A Guide To Validate Your App Idea
There must have been many instances where you look at some issue, event, or situation where you must have thought how easier this could be if there was an app for this.?
This phenomenon is also usually known as “There should be an app for that”. This occurrence is solely responsible for the development of many apps that are available in stores today.
But the question is how do you filter out the right one from the plethora of ideas? How do you confirm the feasibility of your idea??
These are the questions this guide is going to help you answer, I will help you understand the right app ideation process.
Let’s get started by first introducing you to the Six Stages Of the Mobile App Idea Validation Process.
Six Stages Of App Idea Validation
Validation of an app is done to make sure that it aligns perfectly with your future goals, this is something that cannot be easily addressed in just pointers. App Idea Validation can be divided into different stages.
Stage 1: Searching For An App Idea
The very first answer to the question of how to validate an app idea is based on finding an app idea. If you do not have a few app ideas with you then checking for their validity is out of the question.?
You must also be thinking about how to get an idea for an app and where you should look for inspiration. Though it may be true the top-performing business applications today are inspired and developed by experiencing real-life issues and challenges, it would be a very bold move to assume that the same would happen with you and you will also get a real-life problem’s solution. But it would be really amazing if you do get a real-life problem solution.
In the case that you do not find a real-life problem solution, then here are the ways you can gain some inspiration to get ideas for your business:
You can start by making a detailed list of your most preferred app segments where you would be interested in making an entry. Once you get the list ready, you should review the top applications in these categories.?
Analyze and understand the features these apps have and what is missing in them, look for any feature that you can offer in your app that could make your app unique.
Once you are done studying the top ranking apps in the app stores completely, then move towards looking into app rating and reviewing websites. The ones that contain specifications for brand new launched in your preferred categories
You can research on sites like AngelList too that contain details of new businesses that have now entered the domains you are interested in it may be mobile or non-mobile and see if you can take businesses like these on.
The next thing that you can do to get ideas is when you are in a stage of a blank canvas is to attend various entrepreneur meets and conferences to discuss your ideas and also find people with the potential and interest to back up your ideas.
Meetups like these are more often than not a source of information and inspiration that is waiting to be brought to life.
The last method would be researching the ones that are getting funded. It helps in knowing the various industries and business models that are gaining traction and will also give you a clear idea of testing and where your future lies.?
Stage 2: Viability Research
After you get a basic idea of the app category and the type you are interested in entering the app business with, the next stage is to check the viability of the app idea validation framework itself. This is a very important step.
Your business’s future and the cost of development of your is all dependent on the research that you put into the validation of your application in the market.
This is the most important stage in the case of app idea validation and we will get in more depth about this in the latter part of the article.
Stage 3: Market Fit Analysis
Once you are done with the validation of your app concept, the final step before entering the mobile app development cycle will be to analyze what the market may demand from your application.
The market fit analysis stage deals with mainly two things, which are, the feature set of your app and the business model of your app. Make note of the features in your competitor app and check which ones you can incorporate into your application.
Now that we have gone through the stages when the app is just an idea, let us enter the main part of this article. In the coming stages, we will discuss the most effective strategies that you can adopt to Validate your Startup App Ideas.
Stage 4: MVP Development
Once you understand the applications developed by your rivals by analyzing them and figuring out the real need of your target audience by market analysis and user feedback, you gain clarity about the application that you want to build and the features that you will add.
Once you get to know the basics and the needs, you should consider developing a minimum viable product for your business. Build a functional MVP and distribute it for testing with only the main features to understand how it works in the real market.
Stage 5: Developing a Digital Prototype
Once you are with all the above stages, you will have a proper idea of what you want to create, and therefore it is now time to develop a digital prototype for your startup. Digital models help in characterizing the design flow and the functions of the app before developing the application.?
When your digital prototype is ready, you can get started with iterations to test the effectiveness of your application and then introduce the required changes in the design stage itself to avoid changes in the complete app development process and save time too.
Stage 6: Design Finalization
Once you are done with all these stages, you simply need to draft the final app design and there it is! Your dream application is on the market and is making profits for you.
