These days, almost everything has moved online, be it shopping, working, studying, socializing, and even finding a date. And as more entrepreneurs attempt to leverage the thriving digital economy, it becomes even more challenging to start.

Creating an app is one of the proven ways to kickstart your digital presence. But in the online world, starting is merely half of the process. Scaling is an equally crucial part. Knowing the competitive and overcrowded marketplace, it's a must to find ways to stand out.

Why Does It Matter to Develop a Scalable App

In business, it's a matter of growing. And as part of your strategy, your app should also be aligned with your consumer-driven and competitor-conscious approach to growth. Why so? Market demands and app platforms change. And you need to keep up, whether you are developing an app that sells, tracks time, monitors productivity, sets appointments, gives social support, or helps people relax.

Recent online shopping studies also show that companies with apps can significantly improve important business aspects, such as customer service, revenue, and brand loyalty. These perks will also serve as their head start as they scale their app and business.

Ways to Scale and Make Your App Stand Out Effectively

Like all other projects, scaling an app starts with building and recruiting top sales and marketing people. With a highly efficient team, you can boost your app's features, performance, and the number of users. Many case studies, researches, and surveys also pointed out the following as effective ways of scaling an app.

1. Conduct thorough market research.

Know the age bracket, purchasing power, and buying behaviour of your customers. Study the platforms they're using. And identify their recurring problems and find ways to solve these issues.

2. Set up reliable user verification and transaction safety protocols.

Security is extremely important for apps with payment gateways. So, use multiple levels of verification. Encrypt data. And don't miss to conduct threat assessments and tests before launching your app.

3. Create and follow a strategic app promotion plan.

As you would for your other projects, create a marketing plan that includes app store optimization, paid ads, social media promotion, and content strategy. Leverage (recruiting top sales and marketing) people and events as you implement word-of-mouth advertising, affiliate marketing, and referral programs for your app. It's also practical to partner with influencers. That way, you can tap their followers and increase app downloads.

4. Leverage the full potential of cloud solutions.

An app needs to be built and hosted in a highly flexible and adjustable environment. And nothing else can give you that ideal app development platform than the cloud. Cloud solutions can be customised to meet your requirements. Whether you like to develop an app despite spiky bandwidth or limited hardware capacity, there's a plan for you. Adding new features, debugging, collaborating with remote teams, and rolling out updates would also faster and easier if you opt to build a cloud-native app.

5. Build your API first.

It's common for companies to take the interface-focused approach when developing apps. Yes, many developers can also attest to the efficiency of this approach. But if you want your apps to have a high level of cross-platform performance, it's best to prioritise the API design first. With a well-designed API, you can easily integrate, synchronise, and add new app features even across different platforms. Yes, this also means you can say goodbye to daily infrastructure monitoring and maintenance.

Evernote can easily be considered one of the best app scaling case studies that follow the API-first app development approach. Evernote managed to cater 1 million users in just 446 days. It's now being used by over 150 million users across 193 countries. And it's currently valued at $1 billion. Plus, the digital note-taking app is now on almost every mobile and desktop platform – BlackBerry OS, iOS, Windows Mobile, and Android. Thanks to its well-designed API that makes integration extremely speedy and efficient.

Yes, there are challenges to scaling an app, the foremost of which is the highly competitive marketplace. But don't let this stop you from achieving more. The scaling insights on this post might help you get started. And all you might need to do next is organise (recruiting top sales and marketing) people to carry out your strategies.