Ultimate Checklist For Startups Who Wants to Build an App in 2025

As a startup owner looking to create a mobile app, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done to ensure your investment doesn’t go to waste. Building an app is not a cakewalk, and in today’s competitive market, you need to have a killer strategy. That’s why it’s essential for startups to follow a checklist.

To help you out, we’ve put together five important checklists for startup points that you need to address before launching your first code. By following this checklist, you can minimize the risk of failure and ensure that your app has a better chance of succeeding in the market.

Checklist for Startups

• What is your mobile app all about?
  It’s important to have a clear idea of what your app offers and the problem it solves for its target audience.
• How will your mobile app look like?
  You need to also decide on the looks of your app. Integrating a higher-quality User Interface (UI) in your application would improve its usability and make it navigable.
• How much will it cost to build an app?
  If you haven’t set the right budget for your mobile app, all your app ideas will come crawling down, and you will feel stuck.
• How will you market your mobile app?
  You need to have proper marketing channels to spread the word about your app.
• How will you monetize your mobile app?
  Now that you have put in all your energy, you must find ways to monetize your platform and maintain a regular flow of income.

Not wasting much of your time, let’s directly jump into explaining each of the questions in detail.

1. What is your mobile app all about?

Most people either skip this step or spend too much time looking for a brand-new idea. With over 5 million apps on the Google and Apple app stores, finding a new idea can take years.

But don’t mistake this for copying your competitors without having any idea of what and why they are doing it. Instead, we want startup owners to make solid decisions, something that is viable and unique.

Here, you can either mix multiple ideas or find a gap in an existing mobile app. This way, you know what people want and do not waste too many resources looking for an idea that might or might not be liable.

To get this process completed, you need to have three things on your plate-

• Your target markets

  We are sure you would find an app on almost everything, so it’s important to study your target market and come up with a set of people who would be interested in your idea.

  You can define your app market by reaching out to people on different platforms and understanding user behavior with similar interests associated with your app.

• Your competitors

  Niche down by identifying your cut-throat competitors. These are people who have your ideal buyer and have already established their brand name in the market. Next, you have to identify the features they might be missing and understand user responses to their mobile app.

• Your ideal customer avatar

  This might sound a little technical, but it surely isn’t. Building a customer avatar is identifying your ideal buyer. Someone who would not only buy your free offers but also get the paid ones. Now that you know your target market and a list of your competitors, we are sure that you know who you are selling to.

  Start by writing down the characteristics of your ideal buyer. The more detail it is, the better. You can take inspiration from the following pointers-

  • What is their name, age, and place of living?
  • What do they do?
  • What are their goals and aspirations?
  • How can your mobile help them?
  • What are the objections you might face while persuading them to download the app?
  • How to overcome the difference of opinions between your brand and your target audience?

• Your app’s Unique Selling Propositions

  Your app idea necessarily doesn’t have to be something that people haven’t heard before, but it definitely requires a competitive edge. Here, you have all the required information to build up an idea that differentiates your brand from others and compels a person to download your mobile app.

2. How will your mobile app look like?

The next step would be to create a wireframe for your app. This will give you a detailed roadmap on how to imagine the working of your platform. This is the place where startup consulting services will jump in. You can have a detailed conversation about your needs with consulting experts about market research, wireframing, and other topics. Before doing this, make sure you have validated your app idea and are ready to move forward.

Here, you need to take care of the two most important things-

• The User Interface (UI)

  UI is amongst the most important elements that developers consider while building a mobile application. It determines the face of your app and helps users navigate the platform. These are some of the trendiest UI designs that you can consider including in the app.

  Here, you should focus more on enhancing the user experience and usability of your mobile application. The simpler and fun the design elements would be, the better it will be for the user to adapt your interface and get used to it.

• The core functionalities

  You now have enough information to describe the features of your mobile app. Don’t just include some “nice to have information” that has no or little connection with its core values.

  For instance, if you have a health and fitness app, including games or other non-training functionalities would confuse the user, and they might end up uninstalling it.

  These will help you keep the cost aligned with your budget and bring out a mobile app that stands strong with its basic features.

3. How much will it cost to build your mobile app?

There are a number of components that you must take into consideration before diving straight into app building. Not doing this can lead to overspending and waste of resources.

Factors that affect the price of a mobile app include-

• The app type- Native, Hybrid, or web app

  
  All mobile apps can be categorized in either one of these columns. This is another crucial but technical decision that startup owners have to make early in the development process. Here, you can leverage the wireframe of your app and the market research to understand which one would be a better option and why.

