Design is daunting and difficult; it takes a lot of effort to make something look and feel seamless. And in the current (and competitive) mobile app landscape, you can’t afford to skimp out on a beautiful user interface and experience. At this point, a seamless UI and UX is the minimum needed for mobile app success. Don’t disappoint users who download your app – design your mobile app right the first time.

If you’re not sure how to effectively and correctly design a mobile app, we’ve compiled a list of tips from the mobile app developers and designers in our Los Angeles-based office. Check it out!

#1: Plan ahead

Take the extra time and effort to wireframe, write rough copy, and revise everything in iterative steps. When you think you’re done, go back and minimize areas where users can get confused, frustrated, or cornered into a part of the app with no way of going back.

This is a great time to plan for what (if any) animations and gestures you want to incorporate into the design. Starting this conversation early can lead to many follow-up discussions with the rest of the team. It’s important to remember that any extra features, like animations, should remain intuitive for the user, both in their placement and their purpose.

Including a member from every team involved can also speed things up; if a developer is able to confirm whether something is possible on the back-end, the wireframe iterations will move along faster.

Visualizing the “big picture” ahead of time can be difficult and sound daunting, but it ultimately saves more time, budget, and effort for everyone. A project that may take six months without proper planning can take half the time when developers are given exact instructions to build upon. This also reduces internal back-and-forth and the risk of miscommunication between teams.

Lastly, does your client already have established brand guidelines and a style guide? This can take care of a lot of the initial legwork for you in helping define styles, color palettes, icon sets, fonts, and much more.

For all of this planning, your users will thank you by reporting fewer bugs and more compliments.

#2: Stick to a proven formula

But don’t be afraid to improve on that formula with each project you take on. Did your last mobile app require an extra side-step off of your current checklist? Add it in for future projects so you’re not doing any work twice!

Start with goals for your app, its users, and the business. List them out explicitly. You’ll want to return to these later when the project is getting more complex and involved. Use this list to keep yourself and the rest of the stakeholders and teams aligned.

When you think things are straying, remind everyone what was agreed upon at the beginning of the project. If needed, revise this list moving forward, but you will find that this list stays concrete for most projects. Goals do not usually change, but be prepared for small tweaks.

Remember, your proven formula will not be exactly the same as your competitors’ proven formulas. And that’s okay – you’re bringing a unique twist to this project, so don’t be afraid to let it show.

#3: Think of your users at every step

Does the client have their current user base and ideal user base mapped out? Who are you designing for and who might use the app in the future? User stories, complete with their problems, how your client helps solve their problem, how the user is acquired, and more, flesh out several users for you to envision throughout the design process.

The design process isn’t straight-forward, but neither are your users’ needs. If you can imagine yourself as the user of your new app, you’ll avoid most major pitfalls and areas of frustration from the get-go. Anything remaining (and minor) can be adjusted after launch. Doing this throughout the design and development process shows in the final product — often, these mobile apps are very obviously thoughtful and fun to interact with.

Move up your project’s timeline for all teams by a few weeks. Then ask everyone to spend the last few weeks interacting with the app, submitting bugs, adding more hand-holding instructions, and cleaning up anything left behind in the rush to launch. Go through the goals you wrote out at the beginning of the design process — are they being met? If not, how can you meet them?

Research shows that humans love positive reinforcement (come on, did we really need to do official research on that?). Did the user successfully check out their cart? Let them know with a small celebratory animation. Did the user clear their whole cart? Give them a way to undo that action, and let them know it’s okay. Meanwhile, maybe it’s a good time to check out how many users are clearing their carts and undoing the action; perhaps the “clear cart” button is in an area that’s too easily accessible?

Keep it up

As we mentioned many times, designing is an iterative process. By the end of the project, you might be completely bored of staring at the same wireframes. But the fire will come back when the wireframes are transformed into a real app. And that’s what keeps us going as mobile developers and designers.

Keep up your design eye by following your competitors, and leave some room in your design process for creativity and ideation. You’ll be surprised at what you’re capable of creating!

At Dogtown Media, we specialize in mobile app development, grounded with expert knowledge in the internet of things, fintech, medical tech and user interface design. We are determined to take on your next project and create an app that will help your business grow.

