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How To Find Which Kind of Apps Are in Demand?

In August of 2018, a streaming platform called Quibi was launched. With many big names like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and YouTube already in the market, Quibi stood out by focusing on short-form vertical content. Despite raising around 1.5 billion from investors and having a respectable number of options, Quibi failed to capture the market and eventually shut down in 2020.

Researchers discussing over data.

While many people blame the pandemic and other aspects for the failure of Quibi, the core audience believes that there was no demand for the service. It did not offer content people wanted, and its offerings were lackluster. One of the major reasons apps fail is because regardless of how great of an idea it is to the creator, if it doesn't have a buyer, it won't sell. So how do you figure out if your idea is in demand or not? By market research.

Why Do You Need Market Research?

A common misconception that people might have is that setting up your new app only requires you to get into the development process and launch a usable product. In reality, app development and launch are proper projects, and like every successful idea, theyrequire a lot of ideation, planning, and analysis to determine whether the venture is worth the time and money.

Once you've formulated a basic idea of what you're planning to make, or you're just testing the waters tounderstandthe viability of a project, you have to look into mobile app market research. In a nutshell, your goal with research is to understand your audience to the best of your ability, gauging what they want and need and providing them with an application that answers these demands in various ways.

Aspects To Consider

It can seem fairly overwhelming for people to conduct any thorough research, especially when they don't have a detailed idea of the subject matter. The first marker is to figure out many of the questions you will consider for your research, along with preliminary data from the industry that will give you a brief clarity about different aspects.

Numerous industry facts and figures will also shortlist some of your ideasand clear your misconceptions while helping you plan out some ideas for the future. Here are some details that you'd want to focus on:

  1. Your application will not be general and most certainly fit in some category. According to forecasts, the biggest industry in the app market concerning revenue is gaming. Other major markets like photography, social media, and entertainment are far behind. Games tend to make a lot of money thanks to microtransactions and regular content updates.
  2. UI/UIX is an important element. Various users report that they make some of their purchases based on how an application looks and concerns. This makes aesthetics and performance feature a necessary aspect of mobile applications.
  3. Are you trying to profit from your application? You'll be happy to know that the industry is fairly profitable , with forecasts of around $250 billion expected in 2022. A huge chunk of it comes from advertising, which a wide range of applications relyon for generating profit while still maintaining a free application.
  4. The average app count on a user's phone is around 40. But when it comes to most used applications and recurrently used apps, only tenor so of them are included in that list.
A focus group having a conversation.

Parts of App Market Research

To figure out how whether the application you're looking to develop or an application of a particular kind will work well in the market, you have to conduct your research in two parts. While the general idea of the two is similar and they're eventually conjunctions of each other, both of them produce different kinds of data to generate different ideas for you. These include:

Primary Research

Primary research will enable you to learn about the potential audience in a better light. You will discover whether your application has any value and demand from the public or not. Many of the data points that you get from it will also enable you to focus on other aspects like marketing your app more profitably while creating a viable business plan.

For conducting primary research, you can take on various means. The common approach is conducting some form of survey and spreading them across relevant channels such as social mediaand focus groups that you believe will benefit from and/or will be interested in the application. It's a great way of getting organic feedback from a crowd, providing the most productive information provided the questions you ask are the right ones. These will do an excellent job of giving you an idea about whether the idea is a good optionand what the audience wants and expects from the result, allowing you to set realistic ideas and cater to the crowd with your vision. 

While some primary researchers focus on business models and plans in the material they spread to focus groups, others will generally use the data that they get from the primary research to figure out some of these aspects.

Secondary Research

While primary research is collecting new data to understand fresh concepts, secondary research is making inferences and analyzing the information that's already available to us. Whether you're making further deductions and documents out of your primary research or focusing on other existing research, it will count as secondary research. In terms of app development, the most common option is the SWOT analysis, which is short for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats regarding your app.

The Recommended Strategies to Determine Whether Your App's Demand

Making The Most of Google Trends

Using Google Trends, you can find a lot of information that will tell you about the demand for your application. For example, if you're developing an application for managing finances, you can look up search terms like "X best apps for managing finances."This way, you can find the existing solutions out there. Going through trends, you can learn about potential crests and troughs across the graph on the timeline that indicate whether an application is being searched for or not.

