Apps are a great tool for small businesses to expand their reach, generate new revenue streams, and promote their business to a wide audience. If you’ve got ideas for how to utilize a mobile app for your business or need some help, take a look at this checklist to help you outline your roadmap to app success!

A central question for all new app ideas is which platform to develop for. The two major platforms, iOS and Android, are both wildly successful, and from a general perspective offer identical opportunities. Both offer robust and well-documented SDKs. Both have a healthy selection of third-party resources and APIs. And no matter which platform you settle on, you have a good opportunity for success. The question is definitely not “which one of these is good” because both have proven themselves as fantastic platforms. The question of “which is better” is a much more challenging one. To answer that, we’re going to use a tried and true method of decision making: a list of pros and cons.

Every year brings new ideas and innovations—that’s what makes technology such a fun thing to follow. And while it’s not always possible to foreseen the individual success stories inevitably that crop up (I’m looking at you “Yo”), there are some overarching trends that we can look forward to.

Engagement is, in some ways, the only metric that matters when it comes to mobile apps. You can define your level of success based on how engaged your audience is; that is, actively using the app, rather than downloading and ignoring (or deleting). Engagement is valuable. It catches people’s attention, puts your name in headlines. Engagement is what grows your app. It’s the holy grail of app design. App owners lose sleep thinking about how to engage users, and when they sleep they dream of beautiful UI designs and hordes of happy customers. I can’t offer all the answers here, but maybe I can help kickstart your brain.

If you look at the number of smartphones in the world—a whopping 1.5 billion—it is easy to see why most of the thought leaders are banking on mobility as the next big engine of growth. But the pace of change is so much that it has left businesses confused: Do we need a mobile strategy? And if yes, how do we go about it? The catch is that the mobile world thrives on social networks, user experience, and innovative ideas, and as such is elusive for those accustomed to the established ways of thinking. But it need not be this way. With the services of an experienced app development partner like Software Developers UK, it is possible to break into the market comfortably.