How to Create A Signature App
How much time does it take to sign a document? You probably format your document, get a print, sign it physically and then scan it back into your PC. This process doesn’t really take much time. However, if you had to perform this task repeatedly, then it becomes a big task.
This is where electronic signatures help you out. They basically let you sign the required documents within seconds. They enable the users to sign on to certain documents and files without the hassle of doing it physically. It is a faster and more convenient way to validate electronic and digital documents.
Based on Electronic Signatures and Record Association‘s research, businesses that switch to e-signatures are likely to improve their performance by 83% in getting approvals and saving up to 86% in document costs. However, sometimes, the current software for document signing might not help in growing your company’s performance. This happens because of a lack of integration and other features that might cause obstacles for the customers and other users.
To register a valid digital signature, they should be legally accepted by the law enforcement agencies in your country. Below we have a few conditions which must be fulfilled to make your e-signatures work.
- Every signature should be distinctive
- It should be the owner’s responsibility to use a particular signature
- The owner should have a detailed record of the usage of signature
- When using digital signatures, the recipients must accept the e-signature holders’ documents to keep a track record.
You can use digital signatures for different locations and documents, but there are some exceptions. For security purposes, they require witnesses or some sort of identification to ensure that the person is using their own signature. Below are some of the documents that are usually required for such purposes.
- Documentation from the Court
- Marriage Certificate
- Power of Attorney
- Any previous financial transactions
- Will
Before finalizing and creating your application for a digital signature, make sure you focus on the following points:
- The application should provide signatures that will help you make the documents legal in the eyes of your country’s law
- Your application should have an option for mass signatures so that you can authorize various documents in one go
- The process should be straightforward and fast enough to ensure a smooth workflow
Steps to Create A Signature Application
- Defining Your Goals
As a developer, you need to set some pre-defined goals that should depict your plans, what you want to achieve and target. It should focus on the problems that you’re trying to solve with the help of this application. If you have set your goals from the beginning, it will help you establish a great development process. If not, then it is very likely that you will be lost once you start developing your application.
Therefore, while making a signature app, you should set measurable goals to target business owners and make their life easier. This way, your goals are set based on the end-users. Hence, have a pre-set goal to ensure that you’re aiming towards your target audience.
- Conducting Market Research
After setting your goals, you need to start researching signature apps, whether they will be successful in the market or not. Are the businessmen and entrepreneurs willing to use and trust your application? If there is enough market need for a signature app, you should go ahead and start developing it. If not, then drop the idea before you proceed further, as it is better to understand and respond to your market’s need effectively. This will save you valuable time and money that you might’ve spent on the app.
You can conduct your market research by conducting interviews with your potential customers and clients or run a focus group to get detailed feedback on your research.
Below are a few questions that you can include in your research:
- Are there any other signature apps that you’re using?
- What do you expect from a new app?
- What makes you switch from your current application to a new one?
- Will you trust a new application?
- Creating a Wireframe
If you are new in this field, you must be thinking, what exactly is a wireframe? It is a very simple and easy but very important step without which your application is incomplete. You will need a wireframe to create a rough layout of your application. It is like an informal plan on a piece of paper, a napkin, a whiteboard, etc. It simply helps you understand your application’s core components and derive different schemes and plans to carry it further.
Your wireframe should only focus on the flow and structure of the application, nothing more to it. This is an initial stage of planning, which only requires a lot of research and homework.
- Choosing Your Development Process
There are various ways to create an application, but you should select the best method based on the type of application you’re planning to build. A signature application will have a completely different development method than a virtual reality application. It depends on your budget as well as the level of expertise that you employ for the job. Therefore, there are many reasons that determine the development process based on the type of application, budget, time to market etc.
- Research Current Applications
Before starting the development process, you need to research the existing applications that are already working on e-signatures. This will help you save time, money and other resources before starting your development process. However, if you still plan on creating the application, focus on making it different from the existing ones in terms of design, analytics, infrastructure, push notifications etc.
- Technical Specification
The wireframes that you created in the third stage will be helpful here. They act as a basis on which you build your app. Developers focus on the wireframes to study the internal and external technicalities involved in the development process. It will help you build a ‘tech-spec’ for your application.
A tech-spec is a very crucial part of the development process. It helps you find alternative ways to reach a conclusion and achieve the pre-set goals. These alternatives are usually better versions of the already existing options. They save resources like time and money and give you a better way out. So, to reach the best alternative, research the information and then weigh your options to reach the best version.
- Set Milestones
Creating milestones builds determination in the team to focus on the goal and its process. These are like the benchmarks that you set for yourself to stay on track and achieve your milestone. You can do this by dividing your project into smaller or sub-projects.
These smaller projects should then have a specified timeframe within which they must be completed based on the ease or difficulty level of the task. The timeframe can vary based on the task’s complexity. It could be either a few days or a few weeks. This process will help you achieve your milestones and meet the deadlines.
- Creating an MVP
Once you start building your app, the first thing you should focus on is an MVP. i.e., Minimum Viable Product. An MVP helps you focus on the most important features of your application. It focuses on the requirements of your application and builds them first on priority. MVP is like the backbone of your application without which the app cannot stand. You don’t need to think about the design or logo of the application at this stage. Instead, focus on the core features.
Since you want to build an app for signatures, your MVP would be to create signatures for various documents. You wouldn’t start designing the colors and logo of the application, put up audio and microphone options etc. Instead, you will focus on the main objective. i.e., enabling the signature feature in the app.
