Top 10 Mobile App Design Inspirations

If you're designing a mobile app, you should look at some of the most successful, popular apps on the market today for design inspirations. This will help you incorporate visually pleasing design elements and functional user-interface ideas into your app. Take advantage of the major market and development research large companies perform to give your mobile app a boost in performance and design.

1.  Facebook 

Perhaps the most popular mobile app in the world, the Facebook app has many well-designed elements that should inspire your next mobile application. The first being a secure, SSL login and an open API that allows third party applications. Consider offering an API for your mobile app to encourage third-party cooperation and marketing. Secure login is a must if you are hosting any sensitive user data.



2. Snapchat


Snapchat was one of the first mobile apps to implement the slide-up and slide-down navigation, where users can slide entire screens to move to the next page. Try using this on any app that has a modern, younger audience, as they will be used to this kind of navigation. The app also has a feature to delete sent messages, which is great to add privacy to your mobile application. Let users know you have professional web hosting, and care about their privacy by including features like auto-deleting messages and transparent logging policies.


3. Periscope


This mobile app is innovative and has many inspirational design elements. It features live streaming capabilities for users, and extensive user profile options. Periscope is complex with many menu options and side-scrolling screens, which work well for any mobile app with a lot of content. Consider using side scrolling pages on your mobile app if you want to condense a lot of content in a simple, easy to view manner.


4. BIGO Live


Another live-streaming service, the BIGO Live mobile app has unique design elements ready to be replicated or inspired by. This app takes the opposite approach from Periscope, which makes it interesting considering its shared category. It has a very simple, three-button menu that can get you to any part of the app. Consider using a simple menu to avoid loosing new users to steep learning curves. Even though BIGO isn't necessarily outer space related, it uses planets and spaceships for its icons, showing that trendy icon sets work well even if not entirely niche-related.


5. Capital One


With one of the world's largest banking apps, Capital One has created an inspirational and useful application for new and potential customers. The main feature that stands out in this app if the pattern-based login. This allows users to login by drawing a familiar pattern on a 9-dot grid. Use this type of login if you want to let users create unique passwords that are easy to remember, and easy to type.


6. Instagram


This is perhaps the most artistic app on the list. Instagram has many design inspirations that you can use on your own web hosting to give your app an artsy, modern feel. Not only do Instagram's filters allow users to customize uploaded content, the company has been a front-runner in developing methods for users to interact. Recently Instagram added the ability for users to 'heart' each others’ comments. Use this technique on your mobile app to encourage users to interact amongst each other more.


7. Flinch


This viral app is popular on iPhone and Android marketplaces, and has inspired several major mobile apps to make innovative games using live video streaming. The Flinch app offers a fun way for users to connect to one another, and have digital face-off contests. If you're making a mobile app with any type of social component, take a look at the Flinch app's profitable system of gift items. Users can purchase gifts to display for other users, allowing for a pay-to-play system that works for everyone.


8. eBay


The eBay app is the most downloaded mobile app in the eCommerce category. This app has design elements that should inspire any commerce-based application. eBay uses filters to let users find the exact products they want. This way users never have to resort to leaving the app and going to a desktop version of the website. Include filters in your in-app searches to ensure users can shop, from purchasing to checkout, simply by using your app.


9. Netflix


The Netflix app brings a web application that's typically designed for desktops or smart TVs to the mobile platform. If your website is designed to be viewed on desktops or large screen laptops, remember that Netflix has accomplished millions of downloads for a similar product on mobile, where screen size is often under 5 inches. The Netflix app uses a responsive design to accomplish this, meaning the video and menus being displayed automatically conform to the detected screen size. Use responsive design on your own app to garner a wider user-base.


10. Amazon Seller App


The Amazon Seller App is designed for Amazon sellers to list their inventory and check on orders from any mobile device. It has inspirational and cutting-edge technologies and design elements. The most prominent of these is the in-app camera that can read bar codes. Consider downloading a bar-code scanner to install on your own web hosting to allow users to scan for items when out shopping. This works great for mobile apps that let users keep track of purchases, or compare prices and other features of items live while in a store or at home. The user interface is simple with well-defined content areas and readable text.

Use ideas from these top 10 mobile app design inspirations to create a stunning, useful app that you visitors will readily recommend to others. Use social media integration, quick payment links, and intuitive navigation buttons to make the most of your company's mobile platform.