Millions of apps are being released each year and only a few get popular and survive in the market. Why so?- because nearly 68% of users do not use an app ever after installing it and even they uninstall it at the same time. Here also the first impression plays a great role. I mean if you can impress your user at the first attempt, congrats, he/she will return to your app. But if they find your app design is complicated to understand or navigate, they will simply stop using your app. Some users will also uninstall your app just within minutes. And only good app design practices can save you from such a failure!

We know this is completely heartbreaking! But think about those apps that can impress their users at the first move and make them return. The retention rate of mobile app users is reducing day by day due to increased competition, according to Statista. When it comes to making your users use your app to get your service or products, there’s nothing better than following good app design practices. 

Regaining a lost user is next to impossible. But still, there are 32% of users who will return to your app if you can impress them. In order to make them return and use your app, you should not leave a stone unturned. When it comes to making an app pleasing for users or simply improving the user experience, we just can’t ignore the contribution of good app design practices. 

Which are good app design practices? Honestly, there is no specific definition of it. But we can say that it is a set of works that you have to do to meet a standard. In this way, you will be able to eliminate users’ confusion and experience the full potential of your app. 

You know that theory and practical views are two different aspects. You cannot always apply what you have read. You have to employ something unique that you have learned through your working days. According to experts, there is no ideal way that can be followed to make the UX flawless. But you should have the detail as well as a tactical understanding of the UX design process to best use good app design practices. 

Well, there are some good app design practices that we follow to make our apps successful. Not only us but also a lot of expert app development companies do the same thing in order to fall in the better percentage bracket (32%). So, which are those good app design practices?- Let’s explore below-

Good app design practices you must follow

1. Check other’s work

Do you know that some of the most amazing works are inspired by others’ works? But there is a line between getting inspired or copying. And you should never disobey that line. It is not that just by checking others’ work, you will also produce the same thing with the differences. In this way, you can escape plagiarism but the work will not be a masterpiece. And that’s why we suggest checking the mistakes of the amazing works. 

Here you have to scan as well as learn. You can learn new things, rectify your mistakes, find out others’ mistakes, and at last, you will be successful in creating something super effective. 

A lot of expert professionals also follow the mobile app trends on popular platforms so that they can offer the best things to their users. On popular platforms like Dribble or Pinterest, you will find a lot of related things to app design such as state transitions, UI elements, push notifications, and so on. You can download some UI/UX that best match your app. You can also enable some changes in order to maintain a unique feeling. 

Apart from this, there is another way to identify the most liked app designs. For that, you have to visit the popular app stores and download the top-rated app based on the domain. Those downloaded will help you to understand how they are making it possible or why people are in love with those apps. 

2. Note down your ideas

This kind of task requires proper planning. You may have a great plan to win easily. But what if you forget one or two vital steps of your planning! Experts suggest putting down all excellent ideas on paper and follow that paper while working on a computer. In this way, you will not only complete the process without any error but also make something unique. Apart from this, you know that making a logo and other things are much easier than designing something with computing tools. 

If you are not sure about your design, I mean, whether it will work in the real-world or not, you can take the help of a design sprint. 

3. Maintain the consistency 

Maintaining the required consistency is one of the important tasks that you need to do to survive as well as grow in the market. If you fail to maintain consistency, it will be accepted as your lack of vision. Maintaining consistency in the entire app is very much important to keep the application error-free. Now the question is how will you maintain the required consistency? Well, for that you can follow the below tips-

When it comes to maintaining visual consistency, you should use the same icons, buttons, labels, and typefaces, in the entire application. 

In order to maintain operational consistency, you should make the interactive components equally functional throughout the app. 

The design should look the same on different platforms as well. I mean the roadmap and design of the app should be the same on mobile devices and computer devices. 

4. Keep your app intuitive

On your app, a user should be able to find a thing instantly. he/she will not spend minutes to find stuff. he/she will just give 20 seconds to find stuff in your app. And that’s why your app needs to be more intuitive. 

It has been noticed that a lot of apps have great content but users did not offer any attention. And the reason behind this is they were unable to find those stuff. So, when you are planning to add some content, you should make it easily accessible. 

