It would be almost an impracticable task to find a digital entrepreneur who doesn’t want to repeat the success story of Alex Zhu. The lucky businessman, whose startup has attracted the major part of smartphone owners, managed to guess what his audience wanted and invented it, and now his project has produced a profit of more than $75 million. Yes, we are talking about a very popular video sharing service TikTok.
What makes it catchy? How can this idea be modernized? How to create app like TikTok?
What advanced features to add in order to make it even more attractive than the original version? These are only a few questions that are bombing the mind of creative entrepreneurs. Let’s contribute to the issue and make the picture of perspectives clear like a spring sky.
The foundation of the app success
When you try to brew something cute and fresh in digital business, first of all, take care of the solid basis for the undertaking. Learn as much as you can about your target audience and its aims. Let’s take colorful pencils and draw its portrait. In order to find out what traits are the most significant, write down the answers about your possible users to the following:
- What’s the age of the users you address to?
- What are their interests and core needs?
- What are their cultural restrictions and dominant preferences?
- What obvious or hidden people’s needs can your app satisfy?
- Are there any alternatives to your future product? What are their weak sides and how can you avoid them and enforce advantages features of your app?
Leaning on the results got due to this questionnaire, you can plan the next steps. Just keep in mind, if you’re intending to create an app luckily, it’s an essential part of preliminary work to research your potential visitors and their motivation in a detailed approach. In order to create an app, this preparation does matter.
For example, the sharp rise in its popularity TikTok experienced in 2019. During a half of the year the service in demand for the young generation let its founders earn almost $40 million. The reasons that can explain this success feel like that. When all the globe population suffered from the lack of communication caused by the pandemic restrictions, the project offered users new experience for creativity, mutual support and opportunity to stay connected. This experience in getting in touch, simple and intuitively understandable tools for self-expression and positive atmosphere of mutual support made the product irreplaceable for those who yearned communication in a new format. The mix of social media opportunities paired with video editing and video sharing tools turned out to be what people wanted at that moment most of all. The majority of young people dream to feel like a superstar: get cosmic scale attention, responsive feedback, support from followers and a huge space for creativity. The service which combined all these in one product couldn’t stay unnoticed. The success was determined. And it inspired other entrepreneurs to think of how to create an app like this.
Valuable features of the apps like TikTok
You can modify the idea of the popular service and make a note of its sapid features in order to create an app that is unique. Give your imagination a bit of freedom, and you will be able to apply the basic features of the considered app for the unpredictable combination of values your own products can include.
Short videos for entertainment are trendy. They attract a plethora of views on various platforms. Think of how you can improve the process of their creating or what features can be added to make it even more engaging.
Sign up page
You can’t create an app without signing up and onboarding features. To sow seeds for love at first sight, utilize your creativity and knowledge of psychology to make these pages of the application absolutely obtainable and engaging for users.
When the first page is sipid and good-looking and the authorization process is quick and can be skipped, the newbies get involved into the content fast and you are not at risk to lose them. Focusing on the user convenience, you’re able to create an app, which will become a breakthrough in the chosen niche.
For you page
Before diving into the ocean of video content, the user gets into the page that is tuned to his interests. The videos which got a huge amount of views are being shown in the recommendations. On the FYP you can see which soundtracks were used in videos, read captions and sort them by hashtags.
Video loading and editing tools
If you want to create an app with the same feature, think about opportunities that should be available to creators. At TikTok you can add a video limited to 15 seconds, pair it with a soundtrack you can choose from a library, decorate it with stickers, animations and any other effects, write captions etc. As you see, the palette for creativity is wide and includes miscellaneous tools from simple ones such as «crop» and «rotate» to more advanced like «masks».
Live-streaming
The effect of live presence feels precious for the modern public and fans support creators with digital presents. This provides the app with opportunities to make money through the in-app sales with TikTok coins. By the way, in-app purchases is a prevailing way of monetization for this kind of the app. Along with the ads.
Social sharing and reactions
Everyone is ready to give and get feedback. This option enables TikTokers to share their emotions with stickers and likes, comment on their selected authors and support their popularity with sharing.
Direct messages
If you want to let someone hear about you, you can send a direct message. The private communication keeps followers engaged and stimulates their activity in the app.
Duet option
If you filmed a short video where you’re singing your cherished song, you can invite visitors to join you with a specific hashtag. Those who share your tastes can use your video in a joint variant and add their own version with lip sync option.
Stitches
You have possibly seen the curious videos with pasting frames from other films. These features are named stitches. They let creators make funny and humorous videos by mixing extracts from other materials.
As you can guess, to create an app of this scale and complexity is costly. The final budget depends on qualification and location of the development team. The hourly rates of IT experts swing from $30 in Asia to $150 in the US. That explains why the price for the app design can differ by several times.
There are a lot of various nuances to be taken into account before you decide to create an app. Like any business, digital enterprises are unpredictable. That’s why experts offer to check an idea before solid investment injections, and they mean an MVP development. The version of the complex app in its core functionality. Budget and time consumption friendly solution can be an adequate choice when we are talking about such a sandwich app like TikTok. So, aiming to create an app, don’t neglect this practice.
If you dream to create an app that is similar to TikTok, take care of selecting the team with relevant experience. Since there’s a complex functionality hidden behind simplicity and intuitive availability of the app, the engineers you are going to entrust your project embodiment should have sufficient expertise in the domain. Check the design agency portfolio, read reviews and assess their artistic and marketing abilities. If you feel the team as like-minded persons, there’s a high possibility to create an app that will inspire your users and make profit.