Clutch, a company that publishes unbiased reviews of B2B companies, has featured us once again in a recent press release of top California mobile app development companies.  We’re excited to share that we have been featured highly in their directory list of the top mobile app developers in California. This honor adds to our previous recognition as a top California Mobile App Development Company on DesignRush.

Clutch’s ranking algorithm takes many pieces of information into account when displaying companies on their directory pages; the most important part of Clutch’s ranking algorithm is client reviews. To date, we have received over 20 positive reviews. Our clients aren’t shy to share their successes with Clutch:

“Dogtown Media developed a solution for a project considered impossible to do in the tech world.”

“They were extremely responsive and supportive and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

“Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

In addition to our feature on Clutch, we were also mentioned on their sister-site, The Manifest.  We are pleased to announce that we were listed as one of the top mobile app development companies in the world on The Manifest.

Here at Dogtown Media, we are ready to improve your business by creating vital apps that will allow your business to access your consumers at all times.  Our team will work directly with your business to assess how to stand apart from competitors as well. We look forward to taking on your next project!

Each year, Clutch publishes a press release naming the top service providers within certain industries. We’re proud to announce that Clutch has named Dogtown Media among the world’s leading mobile app developers this year.

We’ve also been listed on Clutch’s sister website, The Manifest, a B2B news website that helps buyers through the process of selecting a vendor. Manifest also ranked Dogtown as one of the top app development companies in the world.

Founded in 2011, Clutch is a Washington, D.C.-based research firm that leverages unparalleled market insight to determine the leaders across numerous industries. With unbiased case studies, industry trend analysis, and business market comparisons, Clutch’s data-driven platform allows clients to find and connect with top-tier companies who can solve difficult challenges.

Clutch’s directories adhere to this meticulous, data-centric approach; it’s organized to list the most credible firms first. Credibility is gained by attaining client testimonials and market presence. Essentially, the directories allow potential buyers and clients in need of partnerships to visualize their different options with a holistic perspective of each company.

Check out some of the reviews we’ve received so far below!

Webdam is a digital asset management software company. We re-developed their platform from the ground up. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s work was a massive improvement from the previous app version and received high praise from customers… They were extremely responsive and supportive, and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

We also got the opportunity to help the University of Oklahoma improve its app with more student-centric functionalities and geolocation capabilities. Here’s their feedback:

Another client required an app for the University of Oklahoma. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s expert team inspires confidence throughout the project by communicating clearly from the start. They bring creative ideas to the table at a reasonable value… Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

The past few weeks have been surreal for Dogtown Media. Recently, we made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the United States for the second year in a row. Not long after, we were honored again by being included on Clutch’s list!

Both are incredible awards we couldn’t have imagined attaining when we first started developing in L.A. in 2011. We’d like to give a big thanks to Clutch, Inc., our team, clients, and community — none of this would be possible without you.

From humble beginnings as a mobile app developer in Los Angeles, we’re extremely proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far and we’re also very excited to see where the future takes us. We can’t wait to create more amazing mobile experiences for the world to enjoy.

If you have an idea but don’t know where to begin, reach out anytime — if you can dream it, we can build it!

Every year, the Washington, D.C.-based research firm Clutch releases their findings on the best mobile app developers in various major markets. The criteria include the company’s specific areas of focus, experience, client satisfaction, industry recognition, and market presence. Clutch’s analysts perform highly detailed client interviews to really get a feel for what each app development company brings to the table. To make the Clutch top ten is a big distinction, a sign that you’re doing the kind of work that clients love. This year, Dogtown Media is honored to make Clutch’s list as one of the top ten mobile app developers in Los Angeles.

There’s some stiff competition among L.A. mobile app developers, so everyone at Dogtown Media’s offices is really proud to rise above the rest of the pack. We take every element of app development seriously, from concept, UX and UI design, and coding to monetization, marketing, and distribution. That’s why it’s such a thrill to be recognized for our technical know-how, customer satisfaction, and dedication. With a nearly even split between projects for small business, midmarket, and enterprise clients, we have experience developing apps on a variety of scales. But no matter how big the project is, we always approach it with the same amount of attention and passion.

