The Power Of Market Research In Mobile App Development App Development

So, you have an idea for a remarkable app and are eager to make it a reality? Before starting the development of your app, you must think about a number of factors and take a moment to reflect. Let’s take you to the right starting point:

Did you know that your app launch strategy can be dramatically improved by a process known as app market research? In general, the more you study and understand industry trends, the better you will be able to address the problems that your customers encounter.

Now that you know where to start, let’s learn how to get started. This is where you will begin from scratch while conducting app market research. Beginning with the basics can never go wrong. So, let’s dig into it!

What is Mobile App Market Research?

Mobile app research refers to a process of understanding your target market, competitors, industry, and current market trends. Market research is the initial step of every mobile app development project.

Mobile app market research helps by supporting your app idea while ensuring your app addresses existing market requirements.

Conducting mobile app research needs data collection and analysis. In some cases, you can extract data from existing sources. Other times, you’ll need to conduct exclusive research individually. Most of the time, market research blends these two approaches.

Mobile app research intends to answer the following questions:

•         Is there a market requirement for your application?
•         Who is your target market, and what are their preferences?
•         What competitors do you have, and what challenges are you facing?
•         Does your mobile app have a matchless differentiator from the competition?
•         Do you have a feasible mobile app business model?
•         How can you craft an optimized marketing strategy?

When you’re sourcing data from existing sources, you’ll want to stick with reliable and authoritative references.

You can look for any relevant Mobile App Statistics Guide for general details regarding smartphone users, industry trends, and other data related to mobile technologies.

Original research is normally conducted through focus groups, interviews, customer surveys, and observation.

Global Mobile Application Market Size

According to Grand View Research, the global mobile application market was estimated at USD 252.89 billion in 2023 and is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3% from 2024 to 2030. 

Grand View Research

Types of Mobile App Research

It’s much easier to perform market research when you break everything down into groups.

Market research for mobile app development can be categorized into two phases: primary research and secondary research. Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages below.

• Primary Research

Before everything else, you must thoroughly investigate your users’ market.

Determine who your target market is and learn as much as you can regarding them. Begin with general facts, habits, needs, wants, and dislikes. Then, focus that research even more on how they behave when using mobile applications.

The most recent technological developments and how your business model fits into the existing market environment should also be taken into account in your main research.

Since this early market research eventually directs you through the entire mobile app development process, these first actions are essential.

This information will help you decide whether to target specific users. This initial market study can also be used to frame specific elements of your mobile application.

For instance, imagine you wish to develop a real estate app. The initial idea may have been focused on potential homebuyers.

However, after conducting your initial study, you might find that there isn’t a market demand for this kind of product. Perhaps the app’s objective didn’t meet your target audience’s needs, or perhaps the market is too competitive.

Even if you have extensive knowledge about the real estate sector, you may still choose to develop the app. The only one who will switch to an app that caters to real estate agents’ demands is you.

The app features then will be designed to satisfy the demands of your freshly recognized target market.

• Secondary Research

Researching your sales and marketing plan is the second step.

You have by now established that your proposal is sound and determined that it is acceptable to proceed. All you have to do is use your present study to get more details about how you plan to connect with your target audience.

Using this information, you will draft ad text, optimize social media accounts, develop a marketing strategy, and perform other tasks that will ultimately attract and draw in your target audience.

What is the response of your target user base? How can you properly market your mobile application to appeal to those factors?

Your branding and market positioning within your area of expertise will be influenced in part by your secondary research.

For instance, suppose you are developing a business-to-business (B2B) smartphone application for other companies. Your secondary research can assist in defining your market positioning as an application for improved efficiency, opposed to just marketing yourself as a project management tool.

This kind of position is perhaps more in line with the issues that your target audience is trying to resolve. 

Understanding mobile app market research

Research is all related to the process of collecting and analyzing information. To make informed decisions for the app, the developers must comprehend the target audience, competition, market trends, marketing, and overall strategy.

These steps certify your app idea and notify you regarding the ups and downs you will come across. Related to the benefits, mobile app research can also assist you save time and money since spacious steps can be eliminated.

The Benefits of Researching the Mobile App Market

• Know User Expectations

The key reason why every mobile app developer does market research is to comprehend its target customer base’s behaviors.

Depending on the demographic particulars of your target audience, you will have to choose the features you provide, the subscription cost you set, and even the interface design that you pick. It will also regulate what kind of marketing strategies you choose once the app has been built.

• Integrate the Latest Algorithmic Trends

Know that the first idea is certainly very basic and will be changed several times during the app development process. Use the knowledge from your marketing research to shift to high-quality, innovative programming shortcuts to create intelligent algorithms that highlight you in the market.

• Know Your Competition by Analyzing Them Closely

If your competitor is great at something, you must be good at it, too, so that you can definitely be a worthy competitor.

On the other hand, if your competition has any weaknesses, you have a chance to shine brighter than them.

Moreover, your competitor will also be keeping several great secrets that you can figure out if you look closely enough.

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Reasons You Need Market Research

Here are four primary reasons why you should opt for market research for dedicated app development.

• Better Decision-Making

When you consult a well-known mobile app development company, they can conduct thorough research to provide you with the required actionable insights. Such insights can enhance the decision-making process.

• Get Investments

How about getting finance for your upcoming mobile app? Detailed market research and exceptional presentation of the app’s concept to potential investors can make it possible.

• Prevent Failures

This is one of the major reasons for researching app market research. An all-inclusive report on market research can efficiently reduce failures, enabling your company to make decisions in real-time.

• Discover Audience

Following the approach to hiring mobile app developers who can do extensive research on user behaviour and trends is always a better idea and can actually help you find new target audiences for the app.

