GirishSmartphones are becoming an integral part of our professional and personal lives. According to Statista, in 2021, Google Play and Apple Store witnessed a combined 230 billion app downloads. This number is exponentially increasing, and businesses are trying to create more apps for their diversified services. But installing multiple apps takes up more storage space on a user’s device and instead they prefer to install a super app that performs multiple functions. People use apps to make payments, shop online, order food, watch movies, play games, connect with others, and many more. But it is getting increasingly difficult for them to manage all the apps. As a solution, they are looking for a single app to do it all, in other words, super apps.
What is a super app?
A super app is an application that has all the features integrated to be a complete solution for every need. You can use a super app to order food, pay bills, buy insurance, book hotels and flights, recharge your phone, etc. A good example is the Tata Neu app, which combines all of Tata group’s services in a single application. It offers “everything from groceries to gadgets, trends to travel, cuisines to coffees, and fitness to finance.”
Given the increasing demands of customers and the rising cost of app development, it is not difficult to anticipate why businesses are vying for super apps. This article looks at how to plan a super app from scratch.
1. It starts with market research
Not every category or type of app can be converted into a super app. Market research is essential to decide the inclusiveness of the super app. You must understand your users across gender, age, interests, requirements, etc., to ensure that the app navigation is suitable for every user. You might also want to partner with other online service providers to make your super app more useful. With the giants like Amazon, Tata Neu, and Paytm, it won’t be easy to compete. You should create a profitable long-term strategy when you partner with growing third-party online services.
As an app developer, you must ensure that the super app has a native feel. This is why UI/UX, design, and content of the presentation planning are essential.
2. Comprehensively define the app features
Features and functionalities are critical for the success of a super app. The requirements you find from the excessive market research should be effectively translated into features during the app development. Define what features and functionalities your app will need. Will it have e-commerce features, payment gateways, messaging and calling features, news feeds, etc.? These considerations will guide you toward taking the right UI/UX approach and technologies stack.
3. UI/UX design considerations
The design requirement for super app development is more complicated than traditional mobile applications. As you will be developing an app for several segments, the UI/UX elements have to be versatile to transform and accommodate the needs of each part. The critical factors to consider while planning super apps are color scheme, typography, effects and transitions, placement of the services, usefulness for users with physical disabilities, and content planning. Well-defined design considerations are essential for a satisfactory user experience.
4. Pick the correct technology stack
Super apps are composed of many online features across several industries. You must consider many technical aspects to integrate different services into your app. While deciding on the technology stack, you will use for app development, focus on the following aspects:
- Code space consumption
- Code execution time complexity
- Development requirements (development time, challenges, upgrades)
- Available resources
- Budget
Every phase of the super app development will have specific requirements. Based on the most common conditions and architecture of super apps, here is a list of technologies that you can include in any development stack:
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5. Quality assurance
Just like any other software, the super app development must also go through a series of test cases to ensure that the code is bug-free and top quality. QA engineers have to write test cases to evaluate the overall user experience at this stage. Any super app should be put through:
- Compatibility testing
- Functional testing
- Installation testing
- Localization testing
- Manual testing
- Performance and load testing
- Security testing
- Usability testing
The results of these testing approaches will tell the development team about the performance and code quality of the super app.
Conclusion: What to keep in mind when creating super apps?
Given the complexity of a super app, there is a need for cutting-edge IT infrastructure. The server and memory management should be blazing fast. Furthermore, you should optimize the code for faster loading and execution. The API creation for such an app is sophisticated and requires multiple developers to work on the code. And ultimately, the standards and regulations for a super app are complicated as it falls into various categories.
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Afreen Khalfe
Ashutosh Singh
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