According to Clutch analyst Amber Dewey, “The leading companies in our research have proven their ability to handle projects of any size and complexity, and create impressive mobile apps and custom software solutions that help push each client’s business further, whether it be internally or in the marketplace.” That sounds about right. While Dogtown Media is glad to be hailed as one of the finest mobile app developers in the city, we’re not going to rest on our laurels. We’re going to keep up the hard work so that we make next year’s list too.

Analytics firm Localytics recently released some numbers that chilled mobile app developers to the bone: 63% of mobile users will use an app 10 times or less before scrapping it. Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that 23% of users launch an app just once before deleting it. Users trust their gut when it comes to apps — and the gut can be ruthless.

After all the hard work mobile app developers put into bringing their brilliant, potentially world-changing apps to fruition, it can be hard to accept that users will discard them on a whim. It can be tempting to ask, “Why didn’t they give our app a fair shot?” But the more productive question is “What did we do wrong here?” and its follow-up “What can we change to retain users?”

It’s one thing to have a great concept that grabs the consumer’s interest and leads to a download, but getting that consumer to integrate an app into their lives is another matter altogether. The app store is crowded with great ideas vying for limited attention, and if an app’s UX is irksome, users are ready to move on to the next one.

We’ve developed our fair share of apps at Dogtown Media, and we know what drives user’s away from an app. In today’s post, we’ll outline five problems that lead to user churn — and some fixes that will help keep users around for the long haul.

Onboarding overload

The app experience begins with onboarding, the how-to tutorial that eases users into an app and familiarizes them with its benefits and features. Or that should ease users into an app — all too often, the onboarding process alienates users, driving them away before they even get a chance to see what the app can do.

Onboarding can be notoriously tricky to get right, but without a smooth onboarding experience, an app is almost guaranteed to lose users immediately. When it’s done correctly, onboarding starts to “bond” the users to the app and create habits that will keep them coming back. Much more than just a mere walk-through, the onboarding process should give users a sense of mastery. The faster users can feel like “experts,” the faster they can integrate the app into their everyday lives.

Unfortunately, too many developers botch onboarding, overwhelming users in their earliest moments with an app. It may be important to create a sense of expertise in users early on, but rushing the process can make an app seem too difficult to use. Cramming all the tips and tricks onto one screen at the outset will only scare people away.

Progressive onboarding provides a gradual, balanced way for users to navigate more complicated apps. This method allows users to explore the app, learning as they go with periodic assistance from inline hints that can point out the particularities of the app’s UI. (Of course, there should always be a “skip” option for users who already have a handle on the app’s functions.)

For simpler, more self-explanatory apps, a quick and easy onboarding process is the way to go. Too many apps delay what the user is there for: to use the app. Good onboarding design recognizes that users want to be productive and lets them get down to business. It’s a good practice to save sign ups and registrations until after the user has gotten a taste of what the app can do.

Putting lengthy, intrusive registrations up front puts hassle before reward, which is not a great way to keep users around. According to Localytics, 17% of users abandon apps after one use if they are asked to sign up in the first session. Only 9% abandon an app after one use if it has a “proper onboarding” experience that highlights an app’s purpose, functions, and value. Putting off registration takes pressure off of users and allows their all-important initial sessions with the app to be much more productive.

Awkward gesture controls

If an app’s onboarding process is too complicated, chances are the app’s UI is too confusing. In general, app users have a zero tolerance policy for counter-intuitive interface design. They expect to be able to learn how to use an app quickly, almost immediately, and when they cannot, the app in question is essentially useless to them.

Ever since Apple introduced fully touchscreen iPhones back in 2007, gestural controls have become a cornerstone in mobile UI design, largely because they are so intuitive. Tap, double tap, pinch, drag, flick — these gestures are basically universal, as Dan Mauney, former Director of Human Factors & Research at HumanCentric, pointed out in his widely circulated 2009 study. After studying the gestures of 40 people from 9 different countries, he concluded that people tend to associate remarkably similar gestures with specific tasks on mobile devices, no matter what their cultural background is.

