Making up a wireframe. On this stage, your ideas and sketches are drawn out in one picture. Wireframing reflects everything that is going to be on each page of an application and the way it’s connected. It also enables evaluation of the scope of the project and understanding how it’s going to look in practice.
Designing. Before you start coding, you must deal with design. Your dating app has to look and feel good. With User Experience (UX) you can set up the interaction system of the design elements, and User Interface (UI) will provide the look and beauty for your app. It’s very important for a dating app to have a user-friendly interface and ease of use, because customers won’t be eager to spend plenty of time examining how this application works.
Coding itself. When it comes to coding, keep in mind that there must be some specific features in dating apps, such as login, user profile, app and discovery settings, chat, geolocation, matchings, premium features, integration with some social network (Facebook, Instagram), etc.
Testing your application. Before your application is on the market it’s very important to make it reachable to the users who will beta test it. There must be some people using your application and providing feedback. The most important thing of this stage is not only letting users show its drawbacks, but also demonstrating an app to them so that they will be eager to use it and even promote this app in the future.
Launching the dating app. So, when your dating app is ready to enter the market, first thing you do is submit it to the relevant app store. Publishing your app to the app store can take a few weeks. In addition, marketplaces have different policies when it comes to this process. For instance, on IOS each app is manually reviewed and you must be ready to make some changes in order to launch it. Once your app is finally in the app store, it’s time to make it noticeable and widely used, which is a beginning of another long story.
In-app ads. Advertisement is a popular way to earn money. At the same time it can be extremely annoying and intrusive for the users
Many dating applications use access restriction or some additional features to make users pay for it. For example, Tinder Plus, the premium version of Tinder’s service, demonstrates how money can be made by making some crucial features of the app payable. Tinder Plus offers Undo button and Passport option for searching outside your current geographic region as premium features.
Recommendations
Pick some selected location – for instance, a city with many students, and concentrate on it – everything big starts from small
Find your niche. In order to strike a market you need to offer something new, something that no one from your competitors had. When you enter a market and want to succeed you don’t have to satisfy everyone. You have to find your niche – a dating site Gamer singles only specific audience interests of which you will satisfy
Create a monetization plan – the way you are going to make money from an app. What you need is creating something not only widespread and successful, but also profitable.
Coffee Meets Bagel has creative branding lying in its name. A bagel is a profile of potential match and you are the coffee looking for the bagel – your mate. There is the possibility of sending only one match every day at noon, which makes the process simpler and more time-effective.
But such trick pays out when there is high level of brand recognition and loyalty to the app – Tinder Plus was introduced after Tinder has already become popular
Mobilizing resources. Actually, your resources are you development team. You should have a team of developers, which would be ready and able to work on your application. Usually, a basic development team of such project would require of a project manager, a UI/UX designer, at least two developers, one backend developer, and a quality assurance engineer.
