How’s the weather at your place? What does the weather updates say? How cold is it here in the late-night time? People keep asking such questions quite often. And that’s about people from all over the world!
Weather! You may need to know about it anytime while you are travelling, or you are planning a trip to some place, or even when you are sitting inside you want to know how’s the weather outside.
And of course, as you have apps for every important thing or any regular idea, you have apps for weather too. And there are users increasingly turning up to ask these questions to an app – which for all obvious reasons – could answer you back more accurately and timely than a human counterpart.
That’s why weather app development is so popular among businesses and people who look to build some utility app. And it doesn’t matter if they are just the beginners or seasoned professionals in the field of mobile apps. As with something like weather app you get a great quick opportunity to prove your talent as a startup. And if you are an established business and have a dozen of apps in your kitty, you get a chance to diversify into something really useful and applicable to the utility vertical.
So, the most important question here is – what does it take to build a weather app?
First things first, you need to show real-time accurate updates to users in their language or in a way they understand it the best. And that is the first thing they would like to have in place and then other features would follow.
So, with that, you need to first integrate an API that throws accurate results (or next to accurate, as it is weather after all). And for this, you need to choose from options that fit your purpose well and cover the most of your ideas of a weather app as a functional support system.
One of such options is OpenWeatherMap API, which allows you to fetch real-time weather data for over 200,000 cities sourced from more than 400,000 weather stations worldwide. It allows you the forecast of 5-16 days. Besides, you get information on historical data, UV index, weather map layers, air pollution levelsand the data is made available in JSON, XML and HTML format. And to get the advanced access to all the data all that you have to pay is$40/month. The further you go with the advanced plan the higher would be the charges.
There are more such APIs like Weather Underground and DarkSky to help you build the backend of your app but they have quite similar offerings in terms of features but if we take a broader look, OpenWeatherMap API looks quite lucrative to go with. However, if you look to go with some particular functionality or some peripheral components, like more languages to support communication or dynamic radar images, hyperlocal data support, that may vary from API to API. But, largely the support remains much similar.
Weather app development seems to be quite straightforward in approach and execution but actually it is something to be dealt with precision and detailing. You have limited scope to interface and communicate with the users as such an app is upfront to cater to the purpose and utility it is meant to serve. So, the approach towards building the concept and design for such an app to make the most out of it should be all-inclusively informative, minimalist, uniquely themed, interactive and delightfully dynamic.
Go for user-driven design: Opt for minimalistic and no-brainer approach. The app should be built on a discreet concept and based on an easy and receptive design that requires least efforts to interact. Keep the primary weather details up close and handy. Have the transitional animation soft and navigation scheme smooth.
Give it a brand persona: When working on an app like this it is important to wrap it up with a distinctive character and an individual trait of its own. You can go for a certain theme that describes your weather app purpose well. Go with a suitable color and graphic order and drape it up with design elements and characteristic attributes that give it a distinct brand persona.
Don’t go overboard: Stick to the basics while compiling the theme. Allow it a neat interface with flat and clear fonts. Bargain and validate the difference between being bright and loud. Go with a certain color tone and icon family and use them smartly to refine and enhance your communication with the user across the app.
Make that difference count: Buff it up with smart roles and interesting traits. Apart from providing them the core weather information and updates, allow your users to access other useful and relevant details. You can give them suggestions on what to wear on a certain day and what drinks will best suit a particular weather.
Smart notifications: Just like you suggest them for wearing a certain dress on a day, send them interesting one liners and useful tips through notifications. This could be anything like ‘Grab an umbrella if you don’t love drizzles.’. Or ‘Play cool! It’s gonna be burning-hot today.’ These attractive overlays and alerts should help you greatly.
Go hyper-local: Tracking the current user location and allowing them minute-to-minute data for that particular place keep them delighted. There are many APIs available to allow you commit to hyper-local updates for your weather app.
Attractive weather visualization: This is when you play artistic with your interface and allow users to experience some really attractive visuals with beautifully mapped locations and weather illustrations, legends and annotations on them.
Go beyond the bar: Show them you are the best! Compare historical data with the current temperatures saying, ‘It is 20 degrees higher today than the same day in the year 1984’. You can also go for drought monitoring and forecasting, which will win you fans from the agriculture industry.
With this article, your idea of the weather apps must be quite clear now. But building one owning everything listed here could take a higher investment. But you can always choose to go for an app choosing a combination of features and picking the interface that fits your idea and suits your budget well. But it is advisable to take a note of your feature preferences and value parameters before you actually take it to the board and go for the action.
And if you have any doubts regarding developing a weather app, Konstant team is always here ([email protected]) to help you with our years of experience building such apps.
A marketing graduate, a deemed strategist, a sure geek - Tushar is a fine blender of the art and science of writing. When it comes to tune up content with commerce, he knows the trick. For him, if words don’t make you think and beat, they are not worth your time. A crazy foodie, an unfailing jogger – that’s him off the desk!
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