Introduction
The business of mobile application is amongst the best business that one can venture into today. In 2016, for instance, Pokemon Go topped the charts by generating revenues of about $1 billion. In addition, the team that developed Candy Crush earned a lot of money after Blizzard acquired it for approximately $6 billion. On the other hand, Snap attained the market capitalization of about $33 billion after going public and Apple paid out approximately $50 billion in 2016 to its developer. Another popular mobile app is Uber which has a value of more than $60 billion.
If you are aspiring to be ranked amongst the list of mobile apps entrepreneurs, you need to come up with a great idea and then start building the application. Fortunately, you have come to that appropriate starting place. This article will give you a great idea of how you can come up as well as validate your application idea to make sure it is worth investing in your money, time and effort as an app development agency. However, bear in mind that since app store optimization and app marketing are essential, you should start with building an incredible application that people want.
Developing a great idea
First and foremost, in order to develop a great application, you need to develop a great idea about the application. The best way of coming up with the idea of an application is by identifying a certain problem and build the solution to that specific problem.
Remember that the best chance is identifying a problem you’ve experience with. Such kind of problem gives you the first crack of knowing how you’ll create a solution, instead of extracting the solution for the head of someone else. In addition, there are several solutions to any problem, so you shouldn’t get disheartened when you see 1 or 2 apps solving the problem in one way. Instead, think about a different approach that will solve the problem in a more effective and cheaper manner.
Nevertheless, if you do not have any problem in your mind yet, try some of the tactics that we have highlighted below so that your ideas can keep on flowing.
Go through the mobile apps in the App Store
Look at the applications in the top categories and charts to see the problems the app ideas of other people are solving. Think about some keywords of the things that you basically do such a motorcycle, guitar, marketing, travelling, and fitness, and then search for those applications in the App Store. This will enable you to observe the returns and the solutions presented by the apps. In addition, you can tap over in the section of featured apps and look at various categories of applications that are featured by Google or Apple. Many times, applications are featured in a certain theme, like time tracking apps, making home dinner or apps for medical patients.
Take some time off
Take the evening or afternoon off and then walk around the neighborhood, go shopping, run some errands or engage in activity that will fit your daily routine. As you do this, think about the problems that you encounter while doing these activities or what might be inefficient on how you accomplish the activities.
Attend hackathons and meetups
Go to the startup pitch hackathons and meet-ups. You will be immersed amongst the people who are like-minded and hear some app ideas of other people. If you’re unable to develop your own idea during this event, you’ll at least come out more motivated and energized to develop one.
Validating and researching
After you’ve come up with the application idea, it is time to research as well as validate the idea. This is an important step that shouldn’t be skipped since it ensures that any energy, time and money you spend in developing the idea into an application form is invested appropriately. Some of the many tactics that will assist you to validate the benefit of your application idea include;
Analyze and identify existing apps
You should identify the applications that are currently solving the problems you wish to develop the application for and plug them into various tools like Crunchbase, Linkedin and ASO tools such as AppTweak.
Check keywords
Thick about five keywords that might be utilized to describe the idea of your application and then plug them into various tools like ASO tool and Google Adwords keyword planner tool
Ask the potential users
Ask the potential users of your application what they’re thinking about your application idea. There are various ways that are used to survey potential users. These ways include; Twitter, Reddit, and Social media.
Analyze the market fit of your app idea
After validating the benefit of your app idea, you will need to analyze the market fit of your app idea. This is simply analyzing how the monetization model and features you’ve in mind will resonate with the potential users. This will also enable you to understand if the user would select your application over the other apps offering similar value.
In order to validate the market fit of your application, start by creating the spreadsheet of every feature in your app. Then repeat the same about three to five competitive applications that the users of your app might consider, writing down the features of every app. ‘after matrixing the monetization model and features of your app versus the competitors, as the potential users of your app to rank them base on how they would prefer to either buy or use. This will also help you know more about app development cost.