June 2, 2020
Last updated: February 13, 2024
Table of Contents
There’s a mobile app for that! this the saying that goes around as a result of the mobile app’s reach in the market. Right from the beginning of mobile apps being available, they have maintained consistent growth and eventually have changed the ways we socialize, work, and play.
Whether it’s booking a ticket for travel or movies or ordering goods, mobile apps have touched all aspects of our life with all its capabilities and potential. Even businesses today embrace mobile application architecture in mobility to enhance the efficiency of their workforce.
While embracing this, on the other side there continues to be constant pressure on mobile app development companies to come up with unique applications that stand out holding to the mobile application architecture. The growth rate of mobile apps is fast and full of new innovations with every passing day.
To explore more on the mobile apps let’s dig a bit deep into the skeleton that underlies beneath the amazing mobile applications. That is the fundamentals of mobile app development – the mobile app architecture.
Technically, Mobile app architecture deals with a set of techniques and patterns to build and develop fully structured mobile applications based on industry and vendor-specific standards. The most important aspect that gets into consideration while formulating the mobile application architecture, is the procedures and programs that work on smartphones and tablets.
Basically, the mobile application architecture embraces a set of models that developers follow to build a fully structured mobile app, and certain specific elements of the architecture are chosen based on the app’s features and requirements.
The most popular multilayer mobile application architecture comprises of three important layers within an application. They are like,
Presentation layer – UI components and the UI process components are all that this layer holds to.
Business layer – This layer comprises of business entities, workflows, and business components.
Data layer – This layer includes data access components, data utilities, and service agents together form this layer.
Before getting into a detailed study on these three different layers let’s understand the elements to consider before developing the mobile application architecture.
Determining The Device Type
Generally, smartphones come out in different categories varying by their operating systems on which they run and by the characteristics they possess. Now, it is very important to evaluate the device type and its characteristics before selecting particular app architecture. The device characteristics to be considered are like,
The need to determine the device type while selecting app architecture is because the features of your mobile app might have some specific hardware and software requirements.
Estimating Bandwidth Scenarios
Considering the internet network scenarios of your target audience area or location is vital because the fluctuation of internet speeds can negatively impact the user experience. The customers may not be connected to the internet all the time and also might have an intermittent network at times. Therefore, it required to make sure that your mobile app adapts to all possible internet networks and never leads to poor user experience.
Also, the mobile app development architecture should be done by selecting the right software protocols and hardware considering power consumption and speed. It even requires designing the cache mechanism, data access mechanism, and state management in a way it adjusts to slow and intermittent internet connection.
Stating User Interface
Concerning mobile application user interface design, one can explore the horizons of creativity with a distinct style. However, just remember to keep the interface as simple as possible so that users can seamlessly interact with the app. The way you place and show your creativity matters as it stays as a major reason behind a mobile application’s success.
Optimal Navigation Method Selection
Besides having numerous ways for navigation of an app, it is a very significant aspect that includes both frontend and backend. Saying so the optimal navigation method selection should be made by keeping the customers’ preferences and app requirements in mind as it has a tremendous effect on user experience.
Among many different navigation methods, to get an optimal one it is important for you to analyze which one is good for your mobile application. The list includes
Therefore to ensure that the mobile application meets with the requirements of your target audience, it is essential to follow certain guidelines while building the app so that it performs efficiently in different situations.
Real-time Updates vs Push Notifications
The real-time updates or push notifications for the app should be included based on the users’ needs. This also values on deciding the mobile application architecture. This feature being a bit expensive though is an added advantage to the application users.
Presentation layer
The presentation layer embraces and pays attention to User Interface components and UI process components. The primary focus of this layer is to define the app’s appearance and how it would be presented to the end-user.
While designing this layer, app developers are supposed to determine important things like themes, fonts, colors, etc. accounting to the client’s requirement.
Yet another important reason for designing this layer is to select the correct data format and ensure it with a strong data validation technique so that the app gets protected from invalid data input.
Business layer
The business layer is basically formed of business entities, workflows, and business components. This layer represents the core functionalities of the mobile app that count on the business front and business logic.
This business layer is concerned with various aspects like logging, caching, validation, security, and exception management. Also, the ideal approach to design this layer is to have a separate business layer wherever permitted.
Moreover, the layer gets deployed on the backend server by the mobile app to reduce the load that is caused due to the limited resources available on mobile devices.
Data Access Layer
As the name implies the data access layer facilitates secure data transactions and meets with the application requirements. Also, the layer gets designed in a way it could scale in the future as the business requirements keep changing over time.
Staying ahead of as an experienced mobile app development company, our developers focus on choosing the right data access technology to form a layer that is way secure and highly functional.
All the data access functionalities like create, read, update and delete operations and data sources are encapsulated inside this layer and get managed by the mobile application.
Once the three layers are observed completely, it’s time for the fourth one that is cross-cutting. This comprises security, configuration, and communication/connectivity. After successfully working on all of these, the completion of better mobile app architecture gets done.
Let’s now see some of the important tips that help to choose a suitable mobile app architecture
Analysis of your audience
Knowing your audience better helps to build an app that delivers the right needed user experience. This is vital to know as your targeted audience may use devices of different platforms.
App key functionality
Identifying the key functional requirements of the app like making it interactive or static also matters in determining the type of mobile app that needs to be built.
Development duration
Knowing the time constraint would help you to plan according and apply smart development strategies to deliver the best possible experience on key platforms.
Skill sets of the development team
Native app development demands knowledge of technologies such as Swift & Objective C for iOS and Java & Kotlin for Android. While hybrid and mobile web frameworks are mostly based on JavaScript & HTML. So, you would have to look out for resources that effectively meet the requirement.
However, having a broad view of the mobile app architecture we might have understood how important it is for mobile app development. It not only makes the mobile app more secure but also enables it to scale along with the growing business. Designing mobile application architecture is the first and most significant step, doing well results in the growth of an app’s market. Whether you are a team of mobile app developers or are a client hiring a team of app developers, ensure that the entire flow is followed effectively. Having this done will let you cross half the way towards your target.
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