The internet has revolutionized almost all businesses in every industry. Yes, most of them are present online, serving their customers relentlessly. That too, with the arrival of mobile apps, our lives have become a lot more comfortable. Yes, now we have mobile apps for almost everything.
In the current Covid-19 pandemic situation, people can get anything without even stepping out of their house. Yes, you swipe the app and get things delivered to your doorstep.
So, yes, it all sounds fascinating. Isn’t it? Mobile apps are boons of technology and the internet. No doubt about it. But, with more and more businesses entering into mobile apps, only a few of them succeed. Why so? Why do some mobile apps fail?
People get excited by seeing the success of mobile apps and wish to have one for their own. They often come up with many ideas and get obsessed with them. They would want to start the work immediately and launch the app as early as possible.
Most of the time, our ideas sound exciting to us. We tend to believe that we have the best idea, and we will end up with the best app. In the excitement, people often fail to validate their app ideas. Thus, some or most of the mobile apps fail in the market. So, what to do now? The answer is App Idea Validation.
What is App Idea Validation?
Validating an app idea is nothing but dedicating time to understand and evaluate whether your plan is worth the time, money, and efforts. Yes, validating your app idea is crucial to building a successful app.
Assumptions and predictions won’t work. Assuming people will love your app is the biggest risk you will ever take. It doesn’t matter how your idea sounds to you, your friends, or your team. If it fails to convince your target customers, it will not do well in the market.
Yes, your app must have a sole purpose. It should solve the problem/pain point of your target audiences. Thus, the app can attract many potential customers.
So, always ask yourself these questions before executing your app idea that is developing your app.
- ⇾ Does your app address the problem of your target audience?
- ⇾ Will the app add any value to your target audience?
- ⇾ How different and unique is your app from other relevant apps?
Keeping your target audience in your mind while validating your app idea is inevitable. After all, your target audiences are the end-users who are going to download your app.
How to Validate Your App Ideas?
Validating your app ideas need not be as challenging as it sounds. We have come up with a set of predefined procedures that one can use in handy to evaluate their app ideas.
♦ Do Your Market Research
Market research is the first step when it comes to validating your mobile app ideas. Yes, market research allows you to learn about the current market trends, target audience’s needs, and your competitors.
Conducting proper market research help you know more about your target audience’s needs, wants, and pain points. What problem do they face now? Will your app solve their problem promptly? Even if they find your app helpful, will it be affordable for them? Yes, you would need to examine every single aspect before executing your app idea.
Apart from your customer/target audience, you would need to pay attention to your competitors as well. How are you different from them? You have to distinguish your app from their app. Customers are too smart, and they will compare every single product in the market before using them. Thus, you would need to give reasons for them to choose your app over others. To be precise, your app must have a few exciting features that your competitor’s app does not have.
♦ Get Feedback On Your App Ideas
After done with your market research, you will know how worthy or valuable your idea is. However, it is more theoretical. So, now, it’s time to get practical. Nothing gives you clear-cut knowledge other than getting feedback from your reliable friends, team, or family members. It will help you validate your ideas and check the viability of your app.
However, you focus on getting some authentic feedback. Yes, you have to be open to both good and bad ones. As an entrepreneur, you have to appreciate any criticism and constructively take them. Thus, you can minimize your chances of going wrong or committing any mistakes.
If you have any doubt regarding the security of your app ideas, you can always go for a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Yes, you can ask your friends, relatives, or other people with whom you disclose your app ideas to sign an NDA. Thus, you can reserve all rights for your app.
♦ Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A minimum viable product will have only basic features and is not a full-fledged product. It allows you to test your app idea quickly. Also, as you can build MVP with minimal resources, you can determine the feasibility of your app idea cost-effectively. Yes, MVPs can provide immediate value by keeping your mobile app development cost to a minimum.
Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is often a business strategy that most entrepreneurs follow to test the viability of their products. Yes, they develop MVP with bare minimum resources and test the product with a specific group of people. Thus, they can analyze how people interact with their product. Also, they can learn what is good or bad about their product and see how they can improvise them. Hence, they can launch a much competent product in the competitive market.
