Mobile App prototyping: Top 5 Benefits to Consider

Are you thinking of having a mobile application for your business but not sure about its design, functionalities and features? Well, do not worry, as a mobile app prototype can be the saviour for you in this case. You might have heard about the word prototype, and in the mobile app industry, it has somewhat the same meaning. Mobile app prototyping is a must-to-have approach that helps you visualise your product's specifications and performance before launching it. A mobile app development company can assist you with the process of prototyping to shape your idea into a testable prototype.

However, to understand the benefits of prototyping, you need to go through this article. This informational piece will explain to you the importance and advantages of mobile app prototyping. So, let's get started.

What is a mobile app prototype?

A mobile app prototype is an interactive symbolic version of your final product that imitates your future mobile application's design layout, functions, and specifications. It is closer to a design than the launch version of a product that does not contain all the features but the crucial ones needed for testing.

Mobile app prototyping is a critical step in mobile app development, and you should not skip it. You can see it as a pre-developed model, like a sample or a precursory visualisation through which you can gather user feedback for the improvisation in the final app.

How is a mobile app prototype helpful?

With the prototype of your mobile application, you can determine the look, feel and functionalities that your users will experience with the final app. It is an accessible medium to understand and predict how your users will react to your app. Therefore, it helps validate the strategic design of your mobile application.

Mainly, a prototype assists you in analysing the three critical points that make a difference:

• How efficient is your concept?
• Is your app user-friendly?
• What will be the expected outcome of this app?

Some significant benefits of mobile app prototyping

Provides clear perspective

How will you ensure better clarity about your app while developing it? For this, you need to find out the answers to the following questions:

• How will your mobile app appear to your users?
• How will it perform?
• Will it be interactive enough to attract your target audience?

Getting information about all these points before development is a challenging task. However, to answer these questions, a mobile app prototype can prove to be a handy technique. It helps you figure out every aspect of your mobile application that your users might check too.

Attracts investors

Nothing is better than a prototype when it comes to demonstrating the working principle and concept behind your product. It is more effective than any sales pitch to make your investors understand the functions and features of your mobile app. Since a prototype is a sample of your final product, investors can test, analyse, and review it before choosing to invest or not.

However, since the mobile app prototype is more functional, there are more chances of investors being convinced, despite some of them being non-technical.

Saves money

It is crucial to be clear about what you are building before starting your work unless it would be disappointing to end up with something undesirable. Moreover, if the final product does not match the intended requirements of your customers, then the redesigning phase can be overly expensive. It can cost you a considerable amount of money, time and effort

In that case, a mobile app prototype can reduce the risk, if not eliminate it. Since a prototype has to go through multiple rounds of testing, you can validate the requirements before the final development phase so that you can make modifications beforehand, if required. Although this process can be time-consuming, it can save you a lot of money that you might have to invest in improving your final application post-development.

Identifies design issues in the beginning stages

It is always better to figure out the errors in your product in the earlier phase of the development process. The reason is fixing the issues, in the beginning, will be more manageable and cost-effective as you can parallelly make modifications. When you develop the application entirely and find any problem after that, you have to make changes that will incur more effort, time and money. A mobile app prototype sorts out this issue by timely pointing out the errors, primarily related to the design.

Enables easy user testing

No matter how great you think your application is, the user finally approves or rejects it. It is understandable, too, as you build an app for the users, not for yourself. Therefore, it is significantly essential to test your app as much as possible so that there would be no possibilities of errors. With mobile app prototyping, you can test your application, at different stages of development, especially at the earlier phases, to reduce the chances of app-related issues. Moreover, the feedback gathered from prototype testing can also help add or subtract elements to enhance your final application's performance.

Wrapping Up

This article has introduced you to the concept of prototyping and its benefits in mobile app development. You might have understood how advantageous it could be from the business perspective. A mobile app prototype can be a helping hand in all the phases involved in the app development process, from design to testing. Therefore, if you plan to develop a mobile business app for your company, it would be best to create its prototype first. For that, you can hire a mobile application development company and mention your requirements to get the best solutions for your mobile application.