow guest usage for the first time users as well as users who are lacking trust in the app until the app convince them
- Avoid information overload to prevent decision paralyze for the users. For example, you must display only required fields to accomplish checkout process and break process into smaller sections or tasks, so users have to fill up only limited numbers of fields
2: Design Content as Interface
The content is king on the web as well as mobile. Therefore, design essential and value-adding content prominently and remove rests of clutter in the app UI design. Thus, the content itself will act as UI and satisfy the users.
- The location Maps after removing unwanted panels and buttons or pushing it as off-canvas design
- Card-style design where images and texts become actionable content
3: Use Adequate White Space
Leaving white space or negative space is not the wastage of valuable real estate on the tiny or smaller screens of handheld devices. It boasts several advantages such as
- It de-cluttered the screen and reduce complexities in the user interface to accomplish intended actions like unwanted buttons, images, and texts veer the attention span of app users.
- One primary action per UI is the best design policy, and white space plays a significant role.
- White space improves readability of the content to a greater extent on mobile screens.
- Judicious use of whitespace improves layout design hence, UX
4: Design Intuitive and Inspiring Navigation
Navigation is a major means to keep users on the track of conversion funnel. Therefore, navigation design should enable users to accomplish their buying journey quickly, easily, and intuitively.
Due to screen size limits and operational constraints, it is tough to implement multiple navigation schemes at a time. The following designing tips can help mobile app designers to design optimal navigation.
- Know your target audience and consider their expectations in the selection and designing of app navigation.
- Prioritize the levels of paths in design by giving appropriate prominence while designing navigation paths.
- Make navigation visible and easily accessible
- The design must indicate the current location of the user on the navigation path.
- Make it easy to tap even by the thumb.
- The most used navigation schemes in the mobile apps are toggle menu, tab bar, segmented control, full-screen navigation, and search box.
5: Adapt Navigation Design for Screen Sizes
The screen size of smartphones and tablets is increasing over time. Moreover, tendencies of mobile users to hold and use devices using one-handed posture (49%), cradle posture (36%), and two-handed (15%) posture.
Therefore, iOS apps prove the most comfortable because iOS devices and design practices prefer a navigation scheme at the bottom where the reach of one hand thumb is easy.
Similarly, app designers must place deleting and erasing like destructive action in the areas of mobile devices where the reach of single-handed actions is difficult.
6: Don’t Let Users Wait
Loading the screens in the mobile app is faster than loading a website into the mobile browsers. However, the first time loading of the app screen or web service connected content like payment process loading becomes slow due to mobile processing constraints.
In such a scenario, app users have to wait for a short or long period, and it becomes the prime cause of app abandonment. However, there are ways to overcome it, and the most used technique is displaying loading icons or animation.
Unfortunately, today’s loading screen proves an inadequate option to indicate when the loading process will finish and that makes users more impatient. Now, decent alternatives are available for loading screen designs, such as
- Skeleton screen design to focus users on actual loading process
- Designing visual distractions to draw attention of users away from the loading process and engage them elsewhere
- Running operations in the background
7: Design Appropriate Time for Push Notifications
Annoying notifications is the prime reason that an app is uninstalled. To overcome that,
- You must design an app such a way that it sends limited and on appropriate time push notification. Avoid odd hours to reduce annoyance.
- Check the value of the message against the interruption it causes.
- Personalized content to provide inspirations in delightful ways.
8: Depict the Core User Stories
Clients are frequently requesting tons of features and functionality in the app design and forget the actual requirements or core user stories. Therefore, designers must find out the core user stories and give it priorities in designing tasks to assure better performance.
9: Design to Speed up Perceived Performance
Total control over the app performance is nearly impossible for an app designer and only some designing tricks can help them to reduce the intensity. For instance, delay in-app flow is inevitable particularly, when the app is fetching back-end data or computing tons of calculations.
Therefore, designers should take appropriate actions to avert ensues of delays. In due course, the designer can introduce loading animation, useful tips, and placeholder content. Thus, breaking of delay step into sub-steps can change the perception of delay in progress.
10: Design for Performance by Optimizing UI Elements
The UI elements leave greater impacts on app performance so designers must optimize each element by considering some key aspects like:
- Optimize number and types of UI elements for performance. For instance, you should cut audios and videos like the heavy content or replace them with static images.
- Optimize the characteristics of the UI elements. For example cut the size, resolutions, and color depth of UI elements.
- Change the UI element drawing technique like breaking a big background image into smaller tiles/fractions.
Conclusion:
If you are a mobile app designer and looking for fine tips to ease your life, the current post is describing merely a tip of an iceberg deepen into a big sea. You might have a lot in this respect.
- 10 Tips to Create an Engaging Mobile App - January 17, 2018