Do you know what goes behind building popular apps like Instagram, Uber, Netflix, and Spotify?
The first step is to make sure that every component is well-built. Even the smallest problem detected while creating a mobile app architecture can halt the overall mobile app development process in the future.
This is why every top-notch Android and iOS app owner credits its success to a reliable mobile app architecture and best practices for building robust, production-quality apps across platforms.
What is Mobile App Architecture?
Mobile application architecture is a set of techniques and patterns that are required to develop completely functional mobile apps with industry standards and vendor requirements.
These techniques and patterns are formulated with the vendor requirements and by keeping industry standards in mind. A proper architecture saves a lot of time, energy, and costs in the future.
Mobile app architecture design usually consists of multiple layers, including:
- Presentation/View Layer: This layer contains UI components and the components processing them. The presentation layer defines how the application would be presented to the end-user. Moreover, themes, fonts, colors, and everything to be seen by end-users are decided at this stage.
- Business Layer: This layer is composed of business entities, business workflows, and components. It mainly focuses on the business front.
- Data Layer: This layer is created from the combination of data utilities, data access components, and service agents. This layer complies with the app requirements to facilitate secure data transactions. It provides a way to design a mobile app with a clean separation of code into their functional areas within an application.
What to Consider Before Attempting Mobile App Architecture Development
Building better app architecture is vital for a business. So here are some considerations you need to check when building your mobile app architecture:
- Determining The Device Type
Smartphones come in various categories. Android smartphones are completely different from iPhones. Thus it is important to determine the device type while developing mobile app architecture as the intended app features might have some specific software and hardware requirements.
Along with the device type, you should also consider the following device characteristics:
- Screen size & resolution
- CPU characteristics
- Storage capacity & memory
- Development tool environment availability
- Considering Bandwidth Scenarios
An app architecture should be built keeping the worst network scenarios in mind because there may be times when internet connectivity is zero or intermittent. Think about the local internet network conditions in areas where your target audience lives to avoid poor user experience. Design your app caching and data access mechanism in a way that it can adjust to intermittent or slow internet connections.
- Choose the correct navigation method
The mobile app navigation can positively or negatively influence user experience. So choose the best way to navigate through app features keeping customer’s needs and priorities in mind. Some of the most popular navigation methods are:
- Single view
- Scroll view
- Stacked navigation bar
- Gesture-based
- Tab controller
- Search-driven
- Defining User Interface (UI)
Users should be able to seamlessly interact with the app. It shouldn’t be confusing, misleading, or too difficult to use. Always keep things simple. UI builds a connection between your customers and your app, so it plays an extremely important role from a business point of view.
Conclusion
We hope this article gives you a better understanding of mobile app architecture and explains the crucial role it plays in setting your mobile app for success.
Apart from this, if you still have questions regarding:
- Tips to reduce the cost of mobile app development
- Android vs iOS apps
- How to hire a mobile app development company
- What to pick react or native in 2020
Then, you can check out our blog for interesting content. For app-related queries, drop us an email to contact@applify.co
