Seven app design mistakes first-timers make

First apps feel cheap for the same seven reasons, and none of them is a lack of talent. They are habits carried over from websites and slide decks, and each has a fix that takes an afternoon. In the order people meet them:

1. A sign-up wall before any value

The app opens and asks for an email address. Nobody has seen what it does yet, so most people leave. Apple’s review guidelines even say an app should not require sign-in unless it needs it for a feature. Let people see the main screen, with real content, first. Ask for an account at the moment they want to save something.

2. Six tabs

A tab bar with six or seven items means the designer could not choose. Both phones stop at five for a reason: thumbs and attention. Keep the three to five places people return to all day, and move the rest under Profile or into the screens where they belong. If “Settings” is a tab, that is your sixth.

3. A custom back button

Drawing your own back arrow, in your own corner, feels like branding and works like a trap. Every other app on the phone puts back in the same place with the same gesture. Use the platform’s. The same goes for toggles, pickers and the keyboard’s done button: the stock version is the one people’s hands already know.

4. A home screen that does everything

Six equal buttons, a carousel, two lists and a banner. The screen that tries to be the whole app is the screen nobody can scan. Give the home screen one job and one main action. In a bookings app it is today’s diary and an add button; everything else is a tap away.

5. Tap targets you need a stylus for

Text links in a list, icons at 20 pixels, a row whose only tappable part is the chevron. The platforms ask for about 44 points on iPhone and 48 on Android as a minimum, and that is a minimum. Make the whole row tappable and the whole button the target, not just its label.

6. A colour on everything

When every button, chip and heading is the brand colour, nothing is. Colour is for the one action you want on a screen and for state, such as selected or error. Most of a good app is black, white and gray, with one accent used sparingly, which is also exactly how the phone’s own apps look.

7. No empty states

The first time a user opens the app, every list is empty. A blank white screen reads as broken. Every list needs three versions: loading, empty with one line saying what will appear here and how to add the first one, and an error that says what went wrong in plain words. Design these at the same time as the full list, not after someone complains.

The fix is a checklist, not a redesign

Go through your screens with the seven in hand. Each one is a yes or no, and each no is an afternoon. If you design in the App Builder, several are handled by default: the starters open on a main screen with content, the tab bar stops at five, the controls are the phone’s own, and every repeating list carries its loading, empty and error states. The other three are still yours to check.