Effective Mobile App Design: Simple Things You Need to Know

According to Google, “51% smartphone users are more likely to use a company or brand’s mobile app when browsing or shopping on a smartphone because they can get rewards or points”, with an increasing amount of time being spent on mobile apps rather than on web browsers. This points out the importance of mobile app design in the current era.

However, as mobile app developers we at Era Biz Solutions can confirm to you that creating an app that stands out in today’s competitive landscape requires more than just functional code. It is important to effectively apply user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design within mobile application development to play a pivotal role in capturing users’ attention, driving engagement, and ensuring long-term success. Below are a list of key elements that we normally look into while developing mobile apps in order to ensure effective app design with a seamless and delightful user experience.

User-Centered Approach
Intuitive Navigation
Consistent Visual Design
Minimalism
Responsive Design
Feedback and Interactivity
Incorporate
Performance Optimization

Read through them to understand how these can affect mobile app design regardless of whether it is Android mobile app development or iOS app development.

1. User-Centric Approach

One of the fundamental principles of successful app design is adopting a user-centred approach. According to Zippia’s research^[1] 74% of businesses agree that user experience (UX) on their mobile apps is what boosts their sales. Meanwhile 38% users stated that a poorly designed mobile app would just make them lose interest and leave. Most importantly, 52% of people stated that they would completely lose trust in a company if they have a bad mobile experience.

UI design for your mobile app involves understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of your target audience. Start by creating user personas, fictional representations of your ideal users, to guide your design decisions. The method we use at Era Biz to understand the users is to conduct user research to gain insights into their needs, motivations, and expectations.

Design your app’s features and interface with these personas in mind. Consider their goals and how they’ll interact with the app to achieve those goals. By aligning your design choices with user needs, you create a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.

2. Intuitive Navigation in Mobile App Design

Navigation is the backbone of a well-designed app. Users should be able to move through your app seamlessly, with minimal confusion. Design a navigation structure that’s logical and consistent across different sections of the app. According to the same Mobile App UX Trends 2023 report, 65% of users prefer a simple and easy-to-use app navigation.

At Era Biz Solutions, we make it a point to use clear labels and icons for navigation elements, and avoid cluttering the interface with unnecessary options. Consider adopting familiar navigation patterns that users are already accustomed to. For example, placing the navigation menu at the top or using a tabbed interface for different sections can enhance user familiarity and reduce the learning curve.

3. Consistent Visual Design

Consistency in visual design is essential for creating a polished and professional app. Define a color palette, typography guidelines, and UI elements that remain consistent throughout the app. Consistency not only contributes to a cohesive brand identity but also helps users recognize and navigate the app’s interface more easily. At Era Biz Solutions we do this by having our UI designer come up with a color palette and font as part of the initial process.

Find and analyze user preferences in aesthetics and incorporate them. According to Zeppia’s research 52% users have agreed that visual aesthetics plays a large role in whether they will return to the website. While this may seem like something that is dependent on individual preferences, the truth is that it can be analyzed using surveys and feedback from experienced app designers.

Use the analyzed design system or style guide to document your design choices, including colors, typography, spacing, and button styles. This ensures that your design remains consistent as the app evolves and new features are added.

4. Minimalism in Mobile App Design

In today’s digital age, simplicity is key. A minimalist design approach prioritizes essential content and features, reducing cognitive load for users by inducing a sense of order and clarity. Here’s are some key reasons why minimalism is the trending approach in mobile app development today

Great User Experience (UX): Minimalistic designs tend to improve user experiences. The clean and straightforward design makes it easier for users to understand and navigate the app, reducing cognitive load.
Quick Loading: A minimalistic design often translates to lesser data. This means faster load times and overall happier users. Keep in mind that this is critical as according to Google 32% of your users will leave when the loading time increases from 1s to 3s.
Improved Conversion Rates: Several studies have shown that apps (and websites) with simple designs and clear call-to-actions have conversion rates improved by over 200%.
Trendy and Modern:Minimalism, the trend of ‘less is more’ started in the 1960s-1970s. However, it was in the late 2010s and early 2020s that minimalistic design truly caught on and started to be seen as modern and trendy whether in IT, fashion or design. Today, minimalist apps can have a major positive impact in terms of aesthetics, hence improving the mobile app’s adoption rate.
Lower Development and Maintenance Costs: Simplifying features and interfaces can lead to reduced development and maintenance costs. There are fewer elements to code, test, and maintain, which can speed up development cycles and reduce the potential for bugs.