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The design requires the approval of the customers that utilize it, a design sprint can help you in this case if getting approval from customers is difficult for you. You can start by testing your design with a group of three or four users, get their feedback from them and execute this feedback.
Next, you can release a beta version of your app by allowing only a few customers to sign up and join your application, get the feedback and insight of their experience to make the end result, and launch the application.
Methods To Validate Your App Idea
Validation of your app idea is a process that requires many steps to be followed and a lot of time and effort to give successful results.?
Here are the best ways to validate your app idea from my experience and research:
1) Talking to a targeted audience
The first step towards introducing your app to the world is by reaching out to your targeted audience but the real question here is how can you know whom you should contact?
The first step you need to take is to create user personas. The advantage of creating user personas can be felt at a number of app development stages too. You need to define your user group in a way that you get a clear understanding of how your app will be used by the people.
Once you identify the user type that you think will interact with your app once launched, the next step is to make your app idea reach them- this is the stage that will play a crucial role in finding out if your mobile app idea is going to be successful.
There are many ways to do that, you may create a survey about your app’s features and float it across the pool of prospective users to analyze the interest rate in your idea.
The ways to reach your users can be :
The idea of this method is to help you find out answers to questions like the significance of the problem you want to solve, how often your targeted group faces this issue if your user group is satisfied with the existing solution for their problem and if your app is actually offering something that the users would pay for now or in the coming years.
2) Studying The App Stores
With countless applications being present in both App Store and Play Store, it is a tough task to find where your competition is, those apps that operate on the same business model as yours, and those who are also working on your primary feature.
Competitive analysis for your mobile application is not easy. There are multiple applications that you will check and numerous features that you have to list down.
I will make it easier for you and divide the process into step by step factors that you can follow while doing a competitive analysis
Step 1: Put in your ideal category in the search box and make a note of all apps being shown till the second scroll.
Step 2: Search for the keywords that you think your users may put in to find an app like yours and again make a note of all apps till the second scroll.
Step 3: List down all the feature sets and single out the ones that are common and the ones that are not.
Step 4: Go through the reviews and ratings of all these apps to find out how the users are engaging with these applications, what they like and what they do not, etc.
3) Do a Keywords Research
Doing keywords research will help you understand what people are talking about the category you want to enter. This is a way to gauge if there is an interest in your application.
To start, list out 10-20 words or phrases that you think people may search for to reach your application and offerings, Once you get the list ready, research on them using tools like Google AdWords or Moz Keyword Explorer to analyze the traction these keywords are generating.?
The search volumes for these keywords will tell you if your audience is looking for an idea like your application or not.
The information through this method will help you find out how attractive your app idea is to the market as of now. In addition to this, the list of keywords you made will be useful in a number of other steps later in the process like when promoting your app outside of the store.
4) Creating a Landing Page
In this method you will make use of the network you must have built during the survey and social media process.?
Creating a landing page or a single-page website is to distribute it among the network created through other modes and the basic idea behind it is to figure out if people are interacting with your mobile app idea or not.
You can track this by linking your landing page to Google analytics and also by shortening the link using Bitly to get the data of the number of clicks on the link.
5) Uploading Beta Versions Of The App On Review Websites
You can submit rough or beta versions of your app idea to a number of websites like Angel List or ProductHunt , etc. So, submit your idea there to see how other founders and general business enthusiasts are reacting to your app idea.
It is not necessary to have a beta version or a prototype to use this approach. These pages also allow you to submit your app’s description and a tentative list of features that you plan to introduce on a page. So, you should take advantage of these websites to demonstrate and promote your idea throughout the world.
Conclusion
Validation of your idea is important before investing significant amounts of time and money in it. You should employ these methods to validate your app idea and also to get your business plan ideology ready because all this research will come in handy to you once you kickstart your endeavor.
A good MVP Development Company can help you create the perfect basic version of your app quickly and that could serve as a very economical and useful way to validate your startup and get started on your entrepreneurial journey.