But you have to take care of a fact and that is you have to let your app users access your app without any query or explanation. In this way, you will be able to make possible spontaneous navigation. You can add popular icons and patterns to make the app more intuitive.

5. Amazing onboarding 

The sole aim of onboarding is to let the users know the real value of an application by showing them how they can perform different activities effectively and smoothly on these apps. Or we can say that this is the first thing that your users will meet after installing the app. If then your users find any error or problem to use the app, believe me, they will never use your app again. 

You have to make the onboarding experience smooth and simple in order to attract as well as retain users. According to research, the user retention rate reduces to 25% just after the first week of app installation. Another research says that the user retention rate can be increased if you can apply to onboard rightly. 

Generally, there are two onboarding processes such as short onboarding and long onboarding. Both of these processes have some benefits as well as drawbacks. 

Short onboarding pros

• Users can easily skim through the process
• Users will not skip tutorials and understand the app features properly 

Short onboarding cons

• Here users may miss some important features
• Mysterious features can confuse users

Long onboarding pros

• Users can understand all the features properly
• Users will be able to access all features without having any confusion

Long onboarding cons

• Users may get detached
• They can also skip the process even without knowing the best features

6. Let them navigate without sign-up

We have seen that users feel irritated when an app forces them to sign-up first. Nowadays, users prefer to explore the app before signing up. Your sign-up pop-up should be skippable. If users want they will do the sign-up or you can just ask them to sign-up to get a better app experience. We know that the signup process is important to get customer’s data. But for that, you cannot reduce the retention rate. 

Or you can include the third-party sign-up options. I mean the one-tap sign-up process is now trending as it is super easy as well as super time effective. In this way, you can impress your users at the first move. 

7. Enable smart navigation patterns 

When you are trying to plan a master menu option, you should remember that your users do not have that much time to explore all the options in the menu bar. So, it will be better if you set some truly essential options in the menu bar. In order to create an amazing navigation experience, you can take the help of effective navigation drawers available in the market. Along with this, you should consider another fact and that is you should not use different patterns within a single app otherwise it will make your users super confused. 

8. Think like a user

When you are capable of designing an app, we understand that you are pretty good with technology. But not all your users will come from the same background. And that’s why you have to think like a user. What seems easy for a techie guy that may not seem that much easy to a normal user. So, it will be better if you keep the design simple as well as easy to access. 

You can use the popular designs that both Android and iOS users are familiar with. In this way, your users do not have to spend a lot of time just to understand your app features. Apart from this, you can do proper beta testing in order to learn others’ perspectives with your app from the very beginning. 

9. Do some highlighting 

You know that all the elements are not equally important. There are some elements that are useful for app users. You should only highlight them. They should have the most visual weight. In order to highlight the apps properly, you should experiment with font-weight, color, and size. 

You know that there are some features that all users use such as user profile, search, wishlist, and so on. And you have to highlight these features for the ease of your users. It will also boost the conversion rate. 

10. Readability

This is another vital fact that you should consider while designing an app. If you put something complicated and your users cannot read or understand that, what’s the benefit of putting content there! If your text-based direction is unreadable as well as illegible, users will not be able to use the app. And soon after they will uninstall the app. 

We always suggest maintaining good readability. Your text-based information should have a properly readable font size, font color, and font style. Along with this, you should also choose an appropriate contrast. You should not make the font size smaller than 12 otherwise it will be difficult to read for your users. 

11. Use clear images

When it comes to putting images to your app, you need to be very careful about some facts such as image resolution, aspect ratio, and image architecture. You have to set the aspect ratio in accordance with mobile devices, animation effects, design elements, and so on. You should keep the size of the app small otherwise users with a poor internet connection will not be able to see your content and access the app. The image resolution also needs to be perfect otherwise users will get blurry images and that will create a bad impression of you. 

12. Properly optimize the user flow

Expert professional app designers always suggest properly optimize the user flow. Optimizing user flow is not only a good app design practice but also an important part of content design. 

You have fixed some tasks for your users on your app. But your users should not feel that they have to perform some tasks there. You can set a goal and divide the road into several parts to achieve the goal. In this way, your users will spend more time on your app and achieve the goal by following your directed way. 