In Mauney’s study, when the subjects wanted to delete an item, they generally tried to drag it off the screen. The second most common gesture was swiping it. These gestures make sense to people. They feel natural. Now imagine how confusing it would be to have an app that requires users to pinch an item to delete it. Sure, the user could be taught to use pinch to delete in the onboarding process, but it takes time and patience to retrain user’s instincts — time and patience most users won’t have for an app with unnatural controls.

Progressive onboarding is the best way to introduce users to slightly counter-intuitive controls. It’s important to find a balance between letting them explore and discover the controls on their own and providing subtle reminders along the way. The learning process should be as painless as possible; ideally, it shouldn’t feel like learning at all.

Privacy concerns

In the age of Snowden and WikiLeaks and justifiable paranoia, mobile users are growing more cautious about what they are downloading onto their phones. People store their lives on their mobile devices, and they want to feel as if their information is safe. If an app crosses the line and asks for too much personal data, users are going to feel as if their privacy is being jeopardized and dump it fast.

A few years ago, a Pew Research Center report found that 6-in-10 mobile users decided not to download an app based on the amount of information it asked for. 43% uninstalled an app for the same reason.

Much of the information apps request is used in relatively harmless ways (and that’s not to mention that a lot of permissions are necessary for the proper functioning of the app), but users often (understandably) have their guards up. They are increasingly suspicious of apps that ask for too much access to their phones, track their location, automatically share to social media, or sell their data.

Smart Android app developers should make it clear to users why certain in-app permissions are needed. After all, in that same Pew study, 9-in-10 mobile app users said that knowing how and why their data is utilized is an important factor in deciding whether or not to download an app. It can also be a determining factor in deciding whether or not to delete one.

Once again, it’s also best to postpone mandatory user registration, especially if it’s the first thing users see when they open the app. Not only is the sign-up process a drag to users who are itching to explore everything the product has to offer, it can make users squirm as the app asks for private details. The best practice is to let the user wait until they trust the app before springing a bunch of personal questions on them.

In-app ad onslaught

There is an unspoken — and uneasy — truce that mobile users have with mobile app developers: they’ll put up with a reasonable amount of ads for a free app experience. But they are only willing to endure so many obnoxious ads before they abandon an app.

Inescapable full-screen ads, constant pop-ups, low-res eyesores, a screen cluttered with bad ads — these are sure-fire ways to turn off users. Ads that aren’t quietly integrated into the app experience disrupt it. The relatively seamless Instagram model should be an inspiration to San Francisco iPhone app developers. Its advertising looks deceptively like native content, but users are generally okay with this deception because it’s much less intrusive than the alternative.

Most of the solutions to issues with in-app advertising are common sense. The key is subtlety. Developers need to space out ad placements so that users don’t feel like the product is more ad than app. They should also make sure that the advertising is germane to the app’s users, especially since irrelevant, tone-deaf ads really tend to stick out. And perhaps most importantly of all: if an app is geared towards children, it should not feature gruesome or pornographic ads.

Pushy notifications

When it comes to retaining users, few tools are as useful as the push notification. In fact, push notifications boost app engagement by 88%, according to Localytics. 65% of users who enable notifications return to an app within a month, while only 19% of users who do not opt in stick around. But too many push notifications, well, push users away.

App developers have to find the appropriate push notification strategy for their particular app and audience. The ESPN app or similar sports apps are okay to send out numerous notifications in a day; chances are, their users want up-to-the-minute scores. But if a retailer started sending out multiple push notifications in a day, users would likely see it as a spam attack. Finding the right frequency is crucial to keeping users around.

It’s also wise to send push notifications tailored to the user’s specific needs. Personalized messages are more useful for the consumer and encourage engagement much more than generic, easy-to-ignore messages.

An overly-aggressive push notification strategy that’s constantly blowing up user’s phones for little to no return will undoubtedly drive users to delete the app. But an optimized strategy will keep power users coming back and can even rope in straying users.

Why don’t you stick around?

Few things bum app developers out more than user churn rates. Apps are hard work — believe us, we know — and the fact that they can be so dispensable to users is discouraging. But it’s necessary to look at why users turn their backs on an app and to avoid the mistakes that have capsized so many promising apps.

