Mobile app development is an exciting process and time for an organization. Once you have a great mobile app idea, it is natural to want to jump into the app development process and get your mobile app out to the public.
However, one of organizations’ biggest mistakes is beginning mobile app development without thorough market research. Mobile app research is vital to the app development process; without it, you can’t hope to create a successful mobile app.
This post will explain the importance of mobile app research. In addition, we will explore what mobile app market research is and the top market research strategies you can employ to gather relevant data and validate your mobile app idea.
What Is Mobile App Market Research?
Mobile app research gathers information to understand current market trends, industry competitors, and target audience. Market research helps your organization validate its mobile app idea and ensure it is addressing market needs.
Mobile app market research should be the first step of every app development project. To perform market research, your organization must collect and analyze data. You can sometimes conduct market research by pulling data from existing research sources.
However, at other times, you will have to conduct market research to get relevant insights for your mobile app. In-depth market research combines both research methods to get a comprehensive understanding of present market conditions.
Solid mobile app research should address or answer the following concerns and questions:
- Is there market demand or need for your app idea?
- Who is your competition?
- What obstacles stand in the way of your app idea?
- Do you have a unique differentiator that distinguishes you from other mobile apps?
- Is your business model financially viable?
- What does your target audience look like?
- What will your marketing strategy look like?
The Types of Market Research for Mobile Apps
Performing market research is a lot simpler when you break it down into distinct categories. Two types of market research are important for mobile app development projects:
- Primary research
- Secondary research
Both types of market research will be critical to fully vet and validate your mobile application idea.
Primary Research
Primary research is characterized by the active involvement of your organization. Examples of this type of market research include focus groups, competitor analysis, surveys, and customer interviews.
You can encourage users to join focus groups or find potential users to interview about their thoughts and needs on your organization’s social media platforms. This is a simple way to start primary research.
Primary market research involves conducting competitor analysis, defining your target audience, and highlighting the latest technology trends.
Primary research will help validate the need for your mobile app, frame your business plan, and help create a winning marketing strategy.
As your organization concludes this research, it should understand how its mobile app fits the established business model and addresses users’ pain points.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is characterized by the passive involvement of your organization. This market research includes studies conducted by industry organizations, universities, think tanks, etc.
Secondary research is best used to understand industry trends and broad audience information. Generally, this type of market research will be used to craft and hone a marketing strategy.
It might provide additional insights into your mobile app development project, but it shouldn’t be the sole research used to validate your business model or app idea.
Secondary research won’t be fully utilized until your organization finalizes its sales and marketing strategy. However, it will help ensure your business plan and app marketing strategies are aligned with the reality of market conditions.
The Importance of Market Research in Mobile App Development
Market research is vital to the success of every mobile app development project. Without app market research, your organization is going into the mobile app development process blind and making guesses.
Building a mobile app is expensive and time-consuming. In addition, guessing wrong in app development could end up costing your business when you discover no target audience for your idea after development instead of before.
Not only will research help your organization save time and money through industry and target audience validation before development, but it will also help your business understand the competitive landscape and the obstacles standing in its path.
This information will help your organization determine its target audience, highlight industry trends it can take advantage of, inform its marketing strategy, and help it optimize social media accounts.
In addition, market research can help guide mobile app store optimization efforts and help your business craft compelling messaging and product differentiators for its target audience.
Top Market Research Strategies
App market research will look different for every project. However, there are some proven strategies that your organization can employ in the effort to gain a better understanding of the market, including:
- Survey users
- SWOT analysis
- Competitive analysis
- Gather industry statistics
Survey Users
The most important task in app research is to validate the underlying idea. The simplest and most effective way to validate your idea is to ask actual users.
You can send out surveys, run focus groups, and directly interview users to see what they think about your app idea. The key here is to gather as much information as possible.
Does it meet the needs of users? Can it be shifted to better meet their needs? This is one of the most important aspects of market research.
If you can’t validate your idea or business model, your project should end here, and your business should start over with a new idea.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis can help your organization strengthen its app idea post-validation. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Gather all primary and secondary research and thoroughly investigate the following questions:
- What are the advantages/strengths of your app?
- What aspects of your idea or business plan are vulnerable?
- Are there specific niches or openings in the market that you can take advantage of?
- What competitors or potential market conditions could limit the success of your idea?
The SWOT analysis helps your organization better understand its own idea, current market conditions, and the competition.
Competitive Analysis
Knowing your competitors is critical in mobile app development. Mobile apps are seldom unique. As a result, the chances are good there are other apps on the market offering a similar service to yours.
The vital component of this analysis is to find apps that offer similar services, see what they do well, and, more importantly, see where they fall short. Your organization will use this information to build a solution that fills the competition’s shortcomings.
Gather Industry Statistics
Real-time statistics are valuable to ongoing app research and improvements. The key here is to find trustworthy sources of information. The worst thing you can do is act on bad information.
Reliable sources of data include Google Trends, Gartner, Statista, Gallup, and Pew Research, to name a few of the more prominent options.
Final Thoughts
Mobile app research is critical to the success of your project. If you want to learn more about how to conduct in-depth research or mobile app development best practices, reach out to a skilled app development company like Koombea.
