In the modern society emoji platform development takes a strong position among design tendencies. It’s a fact. Daily users from all over the world are sending around 6 billion emoticons.

Hence, we would like to distinguish major highlights to consider while working on an emoji app. In such a way you will come up with a practical and effective platform for your customers to enjoy. Thus, let’s say a few words on emoji itself.

What emoji is

It is a great way to save time while interacting with other people and to avoid long texts by simply applying digital images and icons that are called emoji. They help with expressing what we feel without saying extra words.

Those cute faces and icons are in social media and all kinds of messengers – basically wherever you look at, even in business correspondence. Therefore, emoji popularity makes clear the necessity of developing emoji services.  

Mentioned expressive tools help the audience make their messages clearer seen and perceived. Emoticons are no longer solely for kids’ amusement. They have turned into a practical tool while dealing in business and proving a significant effect on clients with a simple picture.

In a due course of our conversation, we will discuss a few great emoji platform examples together with the cost to develop emoji keyboard apps. But for now, we shall devote our attention to the emoji platform elaboration process itself. Shall we?

Stages in developing emoji application

Let’s distinguish some compulsory steps in designing a credible emoji platform.

# Choosing Your Final Consumer

As we mentioned earlier, everyone using different images and icons can show their feelings in such a bright way. Emoticons could be a real lifesaver for shy people who don’t really know how to communicate. You can even create an app for a group of people, for example, for fans of a specific celebrity. Speaking of business, companies might use this tool for their startups.

Simply decide who you would like to focus on. Who do you want to design your platform for?

# Researching the Marketplace

It is for your own good to figure out what your potential users expect from the service. Just make up a clear understanding of what icons and pictures will most probably be popular among your customers, what emojis they will want to purchase. To get answers to all those questions your task is to perform a detailed analysis to see exactly what it is all about.

# iOS or Android

As a matter of fact, Emoji is unified, which makes it suitable for all kind of platforms – iOS and Android, as well as Windows and OS X. Still, in case you have a limited budget, the best case scenario would be to set up an emoji platform for iPhone first. After it is successfully launched, you could focus on adapting your service to others.

# Must have features

Mentioned stage might not make much sense, as the main functionality of emoji apps shall be pictures and images themselves. Nevertheless, just think of it! In case you supply your program with other great characteristics, your audience will happily add those icons to their texting.

We would recommend you to consider the below-mentioned functionalities to implement into your app:

• 3D emoticons – they are always so impressive, so they will immediately catch customers’ attention;
• Animated emojis – you don’t have to put any limits on your platform. Shake things up!

• Magnificent themes;
• Personalized forecasting – customers will enjoy the possibility to type ”flower” and to see all similar stickers;
• Connection to the cloud – your audience will appreciate that;
• Easy input of emojis – think of the ways to come up with a pretty simple program, so your users don’t have to waste their time to figure out how it all works.

# Security matter

As always, the security shall be well-thought through. We assume you won’t be very satisfied with multiple negative feedback, as it happened to Sephora platform.

The reputation was destroyed as the app made it mandatory for customers to grant full access to keyboard settings on the gadget. Audience is not so eager to trust some unfamiliar platform.

Users’ personal data shall be protected properly. You will get customers’ loyalty if you provide them with multiple ways to interact with your program.

# The designing process itself

Working on an emoji platform for iOS and Android could be in two ways:

• Expanding the keyboard sets on the gadget

The idea of such method is the following: a program is designed to maintain customers’ on-screen keyboard updated by means of removing an old emoji set and downloading a new one. Given approach is more complicated than the second option. So, in case you decide to go for it, it could be a good idea to engage with experienced emoji platform designers.

• Messenger integration

Some developers might consider the first method to be too difficult, so there is another reliable way for them. It is also a great idea to design an emoji program that would interact with some popular chat services – Viber, for instance. The favorable advantage that you can get this way lies in those open source platforms which similar instant messengers provide.

Dealing this way designers might easily find needed professionals and the cost of program designing will be much lower.

# Searching for the right engineers

The knowledge on the development process and its components will help you select the right developing company. We would like to mention specific experts that you will require to generate a great online product. Here they are:

• Project Manager

The specialist will coordinate the whole process, ensuring all required communication in the team and coherence all stages;

• Designers

You must realize the importance of engineers to be a real pro in what they do. There are so many companies in the market nowadays. Make sure you select the one that has experienced UI/UX specialists and professional knowledgeable graphic engineers in the team.

• Mobile and backend engineers

Designing amazing emojis is only halfway to success. The second part is to convert those emoticons into a true program.

• Quality Assurance developers

They would be the ones to test the final result and to see what can be improved to avoid any pitfalls.

And now it is time have a look at a few great emoji products.

Emojidom Smileys

Given service is proud of their 2000 stickers. Everyone will find what they like here – Marvel characters, multiple cultures icons, famous places symbols.

The program is well-suited for iOS, as well as for Android.

5000+ Emoji New

The service is quite popular as it provides animated 3D together with text-art icons and images. The application allows the audience to use their icons in WhatsApp, WeChat, Kik and other platforms.

The program is appropriate only for iOS devices.

Of course, there are much more of them at the marketplace. However, there is always room for something special and unique, so new services will always find their audience. Thus, let’s proceed to the money issue.

How much is it to design an emoji platform?

Mainly, the cost depends on time which is required to build an emoji service and the designers’ rates. To start with, we are to specify time consumption matter:

1. Scheduling and prototyping – 70-100 hours;
2. Designing and coding – 680-750 hours and even longer;
3. Testing – 80-110 hours.

As to experts’ rates, it is all about how big a company is and where it is located. The truth is that the most costly specialists are in the UK, Canada, and the USA. Nevertheless, you can find reliable professionals in designing for cheaper rates. For instance, Ukrainian developers ensuring a high-quality result might create an emoji program for $25.000-$35.000 with $35 per hour.

Summing up

After everything mentioned above, we suppose, it is obvious that emoji market will achieve great heights in the coming years. And now you are prepared for the future, as you have several ideas on how to come up with a great emoji platform to compete with already existing rivals. Go for it!