The big takeaway is that users want to feel like the app is working for them, not the other way around. They don’t want to have to struggle to learn how to use an app or to feel like the app is just a mechanism to snatch their personal data and sell them stuff. And they don’t want to be annoyed.

Troubleshooting these issues may not bring back users, but it may help keep new users around.

Messaging apps — which is to say, apps that existing within messaging platforms like iMessage, Line, Messenger, and etc. — have been a huge growth area in the mobile tech industry. Sticker sets alone drove over $250 million in revenue for Line, and Western chat apps have seen similar success stories adding-on services to their platforms. That said, new data from Sensor Tower shows that developer interest in the platform is declining, along with downloads and use. Expanded messaging services are clearly a huge trend — so why is it struggling on Apple’s own messaging solution?

Part of the problem is likely due to the company’s reluctance to “clutter” the user interface with cues that the apps even exist. Unlike Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and other fun-based messaging platforms, actually accessing and using in-chat features like sticker sets is surprisingly difficult. It’s even trickier for actual apps (as opposed to sticker packs, which are oddly classified as “apps” and require a developer liscence to submit). For Chicago iOS app developers, the question becomes: “will anyone see my app?” rather than “will anyone want my app?” This is, for obvious reasons, a big problem.

That said, there are big wins to be made on the platform — and if Apple chooses to make the in-chat app store more accessable in future UI updates, app developers with good products in-place could suddenly find themselves scoring big wins in a surprisingly uncompettative app pool. Chat apps racked up as many developer submissions in the first six months as the app store did in the first year, but given the maturity of the iOS platform those numbers are surprisingly low. Even artists and graphic designers could find themselves holding a winner with the right sticker “app” at the right time. Whether or not Apple takes a leaf out of Facebook’s book or not, it’ll be fascinating to see how the strive to improve prospects for developers in one of the most-used messaging platforms in the US.

SXSW has rounded out to be a wild experience this year, and our Oyster Shuck event with Craftsman and Mongers Market was no exception. Thanks to everybody who came out to enjoy good food and great drink specials in the Texas sun!

We got into app development to make great products, but it can be easy to forget that every great business is actually about one thing: the people that make it possible. SXSW Interactive is always a great time to remind ourselves of that, and there’s no better environment to get excited about another year of tech innovation. (It’s worth the price of admission just for the product demos alone, before you even start tapping into social events like ours and the world-famous speaker panels on offer.)

While last year’s SXSW Interactive had a more hopeful, futurist bent, this year’s panels and discussions often revolved around the very real problems with tech and society. How can tech fix our fractured political climate… without eroding privacy? How can mobile make life easier… without lowering income for traditional career paths? These questions are important to answer, and it was exciting to see developers acknowledge them, discuss them, and come up with real paths forward.

The flight back to Los Angeles after a week in the sun is always bittersweet, but our team can’t wait to get back to work on the products we love building. The Los Angeles app development community is a special thing, and we count ourselves lucky to be a part of it.

In the business of predicting future trends, there are few who can touch Ray Kurzweil. Among all the panels on offer at this year’s SXSW Interactive, we at Dogtown Media knew this was one we couldn’t afford to miss. Beyond his groundbreaking work as the primary inventor of technologies as disparate as the charge-coupled device flatbed scanner and print-to-speech readers, Kurzweil is a noted author and champion of the futurist and transhuman movements. (Not to mention head of engineering at Google.)

His current primary interest, however — and one he shares with his daughter, New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil — is artificial intelligence (AI). How will automation affect society in coming years? More importantly, what are the implications of that work on quality of life for regular people, tech companies, and NYC app developers?

Riffing off a cartoon by Amy Kurzweil featuring robots playing golf, Ray shared some fascinating background on his current project developing computers that are able to write poetry and paintings based on written input on the styles of historical artists.

The challenge, as any iPhone app developer working in AI can attest, are the hard limits of today’s technology, and the seemingly glacial pace of machine learning development. Sure, on the outside it looks like machines are getting faster on a bell curve, but in the trenches it feels more like building a sand castle in a rainstorm.

