The biggest mobile app building mistake

We’ve been building mobile apps for a while now, and seeing our customers do the same.

There’s a big mistake that we see our customers make time and time again. It’s totally understandable, especially when you aren’t experienced building mobile apps. It’s the fault of the app developers and their clients both, and it’s an easy trap to fall into.

The good thing is that the solution is clear and simple, and you can implement it right away.

So what’s the big mistake?

Trying to do too much

Too many people try to put their whole website into their app.

A mobile app is not a website. It’s on a smaller screen, and it is used for a different purpose.

You can use the portability of a mobile app to your advantage, but putting your entire website into the app is not the way to do that. Mobile app users can easily be turned off by your app if it’s cluttered with too much unnecessary content.

The app to the right has too many icons, and they are hard to read. They should find out what their users want the most, and make that the easiest to access. For example, displaying alerts about upcoming events or urgent news is more useful than a link to the school’s YouTube account.

This navigation makes users sort through all this noise to get to what they really want.

Not only is this poor usability, but it’s also a technical challenge to accomplish.

What should you do instead?

Simplify

Simplify your ideas for your app, and focus on what is most important. Make the most important features the easiest to access quickly.

The Torque Magazine app displays their newest articles on the first screen of the app. That’s what most of their audience wants to see, so why get in the way? They didn’t need a bunch of icons on the homescreen to select which article category to view, they just show the most recent ones. If someone wants to find something specific, they can use the left-hand navigation menu for that.

Instagram displays an obvious camera button right in the middle of the bottom toolbar. They even make it a different color to make sure you’ll see it.

The popularity of Instagram is due in part to the fact that it’s just so easy to use. They have built their app to do one simple, repeatable task.

Is your app simple, and easy to use, or are you cramming too much stuff into it?

Make your app simpler, your app users will thank you for it.