An article series made out of a half-decade’s experience, pitfalls to sidestep, gainful tips and design tricks, actual examples, and mostly, a well-saved budget in the end.

When tens to hundreds of thousands (so basically, a lot) of people use your mobile application on a daily basis, you ought to be extra thoughtful about what you hand them. If it has some inconvenient features that frustrate your customers, or some occuring issues that yet need to be fixed, you will end up in the same wretched situation. You lose customers and / or time – and by those, you lose money. And who would possibly want that?

If you are about to spend a significant sum of money on creating a business-critical app, instead of cutting corners, you ought to start by stepping up your game. Including trying to avoid common as well as – and here comes the tricky part – less common pitfalls at any cost, as they would certainly cost you more in the long run. And have no doubt, pitfalls arise in projects at such scale. As a digital vendor with six years of experience in enterprise-level mobile app development, believe us, we know that firsthand. Some we have learned the easy, and some the much harder way.

At Mito Digital, we have been designing and developing clever digital solutions for various industries all over the world, be it telco, retail and hospitality, finance, or aviation. The common denominator in them is the fairly high business criticality. We have just rebuilt the loyalty app of La Cage, one of Canada’s biggest sports restaurant chains, which has 50K monthly active users. We delivered a retailer app both for Germany’s SLV / Lotto Bayern, and later for the Hungarian National Lottery Company, Szerencsejáték Zrt., actively working on further improving them. Deutsche Telekom’s next-generation self-care application, the One App was launched in five countries across Europe (now used in nine), being an industry best practice ever since. And every year, millions of users complete their post-booking journey along the mobile timeline we created for Wizz Air, the best performing ultra-low-cost carrier in CEE.

If there is one thing we have learned is that big numbers of any kind usually mean there is a lot at stake. But we have also learned so much more than that – among them, a lot about critical factors we all wish we had known before jumping into a mobile project.

By way of example, how can you really and truly save time and effort with automated release management, making sure nothing misfires in the first place? Do you need to block the whole release of your app because one of the many scheduled features is still dysfunctional? How can you make the rollout a rapid, failsafe and smooth transition, even though its nature says otherwise?

On the customer’s side, have you ever wanted to use your membership card to claim that much-deserved discount, only to have an endless spinning wheel await? Frustrating, we know. So, is your application actually up and running when going offline? Should it be? Apparently, a lot can be done to improve – or on the other hand, to worsen – customer experience (CX). The size of the app can just as well be a bottleneck for users, thus easily leading to lost opportunities for you. And speaking of frustrating, what is it with deep links that they never open the way and where they should? Mainly, how to set them up correctly? Also, why is having an analytics expert on your design team so beneficial?

You might think that managing localization is not rocket science, but really, typos in hard-coded texts are costly and set nerves on edge in no time. Even a smaller app includes at least 500 translation terms, just imagine how many base words that implies, all in different contexts. Yes, a lot. And as we said, big numbers equals being a lot at stake.

The result of this past decade’s work was a dozen amazing apps for our clients and even more takeaways for us. In the following months, we will be covering the weightiest topics from caching through remote control and analytics to release management. From unforeseen challenges through essential tips and tricks to real-life examples on how we use(d) top-notch, or even in-house developed digital solutions. 

Mobile development at scale is not a walk in the park, and we can’t promise pitfalls will not arise along the way. But by sharing those we fell into, we can show you how to avoid some of the most crucial ones so that they will consume neither the success of your app, nor your budget. Well, nor your or your customers’ patience.

Mito Digital is a business unit of Mito, a unique powerhouse of creative & digital experts with a passion for clever things. We have been working with our clients around the globe for more than ten years, in numerous industries from aviation through lottery and retail to telecommunications. Our goal is to design and deliver human-centered and best-in-class digital solutions that meet and exceed the business goals of our clients as well as the demands of their clients.