Do you have an idea for a cool social network? Dreaming of moving Facebook off a stage, but you don’t know where to start? As American philosopher Ralph Emerson used to say, “Difficulties exist to overcome them.” We’ll help and suggest the key steps for a mobile social network.
Define a goal
Think about why you are creating a mobile social network, how you plan to promote and monetize it. For example: “I want to make a social network for veterinary clinics and earn my living by advertising feed.” Or, “I came up with a social network for mustache lovers.” Or: “I, a photographer, always lacked a professional social network to find colleagues in the shop. So I decided to develop it.”
Make a portrait of the target audience
There are no universal social networks, each audience has its own audience – people of a certain age category, interests. 83% of Facebook users are younger than 45 years. They check the news about 8 times a day, like to update their statuses and upload photos. 81% of the Pinterest audience are women under 40 years of age. 45% of Snapchat users are under the age of 24. They actively communicate on the social network and write up to 20 messages daily. Pro Photo Shoot users are professionals in the photo industry. They use the social network to organize photo sessions and find colleagues within their location. The more detailed the portrait of CA is, the better. At a minimum, identify the gender characteristics of users, age, values and target activities in your application.
Think through the functionality of the mobile social network
The first thing a user does in the social network is register and fill out a profile. If something went wrong at this stage, the user may well give up your application in favor of a competitor. So decide in advance how the user will enter personal data into his profile: manually or the information will be automatically pulled from other social networks. The event feed is another mandatory feature. People like to watch updates, comment and share interesting posts, share statuses.
How users interact with the event feed depends on the application idea
Facebook offers to react to posts by different emossi: a couple of years ago 5 more emoticons were added to the classic “Like”. In Pinterest users keep interesting pins on their board, and the app selects new pins based on their user preferences. Think about the features of your app and make it interesting for your target audience if possible.
Work through the interface
You studied the audience. You have found out what targeted actions users will perform on the social network and what functionality they need. It’s time to get down to the interface. Ideally, it should be so intuitive that people don’t have to constantly look into the FAQ. Group the key information blocks in your personal profile, hide the less important functions in the navigation menu. Make sure that users interact easily with social network content – include shoring icons, repost buttons, emos, etc. in the application interface. And do not overload the social network with complex color schemes and fonts.
Go on to development and testing
You have successfully passed all stages, from the concept of mobile social network to its design and functionality. Now you need to find a good company that will take care of the development. At the moment you can choose https://scand.com/ if you want the work to be done well. Be prepared that development is one of the most difficult and longest stages on the way to your mobile social network. Philosophize redesign stage – they will make your product better.