  Native apps are designed for only one platform, either the Apple App Store or Play Store. These applications can handle heavy-duty tasks and are mostly used in the gaming industry. Web apps require web servers to run and are available only on browsers. However, you can use it for simple applications that are not much of a hassle.  Web app development can cover all the requirements efficiently needed for your application.

  Lastly, hybrid apps are a great mix of native and web apps. Startup owners can build an app that runs on both platforms and has the same code. That’s why these applications are costlier than the other two.

• App complexity

  This is where the actual fluctuation in cost happens.

  Most apps with similar design elements would cost you the same, but the price increases as you move up the ladder. However, apps with high-end gaming features, complex design elements, or premium visual elements can stagnate the cost of your platform.

• Team building

  We are sure you are not doing this alone and would definitely prefer building a team.

  There is a lot to be done here.

  To build a solid mobile app, you would require a developer, a UI expert, a backend developer, a tech project manager, and a marketing manager. These are some basic positions that I would have to fill up.

  Here, you can either hire freelancers, build an internal team, or have third-party agencies help you with app building. But, of course, all of them have their pros and cons list.

  If you opt for freelancers, the startup will have no obligation to act as a permanent employer. So, you save a lot of money on this.

  Besides, these are trained professionals, and they already know how to do their job. The only demerit that comes with hiring freelancers is that they work on multiple projects simultaneously, which might cause delays.

  However, if you build your team, they will dedicatedly work for your app and be responsible for delays. But doing so will cost you a lot of money on hiring, training, and app building. You would also be responsible for paying a monthly stipend to your employees.

  So, the best option that we would suggest for such a grand project would be to hire a top web development agency. This is a perfect blend for the other two options. Agencies give dedicated time to each project, and neither would they require a lot of money.

  You can go with any of the three options, depending on your requirements.

  If we analyze the primary factors, we can bifurcate mobile apps cost into three major categories-

  • Simple app- up to USD 80,000, takes over 2-4 weeks.
  • Database/API app– USD 100,000−USD 1,50,000, can be built in 2-3 months.
  • Multi-functional app-USD 150,000− USD 200,000, takes around 3-6 months.
  • High-definition apps/Games- USD 100,000−USD 250,000. The time varies with the complexity of the app.

4. How will you monetize your mobile app?

If you have built a solid mobile app, monetizing it won’t be much of a problem. It’s tricky as you don’t want to shoo away your audience by solely focusing on earning money. Most app owners make the mistake of only focusing on third-party advertisements, making the app unpleasant and difficult to navigate. Stats show that 28% of users would uninstall an app if they found it too spammy.

And we are not aiming for that, RIGHT?

So, these are some of the ways through which you can earn good money apart from advertising-

• Paid apps

  You can directly launch a paid app and earn per download. Another fun fact is that the Google Play Store generates two times more downloads than the Apple App Store but earns half less. This is because more applications on the Apple app store are launching as paid rather than free.

• Freemium apps

  You must have seen many apps that have both free and paid options. The free part acts as lead management to attract more users and encourage them to buy an app.

• In-app purchases

  This is mostly done in games, where users spend money to get extra points. You can also find a physical product sold through in-app purchases.

• Subscriptions

  It’s the best mode to get recurring income, where the user spends a fixed amount monthly to use your mobile apps.

5. What is your app marketing strategy?

We know this seems overwhelming when you haven’t even started your app preparation, but it’s extremely important in the long run. If you plan to establish a regular flow of users to your app, defining the right marketing strategy is necessary.

There are several ways to promote your app; the most popular ones are-

• Influencer marketing

  This is amongst the cheapest but most highly profitable ways to reach your target audience. Your job is to find the right social media influencers who have a strong presence in your niche and are ready to promote your app.

• Getting featured on the big websites

  To increase the authority of your mobile app, you can reach out to website owners who write similar content and ask them to give your app a mention. This is mostly a paid collaboration, but it will surely enhance your user reach.

• Leverage Google ads

  You can also use Google ads to target only a set of people, leveraging the right keywords. This way, your chances of reaching out to your target audience increase, and so do your app downloads.

Wrapping up

Building a mobile application is much more than launching codes; read our research on the 12 most common mistakes that you should avoid while creating a mobile application. It takes an army to come up with the right idea, decide on its looks, fix a budget, and whatnot.

Doing this can take you days or even months, but it becomes a lot simpler when you know what to do. If you want to skip all these steps, we advise you to hire mobile developers from SolGuruz; all professionals know what they are doing. It would ease out a lot of unnecessary pressure and allow your business to breathe.