What Are The Best Practices To Keep In Mind When Creating Your App In Our System?

We know, building an app can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! In this article we’ll give you some tips and recommendations that we think will not only help you while you’re building your app, but also for when you’re maintaining your app after it has been published.

Before you begin building your app we highly recommend you go through our list of Getting Started articles. These will help give you not only a good foundation on our system, but takes you through the entire initial app-building journey. This series of articles can be found here:

Along with this series, we have additional important fundamental articles that we encourage you to check out which you can find here.

Throughout our system you may see recommended image sizes under different elements as you’re building your app:

We included these for a reason. Not only will they help the images to appear the best they can in your app, but adhering to the correct image sizes can also help in the overall performance of your app. Along with the recommended image sizes that we have included throughout our system, we have an article that goes over all of our recommended image sizes, as well as some tips and tricks for using images in your app which you can find here.
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Included in that article is a template pack which includes pre-sized templates for our system that you can download and use when creating images for your app!

When we say “native in-app functionality” what we mean is make sure your app isn’t just a bunch of WebView features pointing to outside websites. Apple and Google are looking for an app that will give the user an experience that can’t be replicated by simply visiting a website.
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What are some good examples of features that can help you add this to your app? Well we’re glad you asked! Some of the best features to use in order to add in-app functionality to your app are:

Adding these, along with some of our other features can help “flesh out” your app and add functionality and interactivity that help separate it from simply visiting the mobile version of a website.

We have a pretty big catalog of features to pick from, and we’re amazed at how some people have used our features in ways different from their original intent. We encourage you to go through our features and think of unique and creative ways to use them within your app!
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Not only will this help in adding native in-app functionality to your app (see above) but it can help give your users a user experience that’s unique to your app!

As you’re building your app you should keep in mind Apple and Google’s app store policies specifically in relation to your app’s content. Apple and Google have very strict set of guidelines for their respective app stores, and they’ll follow those guidelines when reviewing your app.
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We encourage you to look at their app store guidelines here:

Apple’s App Store Guidelines

Google’s App Store Guidelines

We also encourage you to also check out our article which has some advice regarding the main points of interest that Apple and Google’s review teams will be looking at which you can find here.

When you’re ready to submit your app you’ll need to have your own Apple and Google developer accounts, and when you’re enrolling in the Apple developer account program you should be conscious of what type of account you enroll in. Apple has two types of accounts that you can enroll in when registering for a regular Apple developer account:
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​Individual:

An individual account only allows for a single primary login to be created to the iOS Developer Account. Also, the developer name that will be made public (on the App Store) will be your First and Last name. Sign up for an individual account only if your app is branded to you as an individual.

Company/Organization:

A company/organization account allows for multiple user logins to be created and managed with varying permissions capabilities for each login. The developer name that will be made public will be your company or organization’s name.

Enrolling in the correct account, or entity type, is vitally important to getting your app submitted and approved by Apple. Not sure which account type to enroll as? It all boils down to what your app’s content is for, and what it’s branding is set to. 

Using Tony Stark of the Avengers as an example, let’s say he built an app about himself called “Tony Stark’s App”. Not as creative as his Iron Man suits, but it does the job, and everything in that app is related to him as an individual person. Then he could enroll as an individual. But let’s say he made an app for his company Stark Enterprises, or a charitable organization that he created. He’d have to enroll as a Company/Organization for that app since it’s created specifically for his company or organization.

So if you’re building an app for yourself and it’s going to be branded to you under your name, then you should enroll as an Individual. If your app is for a company, organization, or any other entity that’s not an individual person then you should enroll as a Company/Organization. It is extremely important that you enroll in the correct account type as this will help avoid rejections by Apple’s review team.
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Not sure how to enroll in Apple or Google’s developer programs? If so, we encourage you to check out our articles that take you through the enrollment process for both which you can find here:
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​How to Create an Apple Developer Account and Enroll in the Program

How to Create a Google Play Developer Account

Push notifications are one of the most integral parts of your app and can help people stay engaged over time. Not only should you think of how often you should send out notifications, but how you’re going to use them to enhance your app and your user’s experience.
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With our system you’re able to do a wide variety of things with push notifications such as sending notifications to groups of users with our Notification Groups, announce a new feature in your app by linking to it with our Action Builder,  or send out notifications whenever your blog has a new post with our Automatic Notifications.
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There’s plenty of ways that you can use notifications to connect with your users and keep them engaged with your app! If you would like to learn more about our push notifications, you can do so here.
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​Note: Push notifications are one of the few features in our system that do require your app to be live in the app stores in order to function. Once your app is live, if you would like to test push notifications in your app we encourage you to check out our article on best practices for testing push notifications.

Recently Google changed the way that notifications are processed on Android devices and because of this you will need to generate Google Firebase Certificates for your app so that push notifications will work on Android phones that download your app. You can generate these for your app before it’s published, and once generated you shouldn’t need to create new ones.
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If you need help with how to generate the Google Firebase Certificates for your app, we encourage you to check out our article which gives you step-by-step instructions on how to do so which you can find here.

Even if you’re building an app for an annual event, you can still use your app to keep attendees engaged after the event has ended, and get them excited as the next year’s event draws near. No matter what you’re building your app for, it’s always best to have a long-term plan for your app and its users so that your app has the best chance of thriving and staying relevant in user’s minds.
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One way is to make sure you’re creating Engaging Push Notifications that spark the interest of your app’s users. Another way is to think of ways to utilize the features in our system such as the Premium Social Wall which can help add a sense of community to your app. Along with this, we have some free Marketing Materials that you can use to help promote your app over time.
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Simply put: The more engaging your app is, the higher chance of success it will have!

As you may have noticed, we strive to have as helpful articles about our system for our customers as possible. All of our articles can be accessed at:
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​learn.buildfire.com

Where you’ll find articles on mostly everything in our system. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Then we encourage you to reach out to us at:
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​support@buildfire.com

Where one of our Customer Success team members will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about our system!