Today’s market of mobile applications is highly competitive, but has its treasure. The revenue from top successful apps is expected to reach $190 billion in the year 2020. If you want to launch a great app startup, you need to follow a systematic pattern.
To be brief, you may start your app with an easy step: put your app ideas on paper and be as specific as possible. Tools like Balsamiq, Moqups, Justinmind, and UXpin (most have a free trial), are a great way to create the preliminary prototype with a screen-by-screen view.
Any software development is made up of the following steps:
- Conceptualize the idea
- Create an interface design
- Develop a software prototype (MVP)
- Execute thorough tests
- Deploy the product
- Distribute the product
To make a successful app we need two ingredients. First of all, startup begins with a great new app idea which has an alternative solution for a particular situation. Secondly, the project must be perfectly prepared and executed.
Step 1: Conduct the Market Research
Although your app idea may seem to be great, first of all, you need to decide on your niche. The thing is that many new apps are launched everyday in Google Play, Apple App Store etc.
Two facts must be carefully examined to evaluate a mobile app:
- Understand and define your potential users
- Evaluate and learn from all competitive products
An app takes a small niche for a particular group of people and their needs. A micro niche won’t have lots of traffic but will have higher conversions. In the second case, an app can provide a larger pool of potential customers and more fierce competition.
At first, all good ideas are mostly unconditional and risky. If you believe in your app when you need to take a particular route you must understand how much work needs to be done for your app to be successful. Then you will receive a return on investment as a reward.
The main thing is to be open, listen, and ask people. You need to study the products which already exist and surf online resources and social media for the information. If you want your application to be successful you should find out what inspires or irritates your target audience.
There is a list of tips for how to make a successful app concept:
- Study forums and questions being asked. One of the more well-known forums is Quora. Usually, questions are based on some specific problems; why are they not being fixed.
- Search for trends with Google. For example, the comparison of iPhone models.
- Gain some insight with the help of Google Keyword Planner. You can find out what people are searching for and the volume of such searches per topic. Further specific keywords can be used for App Store Optimization.
- Attend tech startups, meetups, and hackathons. This can help you understand what kind of ideas are currently interesting to the crowd. Additionally, search Meetup for local events.
- Take some time to observe the world around you. What are the issues people encounter daily that are inefficient? As an example, there is an urgent necessity to help restaurants reduce their food waste.
- Conduct polls & questionnaires among potential app users. Receive feedback from your friends about what exactly is valuable for an app to do.
- Ask potential users on social networks and their groups. Search in: Reddit Startup, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
- Speak to business owners about their current, and potential future, pain points.
- Check vendors and organization that provide startup funding, like Y Combinator. Here is a link of the most well-known Seed Accelerators.
- Check all the top apps and top app categories of your interest. You can check what solutions these apps provide for their users and compare with your idea.
- Check CrunchBase for successful mobile apps succeeding in the seed funding rounds.
- A tool like AppTweak can help you understand whether some competitive apps are in the top charts for downloads. This means they have solid and valid app ideas being ranked at the top.
Follow this article to find out more about how to make a successful app.