14/09/2020 - anteelo

With numerous mobile apps entering app industry daily, the biggest challenge for app developers is to make their app survive. How can one develop an app that beats 2.8 million mobile applications? How can one make his app stand out of the crowd when user hardly use 30 apps a month? How can one create a mobile app with lifetime success like Pokemon Go, Candy Crush and SnapChat?

One word answer to all of these questions is App Discovery.

App Discovery

App Discovery phase, in simpler terms, is the phase where you put your app idea on paper. You consider your business objectives and user expectations and plan how your mobile app will look and feel. You define all the crucial requirements, estimate the cost of app development and all the major milestones. In a nutshell, you create an effective blueprint for your mobile app project.

To ensure impactful results, the mobile app developers should consider the following stages/steps of application discovery:

1. Concept Analysis – To determine if your app idea is feasible as per the business and technical aspect.

2. Market Analysis – To find out your target audience and market based on different demographics like Age, Gender, Income, Region, Occupation, etc.

In addition to Concept analysis and Market analysis, it is also profitable to invest your valuable time in Competitive analysis. It will help you understand competition your app will face and how to deal with it.

3. Requirement Gathering – To study and decide what features and functionalities you want to add in your mobile application. While deciding app features, mobile app developers should consider the needs and expectations of their end users. This will help in creating a user-centric application and hence, improve the chances of app survival.

4. Wireframing – Wireframe is yet another phase of mobile application discovery that you can’t miss. It let you design a visual layout of the app project and determine what features/specifications can be achieved by certain layout and UX.

5. UI Prototyping – This phase helps mobile application development companies to visualize the end product via graphic designs that empower target users to experience the in-app flow.

6. Development Tools and Technology – In this phase, you decide the technologies and tools to employ for building a successful mobile application.

Now, as you know the perks and stages of the App Discovery phase, let’s move to tips for effective app discovery. Ones which can be applied in addition to taking advantage of Apple’s App Clip, Google Instant Apps and similar discovery-friendly functionalities.

Tips for Effective Mobile Apps Discovery

1. Consider ASO

Irrespective of endless marketers efforts, App Store is still the leading source of app discovery, which implies mobile app developers should learn and implement the best practices of ASO (App Store Optimization) to enhance app visibility.

2. Turn towards Social Media Marketing

Employ social media networks to engage the target audience. Share the screenshots and short videos of your app to engage them. Allow users to share your posts/tweets on their timeline and get leverage of exciting offers.

3. Invest in Referral Marketing

This mobile app promotion strategy is to attract new users while keeping the existing ones hooked with your mobile app. All you have to do in this case is to allure existing users to share the app with their near and dear ones and enjoy lucrative offers/incentives.

The most overwhelming example of this kind of app discovery practice is Dropbox. The app saw an uplift from 100,000 to 4,000,000 users within 15 months, all thanks to this method.

4. Team up with Bloggers

Finding bloggers with experience in your niche and asking them to write about your app is also an effective strategy. You can pay them for writing about your mobile application on their blogs, or can let them try a free version in return for the same.

5. Go for Third-Party Advertisements

Apart from focusing on a respective app store, you can also submit your app on third-party app stores like Amazon app store and Samsung app store in order to increase your app visibility.

With the uprising competition, the need and searching style of consumers have also changed. As per Google’s recent research, users these days are becoming more particular of how and what they search in mobile apps. So, it is advisable to look into the app search trends before building a mobile application.

App Discovery Trends for 2018

Here are the top four app search trends that the top app development companies would be focussing on, in 2018:

1. App with Productivity and Convenience

Smartphone users are looking for apps that make their daily life easier and effective, like note-taking apps, calendars, office suits, etc. Google disclosed that searches for apps with features like placing an order, discounts, and tracking orders have increased 120% YoY. This implies mobile app development companies can turn to productivity apps for enjoying better outcomes.

2. Apps that teach new skills

Users are more interested in learning new skills or polishing their skills more than ever. As per the reports, searches for learning-based apps like ‘guitar learning app’ or ‘painting learning app’ has experienced a rise by 80% YoY. Besides, the language-related apps have seen an 85% YoY rise in searches. So, if you build an education mobile application or an app that let the users learn something new, your app will have higher chances of success in the market.

3. Health and Fitness Apps

With time, the smartphone consumers are becoming more fitness-freak. They are searching for more fitness practices and products than before. According to Google report, the searches for fitness shoes and activities like weightlifting has been increased by 135% YoY. Besides, users are searching for apps that improve their physical as well as mental health, such as meditation apps.

4. Finance mobile applications

Whether it comes to reservation, purchase or enrolling in a gym, users are looking for discounts and other offers. In other words, users are more conscious about finances and are looking for means to save more. Google revealed that brands with ‘free services’ and coupons facility have grown to 90% YoY. This directly indicates that personalized offers and referral marketing should be taken into consideration for app success.

