So You Have an Intelligent App Idea, What do you do Next?

Every successful application solves a problem, that’s why it’s successful. I’ve been there before, that point when you have a brilliant app idea and you can’t wait to get developers working on it. But pump your brakes for a minute. Before you spend a dime on bringing your app idea to life, there are certain important things you need to do. The first and most important of them all is validating the idea.

I know this sound too obvious but I’ve seen people truly excited about an idea, so excited that they forget to do a quick market research to find out if the idea solve a problem people really have. It has happened to me in the past. I was so excited about an idea and because I’m a software engineer, I jumped into planning the application, creating mockups and flow charts and all that stuff. About 2 months into development, It occurred to me that I never did any idea validation or market research. This freaked me out and I was scared I had wasted the two months. After spending a few days to research on the idea, I realise that indeed, I made a haste decision. I had no other option than to stop working the app. This has happened to countless other entrepreneurs. 

If you don’t have the patience to spend days validating your idea, you can spend 30 minutes to an hour and do a quick google search on the problem you’re trying to solve. See how many articles or forums are discussing the problem. If the first page of google is filled with articles and forums about the problem you’re trying to solve, that’s a good indication that you’re onto something.

You can take it a step further by using any of the SEO keywords tools out there to check the number of people searching for the problem you’re trying to solve on google and other search engines. This will give you a good idea of the demand for a solution. I personally use Google keyword planner to do this. 

If you don’t find any articles or forums on google about the problem you want to solve, it doesn’t always mean the idea is bad. You might be trying to solve a problem people don’t know they have yet. You can spend more time and ask people around you. Find out if your idea is something they’ll be interested in. You might be surprised what you find. 

Validate your idea before you spend time and money on developing an app. I hope you found this article helpful. Have you validated your app in the past or made hasty decisions? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Good luck.