13. Try to avoid jargon words

When it comes to designing any mobile application, you should put clear and effective communication as your first community. Experts suggest using the words that your users are already familiar with. You should not put any word there that forces your users to think about the meaning of that word instead of exploring the application. In order to enable a unique approach often, app makers do such mistakes. But you should use the popular as well as easy to understand words or phrases on your app. 

14. Reduce user input 

If your users need to put a lot of details to use your app, believe me, they will be irritated. Gathering customer information is important but the approach should be smart and fast. Apart from this, when a user will add too many many details, he/she may commit some mistakes. In order to avoid such hassles and to offer an amazing user experience, experts suggest reducing the user input. We can offer you some tips to effectively minimizing the user input-

• Keep the sign-up process easy and short. You can enable one-tap signup with the help of third-party user accounts
• Enable smart features that can do some tasks automatically and reduce the performing area of a user. 
• You should also offer your users a tailor-made keyboard. While putting numbers, the keyboard will only show numeric digits and while entering alphabetic, the keyboard will show alphabets only along with email address ends and some signs.

15. Make the app responsive and fast

Research says that if an app is slow then 48% of users will uninstall it within a few days of installation. So, you can understand that speed is one of the most vital aspects of an application. While designing and developing an app, you should consider speed as GOD. you should not leave any stone unturned to boost the speed of your app. 

Maybe your app is fast yet there will be some features that will take time to load/process. The poor internet connection also affects the response time. If you think that a slow internet connection can slow the loading time, you should put some text-based information so that your users stay connected instead of hitting the back button. 

The image size should be low so that it takes little space in your apps and gets loaded faster. It will be best if you can reuse the majority of sources. In this way, code will not be complex. 

You can take the help of a skeleton screen to keep your users connected. In this way, users will understand the content and on the other hand, the app will get some time to load the entire content properly. 

16. Try establishes gestures 

It will be better if you use established gestures. Actually, people are already accustomed to the established gestures on their smart devices. In this way, users can better understand the app and its functionality. Apart from this, if you add popular widgets like social media widgets, users will share your products or services online. In this way, you will get better promotional benefits. Gestures can help new users a lot especially when they try the onboarding process for the very first time. 

17. Reduce the cognitive load

By reducing cognitive load, you can create an amazing impression of you to your users. I mean it will just reduce the load on the human brain. You may know that there is a limited cognitive power that a human brain uses to do daily activities. If you try to spoon-feed a lot of information via your app, the user will get baffled. In order to avoid such situations, you should place your contents systematically. I mean a single screen should not contain a lot of information. 

18. Customization

Once you enable customization on your app, automatically the user experience will be improved. According to experts, when it comes to building better relationships with customers, personalization can offer amazing benefits. It is not only a good app design practice but also a great way to get insights about users’ choices and buying patterns. For example, we can say that YouTube shows the videos on its home page based on your recent searches. YouTube uses artificial intelligence as well as machine learning to make it possible. 

19. Use push notifications

If you ask an expert which is a good app design practice?- then she/he will definitely suggest you using push notification. Without any doubt, this is a good app design practice that directly boosts the conversion rate. 

While including push notification, you need to make wise decisions. You cannot send a notification in a day or just one notification in a week. Both ways are wrong. Why? The first way will irritate the users and the second way will let users forget you. 

According to a survey, 52% of users find push notifications irritating and the rest 48% of users find it valuable. 

So, when it comes to offering push notifications to your users, you should be wise at choosing the type of notification, number, and sending time. 

20. Do proper app beta testing

This is another good app design practice we recommend one asks us “which is a good app design practice?”. It helps to know what is good and what is bad according to users in your app. A lot of companies perform beta testing with the in-house team. But to get better as well as genuine insights taking the help of new and outside users is important. 

It will help you to note down the good and bad about your app. And you will be able to do the required improvement. 

So, whenever you have the question “which is a good app design practice?” to improve the quality of an app, you should try these best 20 ways. These are fail-proof ways to make an app super effective in 2020. You will notice that all the popular apps in 2020 have these 20 virtues. So, when it comes to making an app and just impressing the users, you should not miss any of these 20 good app design practices.