I published my first app in April 2020, and it was a fun experience that I have continued ever since. I want to share a few things that I have learned after publishing three apps in this blog post. Visit this url to try out my apps: https://srivats-22.web.app/experience

Getting downloads

Developing an app isn't an easy task. There's a ton of work that goes behind the screen. Starting from the minimum version to support, what color scheme to use, what initial features the application should have, what database to use, etc. After I released my first app, I looked to hit a minimum of 50 downloads. But it turns out it's way more complicated than that. People would download products they would use and not download just because a friend developed. But if you haven't tried my app's yet, please try them. I would love to hear what you all have to say about it 😊.

App Usage time

Now that you have gotten your users to download your app, how do you keep them engaged to use it for a long time? If you develop a social media app that generates a lot of content, people will have a reason to keep coming back and stay engaged with the application. But on the other hand, if it's like a simple to-do application, it becomes way harder cause at max, they will open the application to add the task, view the task, and delete it. Even in a well-being application, they would open it, view the content, and exit. So getting them to use it for a long time is not easy.

Features

Successfully launched V1 of your application? The road doesn't stop there. Apart from just shipping application updates to support newer OS versions, your users would also want new features within the applications. For some applications, coming up with a feature map will be easy, but it might be more challenging for others. From experience, if you can no longer generate ideas for an application, it might be better to shut it down, take the learning from that project, reflect on how you could have built a better application, and invest time in making that a reality.

Try collaborating

It's hard for someone to be great at everything. If you have an idea that might be beneficial to everyone but isn't your area of expertise. Reach out to a friend who might be, share your vision and see if they would be interested in joining you for the project. This way, you will be able to create a better product because you get to view the product from a developer's point of view and the user's view. Since multiple people have worked on developing the product, everyone will have ownership and an urger to get their friends & family to use the application. It will also lead to being able to generate more features for the applications.

This blog post was more of a reflection after being a developer for close to 2 years. I hope you learned something new. Feel free to share this blog post, and I will see y'all in the next one. TBH this last part sounds like my youtube outro.