Similarly, additional search options will help you get information about what the audience searching is looking for. Continuing the same example, you might find that the second most searched term could be "app for managing finances that does color coding."This is all vital data that allows you to determine what your audience is looking for online, helping you make amendments to your project respectively.

Application development planning.

If you've got multiple ideas, the trend charts will help you determine the idea's popularity as well, and it can often help you abandon a ship to stick to another option if it feels like the ship has sailed for one solution.

Knowing The Target Audience

Being knowledgeable about your core audience makes your job easier. Essentially, you can't determine the worth of your product if you don't know who will buy it. Presenting a product to the wrong crowd will not yield any profit because there's no need, understanding, or resonance with that product in that particular audience. You save a lot of time and money when you are aware of the core audience and set your sights on them exclusively.

Developers talking about a project.

Figure out as much as you can about them. What region are they based in? Is there a particular age group that's specifically interested or catered by your solution? What kind of consumer behavior do they exhibit? What is their psychographics? Is there any gender disparity in the audience? All of these questions will eventually boil down into more specific elements that you'll consult the focus group about, giving you the meat and bones of the procedure.

If you manage to adequately conduct your research, you will know:

  • What features your core audience is interested in, and what kind of solutions do they need and expect from your application.
  • What they want to get done by using your application or any solution in your niche.
  • How you canmake your solution more usable, making it more appealing to the core user.

Market Assessment

It's very unlikely that you're the sole provider of any solution or service in a market. There are nearly 2.5 million applications on the Play Store alone, with many being direct counterparts to each other. It's no surprise that you might already have competitors either in the same phase of your business or already in the market. It's smart to start monitoring their progress and analyze their approaches. Considering how experienced they are in the field,their previous and current strategies will be case studies for you.

A project manager at work.

You will learn about their mistakes, potential business pitfalls, and how you can recover from a particular aspect. Lastly, it also makes it easier for you to create a USP to overtake that competitor in the long run. This is how many applications have succeeded, not by starting a trend but by taking on an already developed idea, learning its shortcomings, and improving upon it in their rendition.What's most important is that you provide something original and necessary for the end-user.

SWOT Analysis

A major mistake that businesses often make is that they don't plan long-term. For a business to operate on a timeline, it needs to focus on concepts like growth and sustainability in the grand scheme of things. While a company should always be open to agility and making improvements concerning market trends, competitor changes, and other elements, having a game plan is necessary. An essential document in this aspect is a SWOT analysis.Here's how each element will help you out:

  • Understanding strengths enables you to understand what your app brings to the table. What it wants to do, how it's head and shoulders above the competition, and what makes it unique from everyone else on the market while highlighting what it wants to achieve.
  • It's necessary to acknowledge weaknesses, helping you understand where you need to make changes, where you currently lack, and what is stopping you from reaching your peak potential.
  • It always pays to be an opportunist, knowing how you can market your product better than the others competing with you. Without neglecting your core audience, know how you can use trends, technologies, and ideas to also capture your competitor's market.
  • A business faces numerous threats, ranging from internal issues and technical problems to external matters, that they need to be aware of while having risk management strategies.

Conclusion

Figuring out the demand of your application requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and analytical information. But it does provide results provided you focus on all the right variables and do your due diligence. While it may cost you some time and money initially, it's much more reasonable than ending up creating a solution with no value or need in the market.

It's common for people to assume that their ideas are going to be a sure hit, but the app market is rapidly growing, and it can take a few days for a new app to take away a considerable share of the core audience if they're offering a great service.

Work With Us

Make your development process easier by working with a company that's experienced in market needs, trends, and other aspects that matter in the real world. Softwareistic is an Android and iOS app development agencythat offers utilities and resources for Flutter App Development, React Native App Development services, and more. Our company has worked with a wide range of businesses across a myriad of industries, helping them develop tools that take their productivity and business to the next level.

Whether you're looking to revamp an existing solution or develop something new and unique from scratch, you can rely on us to get the job done.

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