Said the Kurzweils, we can envision today’s AI technologies as being capable of “level 100” sophistication — perhaps 115, with the right resources and contexts. For reference, a computer distinguishing between objects (like, say, a dog or cat) would be considered level 15. The real prizes in AI are currently several times above level 100, where AI might start being able to interact with the world and “fill in the gaps” with intuitive logic. A human, shown and image of a dog running towards a man and then a second image of the dog standing on top of the man, can infer that the dog knocked the man down in-between “frames.” For machines, leaps of logic like this may be farther off than we’d like to think.

Twitter and trolls are a love story that goes back as far as Twitter itself. Even for diehard users, dealing with abuse and offensive content on the platform has been a turnoff, and it’s something that Twitter has struggled to fix even as competitors like Facebook and Instagram take hardline approaches that seem to please new users. Last week Twitter took their own “hardline” measures, launching a feature that marks accounts with offensive keywords as “sensitive.” The question for iPhone app developers is, how is it working out from a UX perspective? Not too well, according to pundits at the Verge, and hundreds of users venting their frustration in 140-character increments.

In practice, Twitter’s San Francisco app development team the “sensitive” account feature acts as a gatekeeper to flagged accounts. Rather than hiding content and tweets, it simply warns users with an overlay before they view a marked profile. This is an interesting approach, particularly since Twitter’s app developer-heavy userbase has repeatedly offered more specific fixes. For women, the platform has become almost unusable, forcing many users to abandon it altogether for safer social media pastures.

One thing that’s unclear about the new feature is how exactly accounts are marked as “sensitive.” In an article on The Verge, users reported being flagged for seemingly unoffensive content. Apparently, it’s difficult for bots or Amazon-Turk-type workers to pick out the difference between sarcasm and sincerity, which creates obvious problems for a platform drenched heavily in irony like Twitter. Seeing how Twitter handles this will be interesting to watch for app developers keen to reduce abusive accounts on their own platform.

In the era of “fake news,” controlling abuse and fraud on social media has never had bigger repercussions.

SXSW is upon us again, and app developers from San Diego to London have flown in to Austin for the year’s best tech networking event.

For techies, 2017’s lineup is an absolute feast for the senses. Here are some of our favorite events and products on offer:

Mark Cuban Tackles Government Regulation vs Tech Business

Michele Skelding’s “Is Government Disrupting Disruption?” panel event will feature prominent thought leaders including Mark Cuban of Shark Tank and Adam Lyons, CEO of The Zebrawill. Regulation has been a major focus of conversations among app developers, thanks to the uncertainty many feel around the Trump administrations plans for business regulation, immigration, and other key areas that affect the tech industry. The talk runs from 5:00–6:00PM, March 12, in The Austin Convention Center Ballroom D.

Buzz Aldrin. yes, that Buzz Aldrin.

Techies and space travel go together like kids and Pokemon cards. From watching SpaceX rockets pull off miraculous landings to keeping tabs on the latest exoplanet discoveries, the space race is absolutely still “on” among app developers. Aldrin’s featured event, “A Conversation with Buzz Aldrin and Jeff Kluger,” will take place March 14 at 3:30PM, at Room 18ABCD in the Austin Convention Center.

Chris Sacca talks startups, democracy, and how to win at investing

Chris Sacca is a must-see for anyone involved in startup investing — whether on the financing side or the pitching side. He’s scheduled to do a Q&A-style event with Forbes writer Alex Konrad. If you’ve ever had a question for one of the most famous investors in tech history, this could be your chance to ask it in person. Sacca’s event starts at 3:30PM on March 11 in the Austin Convention Center Ballroom EFG.

3Doodler Pen Lets You Draw in 3D

If you loved trying out Google’s Tilt Brush at last year’s tech expo, the 3Doodler pen will be right up your alley. The device has already snapped up an Interactive Innovation Award. It’s perfect for Internet of Things app developers, or any other creative profession where prototyping physical products in 3D is helpful. Unlike a 3D printer, there’s no complex software required. You simply think, point, and doodle. The package includes strands of specialized plastic that react well to small changes in heat within the device, allowing users to control the quality of the “line” with simple, unobtrusive controls on the side of the pen.

For more information on the hundreds of events and startups to catch, check out the official schedule at the SXSW Interactive site. Hope to see you there!