Market Research – You’ll want to start with competition analysis and user interviews to find out what the primary needs for your app will be. This will give you a good indication of what’s on the market and the scope of the project. Look out for the advantages and disadvantages of other cryptocurrency saving apps, such as how many cryptocurrencies they might offer and how that limits or increases user accessibility.
Project Planning – After you’ve completed your market research, you should have honed in on what kind of functionalities you want to offer. An important thing to consider is whether your app will be available as both web/desktop and mobile versions, and this is going to inform you what technology stack you’ll need. With your mobile app, it’s highly recommended you make it iOS and Android compatible to gain as big an audience as you can. Whilst you get the infrastructure for the app down, it’s vital you also consider the legal regulations and jurisdictions your app has to comply with - we’d recommend seeking legal counsel to help you with this. Finally, you’ll need to decide how you’ll be earning money from your app: for example, you could take the traditional route and charge commission on trade transactions, or you could attract customers to your trading terms and go commission-free, like the app
Robinhood.
Technology Stack – Java or Node.js, are two of the most popular back-end products for cryptocurrency exchange apps. For the front-end technology, Angular or React Native are two very effective tools and React Native allows you to build an application that can run on Android and iOS. However, if you want your app to allow cryptocurrency exchange to fiat currency exchanges, you’ll need to integrate with a Payment Service Provider (PSP) like
Coinify or
Bitpay.
Building a Team – So you’ve recognised the features and functionality of your app, the regulations and the technology stack required. Now you’ll want to build a team that can help you put all of this together. You may find you want to outsource some of the projects or hire freelancers depending on your budget. Some key team player we recommend are:
- Developers for iOS, Android, back-end, and front-end technologies
- A graphic designer and marketing team
- A project manager to oversee the overall development and coordination
- Someone to test the product such as a QA engineer
Prototyping – A working prototype will come in handy for a number of reasons before you create the final product: you can advertise the app’s capabilities to future investors, gauge user feedback, and test the app’s functionality, UI, and UX.
InVision is a great tool that allows you to build and test an interactive prototype.
Final development stage – Once you’ve got all of the following done, the end-product development can begin. Creating an app for iOS and Android usually takes between 5 to 6 months, but blockchain technology and cryptocurrency trading is a new, complex phenomenon, so you can’t afford to cut any corners and make mistakes in development. That’s why you’ll need quality, expert software developers onboard combined with your creative team and market research to create a successful app.