Here’s how you can implement minimalism in your mobile app.

Use an appropriate color scheme with fewer colors, possibly in a contrasting, analogous, or complementary method.
Focus on providing a clean and uncluttered user interface with no excessive elements to distract.
Make strategic use of any whitespace to create visual breathing room and highlight important content.
Prioritize features that align with your app’s core purpose, and consider progressive disclosure for more advanced or secondary functionalities.

Want to design a highly successful mobile app that is user-centric and responsive? Contact Era Biz Solutions to discuss with a free consultation.

5. Responsive Mobile App Design

With users accessing apps from various devices and screen sizes, responsive design is no longer optional – it’s a necessity. According to the Digital 2023 Report by We are Social, 95.3% of all internet users use mobile devices. Therefore it is key that you use responsive design to ensure that your app adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes, orientations, and devices, providing a consistent user experience across platforms. Here’s how we create responsive mobile app design at Era Biz Solutions:

Tips:

Test your app on various devices and use responsive design frameworks to streamline the process.
Pay attention to touch interactions, font legibility, and element spacing to ensure that users can interact with your app comfortably on any device.
Do a user test with a sample group of users for your mobile app as there may still be specific responses that they are more comfortable with.

6. Feedback and Interactivity

User engagement is increased through interactive aspects, which also help users navigate your software. A visual representation of user actions, such as button clicks or form submissions, is crucial. Provide indications, such as a shift in color or animation, when users click a button to let them know their action has been perceived. Some of the techniques we use at Era Biz are button clicking animations, changes in color or texture, and pop out messages (such as “Your form has been submitted.”).

7. Incorporate Engaging Elements

One of the best ways to captivate users is by introducing engaging elements that not only improve user experience but also inject a sense of liveliness and responsiveness into your app. By using micro-interactions, small animations or transitions triggered by user actions, you can make your app feel more responsive and dynamic.

What are Micro-interactions?

Micro-interactions are minute, frequently disregarded design components that complete a single task. These include useful and educational elements as well as decorative aesthetic flourishes. They may take the form of animations, sound effects, haptic feedback, or other design modifications that offer feedback, direct users’ actions, or aid in the visualization of findings.

Practical Examples:

Refreshing Content: As initially mentioned, when a user swipes to refresh a feed, an animation can indicate that the content is updating. This might be a spinning wheel, a filling circle, or a playful animation related to the app’s theme.

Button Interactions: When a button is pressed, it might change color, elevate (mimicking a real-world button press), or ripple to communicate its activation.

Data Input Validation: If a user enters data incorrectly into a form, a shake animation or a subtle red glow can indicate the error without being too disruptive.

Toggle Switches: A switch turning on/off can be accompanied by a soft light glow or a snappy motion to make the toggle action feel tangible.

Loading Animations: Instead of a simple static loader, consider animated elements that keep users engaged while they wait, turning a moment of potential frustration into a moment of delight.

8. Performance Optimization

An app is only effective if it functions well, no matter how beautiful the design. Users may become irritated and stop using an app as a result of slow loading times and jerky interactions.

Pay attention to graphics, animations, and overall loading speeds to maximize performance.
Compress to make graphics and photos smaller in storage size without compromising the quality.
Reduce initial page load times by using lazy loading strategies to load images and content as users scroll.
Limit superfluous animations and transitions that could make the app less responsive.

Conclusion

Effective app design is a blend of aesthetics, usability, and functionality. By adopting a user-centered approach, doing proper research, designing intuitive navigation and more, you can create an app that not only looks appealing but also delivers a seamless and delightful user experience. Remember that user feedback and iterative design are key to continuously improving your app’s design and meeting users’ evolving needs.

But with Era Biz, we do all the mobile app design work for you. Our developers are highly experienced in building native android and/or iOS apps designs using Java, Kotlin, Android Studio, Swift, Objective-C, XCode. We also have hybrid app developers who can design your app to work on both Android and iOS through frameworks such as Flutter and React Native with a strong core in programming languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, PHP, etc.)

To make the best designed mobile apps, contact us at Era Biz

^[1] Zippia. “25+ Useful User Experience Statistics [2023]: What Is The Value Of UX?” Zippia.com. Feb. 27, 2023, https://www.zippia.com/advice/user-experience-statistics/