Top Tips to Conduct Market Research for Mobile App Development
Mobile app development is a little dicey – not the development part itself, but the part whether it will be successful or not. One way to increase the chances of the app succeeding is to conduct proper market research on it before you actually get around to the development part.
Regardless of whether you’re a startup or established business, you need a reliable mobile app that becomes popular and adds more users as time goes by.
A recent study concluded that over 70% of newly launched mobile apps fail to do well because of lack of market research.
First let’s understand why research is important, and the main reasons mobile apps fail:
- Around a third of the engagements with mobile apps last for less than 60 seconds.
- Many apps fail as they don’t have a robust business model
- A good many of the failed apps were not backed by proper research – like what was the market requirement, but went ahead with the development anyway.
- Excessive reliance on paid ads rather than word of mouth publicity can lead to the failure of an app
- Lack of innovation in marketing the app
What is Market Research?
In simple words, market research means understating your target audience, or customers, thoroughly. You need to learn not only the customer behavior, but why they behave as they do, at every stage in their buyer journey; understand what makes them loyal to a specific brand, what their experiences are, what excites them, and so on. This helps to create optimal solutions for them and to develop unique and targeted marketing strategies.
Here are some questions to ask:
- What keeps you awake at night?
- Why aren’t you able to increase your revenue?
- Why is your efficiency dropping?
- What is the business model?
- Will a mobile app offer a genuine solution to your problems – is it really required in the market?
The answers to these questions will give you the insights required to define strategies for marketing.
#Bonus Tip: Sometimes focusing on a micro niche may be more rewarding. You may get a smaller crowd of users but those will be highly focused and well qualified, increasing your ROI.
Aspects of Mobile App Market Research
Market research for mobile app development consists of two parts: Primary Research and Secondary Research.
Primary Research
- It helps to understand if there is an actual need for your mobile app in the market – this can be conducted through social media posts, online discussion forums, landing pages and more.
- It enables to frame the business plan, and can be researched on the sales and marketing strategy, defining the company and business model, and analyzing the current market situation.
- This research also helps with crafting the marketing strategy; you can decide the manner of marketing your app, whether you want only organic marketing, or paid ads also, and to pinpoint the drawbacks both prior to and after the launch.
Secondary Research
- A SWOT analysis helps to make the core of the mobile application strong.
- Researching the target audience, optimizing social media accounts and identifying trends helps in developing an effective social media strategy
Effective Strategies to Perform Market Research for your Mobile App
1. Defining Your target audience
This is very important. You need to identify your target audience and create your buyer persona. You can’t reach out to everyone in the world; you must define your target. Identify the following characteristics in the audience, like:
- Demographics – age range, gender, education, income, ethnicity
- Lifestyle
- Spending habits
- Attitudes, fears, preferences, dislikes
To understand these traits, you can include questions regarding:
- What features potential customers would want in the app
- Customer ambitions
- Usability features
- Industry trends in apps
Make sure that your questions are simply worded and unambiguous. Making it easy for respondents to answer your questions will significantly help the process.
2. Analyzing the Competition
Regardless of whether your idea for mobile app development is amazing or not, it is still a good idea to see what your competition is doing. Check out what has worked in their favor, and what went against. This will help you significantly – to integrate innovative features and usability aspects in your mobile app as well as be original and relevant. You can also leverage Google Trends to compare ideas. It is an excellent tool that helps you to understand the relative popularity of searches. Google also has a keyword tool which you can use to learn what most users are searching for – kind of lets you know what people what at the moment.
3. Conduct a SWOT Analysis
Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you strengthen your app’s core. Basically, you perform these actions:
- Determine the strong points of your app by listing its advantages, USP, and defining the goals
- Evaluating weaknesses helps point out potential challenges in revenue generation, pinpoint what to change and improve
- By identifying your competition’s weaknesses, understanding consumer behavior and discovering current trends, you get to know the opportunities available to you
- Check if your app is as per industry standards, and identify issues about funding and other challenges – these are the threats your app faces.
4. Defining Pitch
Pitching your app idea simply means clearly explaining and defining what your app is going to be; you will need to use text that is eye-catching and engaging. This means the pitch has to be brief and to the point. You can link your landing page to it so that a user looking for information can find it quickly.
5. Build Your Business Plan
For your mobile app to succeed, it is important to have a proper business plan. This is a road map that integrates features like sales, marketing, revenue, profit, etc. It should be concise so that matters are clear to your stakeholders. You should also remember to include effective marketing strategies that will ensure the success of your mobile app.
A solid foundation of thorough market research can ensure that your mobile app is well received. Do you have an idea for a mobile app for your business? At IPIX Technologies, we have over 10 years of experience in crafting bespoke digital solutions for a wide range of requirements. Our customers include small and large businesses, startups and established organizations, across industry verticals. We have carved a niche for ourselves with our dedicated service, transparency and timely delivery. Contact us today to know more.