Here, it is fair to mention that you should implement efficient strategies for ensuring a proper mobile app market research. Let’s go through some of the best research strategies.

Best Strategies for Mobile App Research

Everyone’s market research is a bit different. But there are some proven strategies specific to mobile app development that will help direct you in the right direction:

• Mobile App Idea Validation

The first thing you need to do is approve your mobile application idea.

If there’s no market need for your app, then there’s no purpose in beginning with the remaining steps for market research. You might need to head back to the drawing board and rethink your idea.

Discovering that there is not a market requirement for your app isn’t a bad thing. Lots of people are dissatisfied when they hear this news. But you should be content that you didn’t invest money into a project that wouldn’t deliver a return on your investment.

Instead, you can take what you’ve interpreted throughout the validation stages and use that to edge new ideas.

To validate a mobile app idea, you need to get out there and begin talking to people.

Run customer focus groups. Conduct interviews. Send out surveys.

Do everything you can to get as many details as possible regarding your idea and how it does or doesn’t meet the demands of prospective users.

• Identify Your Target Audience

Limiting your app’s target market must be another key area of focus for your market research.

All too frequently, we hear things like, “my app is for everyone” or “my app is great for women of all ages.” That’s not precise enough.

You need to define more precise characteristics, like:

•         Location
•         Age
•         Gender
•         Marital status
•         Occupation
•         Background
•         Income
•         Highest level of education
•         Personality traits
•         Values
•         Hobbies
•         Lifestyle choices
•         Behaviour

With mobile app development, you also need to see if your target audience chooses some mobile devices over others.

For instance, if you realize that 90% of your target market has iPhones, you may not inevitably build an Android app for the Google Play Store right now. You could emphasize your efforts precisely on Apple devices and make an iOS app.

When you’re conducting market research on your target audience, it’s significant to remember that you’re not eliminating other users or other people who might be attentive in your app. But your primary focus and efforts will be near your target market.

• Conducting Competitor Analysis for Mobile Apps

Investigating the competition is a necessity for mobile app development.

It’s unusual to see mobile apps today that are 100% unique. There’s a good possibility that at least a few other apps on the market do something comparable to yours.

Your job is to identify those competitors. Find out what they’re doing well, and find out where their apps fall short.

You can use this detail to your advantage and build an app that fills the gap with your competitor’s inadequacies.

Even if you think those players have a head start as they already have apps accessible for download, you have a quicker path to development by evading the similar mistakes that they did.

Ultimately, you need to comprehend how you’re going to highlight from the competition.

What’s your differentiation factor? Why should someone download your app over another app that does the same thing?

This could be associated with your marketing strategy, feature differences, different target users, or all three.

• SWOT Analysis

Several of you might already be aware of a SWOT analysis. It’s an acronym that stands for:

•         Strengths

•         Weaknesses

•         Opportunities

•         Threats

There are loads of great use cases for executing a SWOT analysis in different business situations, and market research is certainly one of them.

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Why Mobile App Market Research is Important for Mobile App Development?

Every successful mobile app begins with quality market research.

Without detailed mobile app research, you’re basically just guessing whether or not people actually want your app. If, after going through the full mobile app development process, you find that there is no market need for your product, this could turn out to be a very costly estimate.

You can save a huge amount of time and money by simply validating the idea first before writing code or hiring a development team.

Market research also aids in identifying competitors and challenges on your path to success.

For instance, let’s say you have an app idea for a free video-sharing platform, making it convenient for anyone to share and watch videos from their smartphones. Users can create their own profiles, such as videos, follow content creators, and write comments on videos.

Great idea, right? Well, this idea fundamentally just described YouTube.

Market research would help you recognize this, and you’d possibly decide not to straight away compete with the major video hosting platform on the planet.

Instead, your market research can help you adjust your original app idea to target a diverse market niche. Maybe you still want to create a video hosting application, but you want it to be mainly for online education.

Market research helps you better comprehend your customers. You’ll find out who they are, along with their demands and requirements. You might think that your target audience wants to use your mobile app. However, market research will help certify or invalidate your hypothesis.

Then you can lay the basis for your mobile app features, brand positioning, and app marketing strategies as per your findings.

Conclusion

When the course of the Mobile app market research process is completed, the next important step is to develop a proper report employed by the company to begin planning an app outline. Even the right purpose of creating a proper plan, at this point, must be comprehended by all parties and kept in mind when they come up with any solutions or variations. Once the developers have completed their work, the app needs to undergo some required pilot surveys so that the company can assure the clients that the key goals set in the beginning are finally achieved.

As per Statista’s report, the number of mobile users globally is anticipated to reach 7.49 billion in 2025. This rapid growth of mobile users worldwide has made conducting market research essential for ensuring your app’s success in the competitive app development landscape. Through market research, you can develop an app that truly satisfies user requirements while positioning yourself for long-term success, as it involves careful analysis of your target market, rivals assessment, and spotting market trends. In addition to saving time and money, the insights gathered from market research improve decision-making and guarantee that your app stands out in the highly competitive marketplace.

If you’re ready to bring your app idea to life with accuracy and innovation, Progatix, a leading custom software and app development company, is here to help. Get in touch with us today to turn your vision into a market-ready app!

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Author: Amna Shahid

Amna Shahid, a technical content writer, is an expert in simplifying intricate notions and composing captivating narratives to participate and convey technical information efficiently. With a devotion to brilliance in this dynamic technical writing field, Amna is open to collaborating and new possibilities in this succeeding tech realm.

Reviewed By: Progatix

Progatix, a well-known software development company, has been delivering innovative digital consultancy services & custom software solutions encouraging business growth since 2003. Our remarkable solutions involve strategic digital consultancy, legacy system migration, DevOps, and stellar testing services.