- Quality Assurance
After creating an MVP for your application, your app is in a working condition and ready to be tested before launching it in the market. Testing your app is very important to ensure that there are no technical problems and glitches involved. Therefore, you can hire a team for quality assurance to check all the features and options in your app before selling it in the market.
Quality assurance requires thorough checks online and offline; therefore, it should be checked on every device with different software versions and sizes that might face hindrance.
- Deployment
This is the last stage, where the app is built and tested for quality assurance. This stage is where you put your application live in the market for the end-users or target audience. Make sure that your application is visible and functional for your target audience. You wouldn’t want any setbacks in this stage after a long process of app development. Hence, to ensure functionality, you can use different software tools and options to check if the application runs smooth, healthy, and is responsive.
However, you need to first launch your app on certain platforms like Apple Store or Google Play Store. These are the two platforms with certain guidelines to follow and function. Hence, go through the terms and conditions and you’re good to go.
- Marketing The Application
Your task is not over yet. After you’ve launched the app, you need to promote and market it on different platforms to make it visible to your target audience. There are thousands and thousands of applications on the App Store and Play Store. What makes you think that people will look out for your app and use it? You need to make efforts to make it the center of attention.
Your app might be the best but, how would people know it? Therefore, market it on specific platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc., to catch some eyeballs and grab the interest of your target audience. The majority of your target audience is on these platforms in their free time. Hence, you can use these mediums to create a presence and build your audience.
Your main focus should be on building a new audience and attract users. So, to broaden the reach of your app, you should use inbound and outbound marketing. These strategies will help you gather a larger audience.
You can also use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Cost-Per-Install (CPI) to increase traffic. For a long-term plan, it is fruitful to invest in blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to attract greater traffic. This will create your app’s image, and users will automatically be directed towards your application when they search for anything similar.
Different Applications for Signatures
There are various applications that help in creating electronic signatures. They are easy to use and reliable. They are readily available on iOS and Android. Below is a list of the top applications that help in making e-signatures.
DocuSign is one of the most famous e-Signature applications. It has over 200,000 users because of its strong security protocols in its process for data storage. It is widely used in the USA and Europe. It has an intuitive and easy-to-use software and supports a wide variety of third-party tools. If integration is your priority, then this is the right app for you. It has a suite of different APIs, which helps in custom integrations with the current system.
It is priced at $25 per month for a user. However, they are further charged at $40 per month for users to have a premium experience, including bulk sending and payment collections. This application comes with a 30 days free trial.
This award-winning application has a built-in e-Signature option to manage your documents and other contracts. It is known for the best-streamlined user interface. It includes various integrations like file storage, payment, CRM etc. It also includes a management tool with features like drag-and-drop integration, full audit histories and automated data workflows etc.
However, this app has a different pricing method. It has a professional plan and business plan. A professional plan is for individuals who want to create their own signature app. Therefore, it costs around $19.99 per month for a user. A business plan is for big firms that have a team of developers and use this application for numerous app creation. So, a business plan costs around $39.99 per month for a user. Besides, they also provide a 14-day free trial period for new users.
Adobe is a huge player in the market for signature apps. It was the leading startup that built the very first e-signature application. It includes various features that help manage the signatures from any device in any part of the world. Adobe Sign has various third-party tools like Workday, Microsoft, Salesforce etc. It offers features for digital as well as electronic signatures and focuses on global compliance.
They offer $24.99 per month for small business plans. However, bigger business plans have more advanced features, which cost around $39.99 per month with a 14-day trial period for both business plans.
Docsketch has an entirely free plan which includes different features like reminders, document tracking and flexible document workflows. This application customizes the recipient’s experience based on the type of document that requires their signatures. All the documents signed through Docsketch get an audit report that either meets or exceeds the international or the US e-signature requirements. It has approval options for documents related to sales while other documents go through a guided signing option.
This application has a free plan that includes three documents every month, e.g., document reminders, templates and others. The Prop plan is priced at $15 per month for a single user. This Pro plan includes branding options, unlimited documents, advanced preferences and unlimited templates.
SignEasy is relatively easier to use as compared to other applications, as it offers a minimal user interface. It has different tools like in-person signing, self-signing and remote signing etc. They help you create documents from within the application, or you can even use the drag-and-drop option with other third-party tools.
It has a standard plan of charging $15 per month for document signing. The Plus plan is generally for smaller businesses who are able to pay $20 per month for this application. Whereas the Premium plan has per month charges of $75 for three users, which means each user has to pay$25 per month for the subscription.
Conclusion
In a technologically advanced world and a growing use and creation of different applications, customers instantly want solutions to their problems. Creating and building applications for the e-signature process will improve the operations of a business. This is because most of the time, different agreements, documents and meetings are delayed due to their unavailability for their signatures.
The corporate world works in this way only. Nothing goes further without the signatures of the higher person or management; therefore, the introduction of such applications have made things simpler and easier to tackle. Higher authorities and management can virtually attend the meetings and sign the documents from any part of the world. These signatures will not hinder the processes and will make it easier for everyone around.
At Retrocube, we hire qualified UI and UX designers who are able to create amazing sets of stickers. Our expert developers transfer the designs into a real-time application.
So, what are you waiting for? get in touch with us now and set new trends in the app market with your unique product!
