Do you have an App idea?
But
You are not confident or need validation for the idea.
Here is the guide that will help you to validate your app ideas.
Why is it Important to Validate an App Idea?
Even though every mobile app on the store today started with an idea, every idea doesn’t make for a good app. Application concepts alone don’t make an application successful. It is when pre-validating the app idea comes to play.
Pre-validating the app idea helps understand the app’s efficacy and how to carry it out and grow it into a feasible business. Also, it ensures that your idea is valid, realistic, and able to bring profits.
There is no denying that successful apps are able to transform the traditional market. It helps drag the product ahead of the major business players. However, knowing the difference helps you get into the game and makes you the actual game player.
Since app development is a costly affair, validating the app idea depicts if it’s worth spending money on it. For instance, if you are developing an app whose alike are already in the store, it won’t be of any good.
So, the major benefits of pre-validating an app idea are:
- Helps understand the value of your app idea
- Gives an insight if the app idea is realistic or not
- Tells if the app will help you grab profits
- Reduces the monetary loss that may occur by creating a similar app
So, if you are convinced that a mobile app will help scale your business, understanding how to pre-validate the app idea becomes a prerequisite.
Let’s dig a little deeper and understand how it can be done.
How to Pre-validate an App Idea?
Pre-validating the app idea is a toiling process. You need to research, grab knowledge and work on many things to know its feasibility.
Below we have discussed every step of an app idea validation process to protect you from major pitfalls and create the right solution.
1. Scrutinize your Problems
The first step to validating an app idea is finding a problem worthy of being solved. For instance, you need to check all your competitors if you want to serve something unique to the users. Here, you need to become your own customer and pick the pain points.
Apart from pain points, you also need to check the features loved by the customers in competitors’ apps. Identify if you can also add them to your app with some twist. Basically, the motto should be creating an app that is problem-solving and has a combination of new and known features.
An application will perform better even if a similar app already exists unless it is problem-solving with innovative features.
2. Find the Right Audience
It is essential that you narrow down your target audience and know its interests and mood. Believing that your app is for everyone won’t help.
The intention should be to target a specific group and answer the following questions:
- Is the app gender specific?
- What will be the average age group of customers?
- What are their interests, likes, and priorities?
- What are they expecting from a new app?
- What is the disposable income of the target audience?
- To which marketing platform do they respond best?
3. Research Your Business Niche
Check similar or competitor apps already existing in both the Android and iOS stores. Find out what makes them appealing to the customers. Also, pay heed to the ratings, update histories, comments, and reviews for these apps.
In this stage, you can also do the following to pre-validate your app idea:
- Ensure your niche is in the trend and will gain profits
- Use search engines to examine the popularity of keywords that describe your app.
- Check the technologies used to build the competitors’ app and their structures.
- Stay updated with software development industry trends and use novel technologies to beat competitors.
- Keep an eye on competitors’ marketing strategies.
- Utilize tech tools for research and analysis.
- Look for the investors, as there might be people who would love to fund your app.
4. Define your goals and vision
Once you are clear about your vision, you will stay on the right track. Based on the data you have collected of your target audience, create a proto persona.
Understanding an ideal customer is crucial for app idea validation. It will depict if your product reaches the end-user and is perceived by them.
Remember, a proto persona is a mere document. Therefore, updating once you know the target audience is essential.
5. Create a Customer Journey Map
When it comes to validating an app idea, having a tunnel vision about customers doesn’t suffice. You need to know your customers’ journey and their interaction with your product.
It helps understand the customers’ experience and their viewpoint, which will aid in setting up your design process.
In this stage, you can ask yourself questions like:
- Why will a customer switch to my app over the competitors?
- How long will my app take to provide a feasible solution to the customer?
- What features are required to solve the problem?
Once you are clear about the problem-solving capacity of your app, you are good to go. For instance, an e-commerce app should have a user-friendly interface, easy navigation, and checkout.
6. Test the Hypothesis behind the App Idea
Once you have a clear vision of your business and app idea and all the technicalities required to bring the idea into reality, you need to test the hypothesis behind it. It is when collecting real user feedback will help validate the app idea.
Take feedback from the relevant user group. For instance, if your app is directed at the young generation, ask them to share their feedback on Reddit.
Likewise, if your business already has a website, create a buzz telling visitors that you are launching an app soon. You can also inform your viewers or customers through social media apps about the launch date and observe how they react.
7. Process the Feedback
Once you have taken users’ feedback, it’s time to check out the various key points that users have pinpointed. Know what your potential customers like and what they want to be changed. It will help you know what’s working well and at what points there is a need to take some action.
Validating an app idea helps understand the market or target audience and their interests and dislikes. At the same time, it saves time and money that you may lose after creating a worthless app. Validating an app idea mitigates the risks of failure, and thus it is an essential step before an app development.
