Content Attributes
Today’s consumers spend hours a day using their smartphones. For sure, these gadgets are enormously helpful for them, as well as for businesses. Therefore, more and more companies are choosing to benefit from launching their mobile applications. It concerns large, medium, and small businesses. Your size doesn’t matter at all. As long as you want to attract more clients and improve their experience, you must have a mobile app.
How can companies benefit from developing their mobile apps? Newly attracted customers, boosted engagement, increased brand loyalty, improved communication, etc. There is no doubt that the list of positive outcomes is endless. At the same time, multiple businesses do not experience these advantages.
Why? The reason is that building an app is a lengthy and complex process that requires a large number of resources. Those applications that are developed quickly and cheaply are often poorly designed and repel customers. However, you can save much time and many resources if you pay enough attention to the second step of mobile app development. It is about building an impeccable mobile app architecture.
What Is Mobile Architecture?
Mobile app architecture is a set of many different structural elements, along with their interfaces. All of them can be viewed as the foundation of a new mobile application. In general, the term architecture is often used within the software industry. It is synonymous with such words as skeleton and roadmap. Mobile app architecture defines the success of your application; thus, you must invest enough time, energy, and money in it.
Some believe that writing code is the most crucial part of the process of developing an app. These people are wrong, and their assumptions can lead to adverse consequences. Before getting down to coding, it is essential to determine what features should be built into an app. These features must help a business reach its goals. Once they are defined, you need to create flawless mobile architecture. Only after these two steps, writing code follows.
SOLID, KISS (keep it simple, stupid), and DRY (don’t repeat yourself) are the central principles of software development that must be considered while designing mobile architecture. If you stick to them, you will be able to add plug-ins quickly, troubleshoot efficiently, and scale easily. Keep in mind that all the time, effort, and money you invest in creating mobile architecture will pay off in the future.
Things To Consider
Bandwidth Scenarios
You should estimate the worst possible bandwidth scenarios when you create mobile architecture. Sometimes users have bad or no internet connection. If an app fails to run smoothly under these circumstances, people are likely to get frustrated. Their user experience will be nerve-racking, and they may feel unwilling to use your app once more.
Device Types
Before starting writing code, you need to clearly define the characteristics of the gadgets used to run your application. There are a large number of features that you should examine. For example, memory, storage capacity, CPU characteristics, screen size, resolution, the availability of development tool framework. Remember that the architecture of a mobile app and the architecture of a desktop app differ significantly.
Application Users
Who will use your application? Why will these people download it? What are their interests, preferences, priorities? You need to understand who your target audience is before building mobile app architecture.
Layers Of App Architecture
The three-layer mobile app architecture is the most popular. It includes the presentation layer, the business layer, and the data layer.
The Presentation Layer
The presentation layer is all about the visual part of your application. During the presentation layer stage, it’s vital to consider who the end-users of your app are. Their preferences must be taken into account while designing the user interface and presentation logic. Fonts, themes, colors, and navigation intuitiveness are determined at the presentation layer.
The Business Layer
The business layer is about the application facade, workflow, components, and entities. The code at this layer covers domain processes and operations. The business layer concerns a wide range of different tasks, such as caching, logging, data validation, exception management, etc. Its complexity is higher than other layers; thus, it’s advised to reduce it by categorizing all the tasks.
The Data Layer
The data layer includes data access components, data utilities, and service tools. It offers efficient and secure data transactions. While designing this layer, the correct data format should be chosen. It is also crucial to consider how data will be validated and maintained.
App Types
Three main types of apps will determine your app architecture.
Native Apps
If you don’t have any budget limitations, it’s advised to build a native app. It is developed for a specific operating system. For example, Android or iOS. Native apps run fast, work smoothly, are intuitive, and use built-in capabilities of users’ devices.
Hybrid Apps
Hybrid apps are website applications disguised in native wrappers. They are multi-platform and have the benefits of both native apps and web apps. Moreover, they are relatively quick, cheap, and easy to develop. On the other hand, hybrid apps may lack performance, speed, and optimization.
Web Apps
Web apps are reached through a URL in a browser, so they are compatible with any platform. They are usually written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Their main drawback is that there is limited access to users’ cameras, GPS, etc.
Conclusion
Mobile apps can help large, medium, and small businesses reach even the most ambitious goals concerning customer engagement, brand loyalty, or communication quality. However, if you want to enjoy all the benefits of launching one’s app, you should be ready to invest much in its development.
The first step is to define your business needs and the features of your app. The next step is building a mobile app architecture. Only then it’s advised to get down to coding. Don’t underestimate the importance of the second step. Unless you pay enough attention to it, you will fail to scale easily, troubleshoot effectively, and add plug-ins quickly in the future.