Research is a necessary process that enables you to craft the perfect solution for your business. Here’s everything you need to know about this process.
Have you heard about the Hailo mobile app? This was a mobile app launched in 2013 that got a $100 million investment. Yet not long after, it went broke on October 2014.
The failure of Hailo is a classic example of what happens when one neglects research. Hailo aimed to match yellow taxi drivers and passengers.
The developers failed to consider the technological investment it would cost them. Not to mention the lifestyle of cab-riding New Yorkers and their preference. They also failed to make a good connection with black cab drivers.
All these points to one fundamental problem: insufficient market research.
Hailo’s story proves that research can make or unmake your mobile app. Read on for a more detailed explanation of the importance of research in mobile development!
Get to Know Your Target Market
Many developers take pride in their skills. However, skills are only relevant if you understand your target market’s needs.
Relevance and usefulness, along with efficiency, make a top-grossing mobile app. So what better way to learn what your target audience needs and wants than market research?
There are two areas you need to focus on: your target market’s needs and their preference.
Remember this; your app designers and developers won’t be the ones using the product. Hence, mobile app development companies must investigate their target audience’s needs.
Do you know why Facebook launched Facebook Lite in 2015? This is so that it can cater to its market, who live in conditions where it’s difficult to use its full features.
Most developing countries, for instance, have a slow internet connection. However, Facebook Lite works with 2G connections and on outdated Android. As a result, Facebook grew its users and rooted itself as the number one social media platform.
Educational platforms, such as Edmodo, were available before the pandemic. Since these weren’t needed at their launch, they weren’t popular. Had the pandemic never happened, they’d have remained stagnant.
In like manner, you want to develop a mobile app that’s greatly needed. If not today, then shortly, but for you to determine which app is marketable in the future, you need to research.
Preferences Help You Conceptualize
After determining a specific need to address, consider your target market’s preferences. For example, what features does your target market like in a mobile app?
For instance, there are a lot of video viewing and sharing platforms. Yet, have you noticed that most people still flock to YouTube?
Today, YouTube has over 2 billion users around the world. This is significantly higher than Netflix’s 220.6 million worldwide subscribers. The prime reason for this is that YouTube is easily accessible.
Accessible in the sense that it’s free and doesn’t need too much data. This makes it marketable to its target audience, who primarily use mobile data. Also, most of them don’t have stable jobs; hence, they’d pay attention to cheaper but quality options.
Similarly, you want to base your mobile app design on what sells to your target market. For example, they might want a mobile app that doesn’t allow pop-ads for a change.
They may also prefer a dating app that only allows government-identified users. The only way you’ll know is to conduct profound research.
Research Allows You to Make a Unique Product
Mobile app research also allows you to identify loopholes in the available mobile app. This knowledge will help you develop an idea to make your mobile app unique, albeit one that can give you a marketing edge.
Research gives you a better sense of what users expect from an application. You’ll know what to add, remove, or improve so your mobile app will stand out from the rest.
In addition, research helps you learn how to market your product. When you know what your target market responds to, you’ll know what strategies to use. This further allows you to attract a larger audience.
Be Up-to-date With the Market
Today’s digital consumers get tired of mobile applications quickly. Moreover, they’re unforgiving. If they find the mobile app unentertaining or ordinary, they’ll shift to another one.
Loading time is one factor that mobile development teams should consider. Take the average load time of 6.9 seconds of retail mobile sites, for example. If you think about it, 6 seconds seems like a reasonable loading time considering how long it took a decade ago.
Yet, this isn’t true for 40% of American consumers who says they’ll leave a page if it loads for more than 3 seconds. This is a costly mistake as 79% of shoppers say they won’t buy from the site that dissatisfied them.
The market demands are continuously changing. Hence, it would be best if you kept tabs on the changes.
Research Helps You Prepare for Challenges
Yik Yak was an anonymous messaging mobile platform worth $400 million in 2015. Yet, in 2017 it closed its operation after succeeding drops in its downloads.
Reports of threats and cyber harassment led to the downfall of Yik Yak. However, fundamentally, the lack of research and preparation led to the death of the said mobile app.
High school and college students have always been the target market of the mobile app. Since it offers anonymity, which younger generations love, it gained vast popularity. What its developers failed to map out, however, was the threat that their app posed.
Users preyed on their anonymity to launch threats of abuse and cyberbullying. The developers tried to remedy this by restricting the number of users. Yet, this wasn’t enough to stop the problem and led to an irreversible user decline.
Thus, conducting mobile app research is essential after your mobile development team settles on an idea. This allows you to envision possible issues users may encounter. As a result, your mobile development team can come up with solutions to counter them.
A Helping Hand in Mobile Development
Mobile development is a hefty investment to leave at the mercy of what you “think” works. Statistics, facts, and market research are your friends in this field. However, it isn’t enough to know; you must be sure that your design and product are at the top of user needs and wants.
Don’t hesitate to contact us today if you need help researching, designing, and even coding a mobile app!