While there are various other ways to enhance your app visibility and improve its survival chances, the above-mentioned are our favorite.

What are your favorite hacks to reach a wider audience and promote your mobile apps? Share your tips in the comment section below.

The main purpose of building an MVP :

Deliver a working product that provides immediate value with minimum resources be it money, time or infrastructure.

Create a baseline for future development and clarify the next steps to be taken in the project.

Earliest possible product release.

Minimum implementation costs.

Test the viability of the product before investing large capital and manpower into it.

Identify potential features and failures.

Identify and understand its user base and its preferences.

After receiving feedback, more features can be added. Every new release of the MVP should ensure a better solution for the customers and should be completed rather than a ‘work in progress’ solution. This can be understood better through an illustration by John Mayo in his article ‘Two Ways to Build a Pyramid’.

In a traditional approach, building the pyramid can be started from the base, and a new level can be added on top with each increment. Although this is an incremental process, until the last iteration it is only a ‘work in progress’, as in the image below.

The other approach is to start with a small pyramid. With each iteration, components can be added to increase its size or extend its functionality. Thus, after each increment, you will have a complete pyramid which can be further extended.

The rule here is to add new features gradually with each release of the MVP being a better and faster solution for the agenda under consideration.

Types of MVP

There are two categories of MVPs. Low Fidelity MVPs help you to get an insight into your customer’s problems and the kind of solution that will be most effective for the customer. High Fidelity MVPs are used to find out how much the customers will be willing to pay for the solution. Furthermore, it helps you to optimize your marketing strategy and communication channels along with the best potential growth strategies.

In today’s market where a wide range of services and products are in demand, minimum viable products differ accordingly. The different types of MVPs which can be categorized under Low-Fidelity and High-Fidelity MVPs are as follows:

Low Fidelity MVPs

High Fidelity MVPs

An Honest Customer Interview

Digital Prototypes like wireframes and mock-ups

Blogs and their Comments

3D Models for manufacturing products.

Subject Matter Forums

The Wizard of Oz

Website or an Application Landing Page

The Concierge MVP

Split Testing to measure user reaction to changes

The Piecemeal MVP

Videos

Crowdfunding helps generate funding for the product creations as well as testing its future demand in the market.

UX Prototypes.

Single Featured MVP in order to focus on the most essential solutions that will be provided by the product.

Ad Campaigns for market surveys

Email MVP

User SignUp for an Upcoming Product

Audience building via tests, interviews and questionnaires.

Micro-Surveys

Out of the above MVPs, most of which are self-explanatory, let us elaborate on the following few.

Concierge MVP: Here building a product is not necessary. Here you provide the services manually and analyze your customer interaction. This helps to understand if the customers will use your product or they need an entirely different product.

Wizard of Oz MVP: Here a fully functional product prototype is presented before the user while you are at work behind the scenes providing all that is necessary. Through this type of MVC, you are able to interact directly with your customers and review their preferences.

Piecemeal MVP: Here existing tools and solutions are used to create your product. This involves a minimum or no investment. A piecemeal MVP consists of existing components from multiple third-party sources that are put together to create the product or service.

Email MVP: Here you begin by sending emails with the business proposition to your existing customers. If the feedback is positive, the business idea is worth pursuing, however, if the feedback is bleak, either the proposal is missing something or it does not solve any problem.

Pitfalls

The main pitfall of an MVP is its lack of understanding. More often teams tend to believe it is the smallest amount of functionality that needs to be presented to the consumers in order to understand its viability. It might also be confused with minimum market earning. MVP is more focused on learning from customer feedback. It is very important to identify the set of features that needs to be included for an MVP. Including too many features will overload the MVP, incur cost and time and may fail to succeed. However, filtering features may cut out its key functions. The basic set of solution repeatedly mentioned here, refers to developing a deployable product with the key features which allows customers to access the solution and complete their entire journey towards their goal. Hence, it is essential that before releasing an MVP teams correlate the terms ‘minimum’ and ‘viable’ correctly. Finally, always keep in mind the metrics – Daily active users, maintenance rate and the average time spent with the product in order to quantify the success of your MVP.

Conclusion

Developing an MVP is a strategy to avoid developing products that are liable to be rejected by consumers. It is basically built to test a specific set of assumptions and prove that the product will provide an effective solution. MVPs are effective only when you take into account market feedback. This will help you to understand which features are to be developed and which to be discarded. While developing an MVP always keep in mind the most accurate but least features of the product but not the complete product.

Day: September 14, 2020

How might the Discovery Phase aid the survival of your Mobile App?

App Discovery