Experts prefer MVP as an essential step during a new product launch. They recommend entrepreneurs do not skip MVP as it allows them to learn people’s expectations and feedback. Thus they can include or exclude or modify specific features in their main product.
Once you are confident about the viability of your MVP, you can go ahead upgrading it by gathering inputs from your target audience, team, and others.
♦ Look For Ways to Generate Revenue From the App?
So, you are confident about your app idea. You have received many positive feedbacks, and you are planning to proceed with your app idea. Now, yet another crucial step in your app validation process. How to generate revenue from your mobile app?
As we all are aware, mobile app development will cost us more money. So, unless you are an established business and can generate income from ample resources, you have to generate revenue from your app.
Let us look at some of the most common ways to monetize your mobile apps.
- ★ Most apps in the market are free to download and use. They are often known as freemium models. These freemium model apps will have basic/limited features. The users have to pay for availing additional services. It is one of the most common ways to monetize your app.
- ★ Ecommerce apps generate revenue by selling physical products to consumers.
- ★ In-app advertising allows you to sell ad space in your app. Mostly it is combined with the freemium model. The users can pay to ignore ads.
- ★ Then there are subscription-based apps. Users will pay for accessing the content. Most media and streaming services like Netflix and The New York Times offer subscriptions to their users.
- ★ Finally, there comes to paying and downloading apps. Users have to pay to download and install your app. It is more prevalent on the iOS App Store than on the Google Play Store. However, the paid app demands an established market presence. Thus, the users will trust the app.
Consider all the above-said options for monetizing your mobile app. It doesn’t mean you need to settle for only one model. You can combine one or more monetization tactics and generate revenue from your app. However, app monetization highly depends on your business type, target audience, and your competitors. So, it is wise to keep all the criteria in your mind before choosing your app monetization strategies.
♦ Build Your Brand Identity
After going through all those hard work, you are now almost at the end of the tunnel. Once you have developed your app, the validation does not stop there.
How will people ever know that there is a fantastic app that can help them every day? The more people know about your app, the more people are going to use it. Thus, you would need to build your brand, that is, your identity.
So, how to build your brand identity? Design plays a vital role in taking your brand to your prospects. Yes, people come to know about a new brand through its logo. The design, colors, tagline you use in your mobile app matters the most in attracting users to try your app.
Dedicate time and invest in choosing the best design and content for your app. Imagine an attractive logo with an impressive design and a cool tagline flashing on your App Store or Play Store. By seeing it regularly, you will naturally get tempted to download and check it. Thus, it is wise to invest in visual identity.
Other than that, make sure your app reflects the essence of your brand. It must carry the tone, voice, and message of your business. Also, your app needs to have user-friendly features. People want it easy and do not have time to learn any app’s features.
♦ Check How to Track the Performance of the App?
So, now you have successfully launched your mobile app. How will you measure the performance of your app? In short, how will you define your success? What metrics will you use to track your profitability?
You can measure the performance of your app by reviewing various key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs generally depend on the type of your mobile app, revenue model, target audience, and few other things. Also, these days, people give star ratings to indicate their satisfactory levels. Five stars mean excellent product/service. However, brands use many metrics to measure the success rate of their apps.
Here are a few KPIs that businesses use universally to judge their app performance.
- ⦿ User satisfaction
- ⦿ Hours of app usage per month
- ⦿ Customer retention rate
- ⦿ Number of active users
- ⦿ The average revenue per user
But, these metrics and KPIs are subject to variation as it depends on business types and customer’s needs.
Conclusion
Businesses are nothing without their customers. You may have a fantastic idea and adequate resources to develop your app. But if it did not answer your customer’s problems and add value to their life, your business won’t go anywhere. Thus, it always essential to validate your app ideas before executing them. Moreover, it will save you a lot of time and money.
Do you have app ideas but not sure about them? At Cypherox Technologies, we highly recommend our clients validate their app ideas before writing a single code. Our experienced developers have helped many of our clients reviewing and validating their app ideas using the above-discussed steps. Feel free to reach us. Your dream app is just a click away!!
