For app startup founders, getting through the final development push, publishing to the App Store and watching your app spread its wings is an exciting time. Unfortunately, many startups aren’t prepared for what comes next. To find success, you need to find a way for your app to stand out on the crowded App Store.

Getting an official Apple feature is one of the most effective and prestigious ways to separate your app from the rest.

“I’ve enjoyed over 100 Apple features in my career and every time there is an immediate impact on downloads.”

In this guide, I’ll show…

Weighing up the options

When deciding on your app’s login method, choosing between security and user convenience is somewhat of a balancing act. User data is of utmost importance, but protect it too zealously with Byzantine login methods, and you risk alienating users. However, defend it too weakly in a bid to drive up user retention and you risk losing data, trust, and credibility.

There are a host of login methods to choose from. Each comes with its own pros and cons. Below we list the most common login options and weigh up their relative merits.

1. Password login
2. Social and third-party login
3. Mobile number…

For committed app founders, developing an app can be the ultimate labour of love. The thought of spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours only to see your “baby” sit ignored and unappreciated at the bottom of app store search results is one of nightmares. The fear is real and justified.

Each day 662 new apps are released on the iOS App Store and 3,290 on Google Play. Numbers like that make it very hard for any one app to stand out from the crowd. …

We were all newbie UX/UI designers once, making mistakes and producing designs that would never make it into our portfolios today. But, from those early mistakes came valuable lessons that made us better designers.

After twelve years in the industry, I look back at my early work with both nostalgia and mortification. As cringe-worthy as they are now though, those designs and mistakes were necessary for my growth.

Some of us have teachers and mentors to correct our mistakes and push us to grow. Others are more self-reliant, focusing on practice, tutorials and even client feedback for growth. …

There’s a very famous quote by a French author and aviator named Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It’s the foundation of the minimalist movement and it goes:

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

In my view, this pretty much sums up great UX design too and it forms the basis of my 5-Pass Reduction Wireframing technique.

Wireframing is arguably one of the most important steps in the UX design process. Designing simple and intuitive experiences can be time-consuming. …

Ever wanted to know how to make an app? Here’s the short answer.

Let me start by saying — making an app isn’t easy. There are various ways to go about it but each and every method requires skill, passion and determination. This is especially true if you want to do it right and develop a high quality app.

In this article I’m going to break down the app development process that we use at DreamWalk. This is a fairly typical process, not unlike that used by many app development agencies around the world.

This is NOT a programming course…

I’ve always been intrigued by the proverb “Different is better than better”. It’s the kind of life-hacky, too-weird-not-to-work kind of advice that I’m usually drawn to. But, the perfectionist in me had always denied me the opportunity to test it on anything. Then 2020 struck and I was forced to.

April turned into May and Melbourne’s COVID lockdowns tightened. Business owners like myself were rattled and like many entrepreneurs, I immediately got to work on a side project. A backup plan in case the impending recession was unkind to my other businesses.

During a late-night Zoom session with my business…

It’s a common predicament. You spend thousands of dollars building an app, launch it and nothing happens. The revenue you expected to come pouring in simply doesn’t. Not even a trickle.

So, you go through the five stages of grief. 1) This can’t be happening; 2) Who is to blame for this?; 3) Please developer, make changes to my app for free because I’ve run out of money; 4) Why does nothing ever work out for me?; 5) I guess I’ll write it off as a lesson learned. Time to move on to the next project.

This happens all the…