Tag Archive for: Product Market Fit

What You Can Learn From a Competitive Analysis

The Advantages of Conducting a Competitive Analysis

Imagine for a moment that everyone lives in a vacuum. Then, if we’re all living in vacuums, any problems or obstacles that arose would be entirely our own to address. Subsequently, in each vacuum then, we would see a variety of solutions that evolved to address the same issues from vacuum to vacuum. However, we don’t live in vacuums that are entirely separate from one another. Because of this, the very popular phrase, “don’t reinvent the wheel” still exists today. Simply put, it doesn’t do any good to spend time, energy, and resources developing an entirely redundant value. In the context of mobile app development this means conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis.

There are many benefits that developers reap from conducting a thorough competitive analysis. The competitive analysis is a process in the mobile app development workflow that helps the development team gain an understanding of the current marketplace. There are many factors to consider when conducting this analysis.

What To Look For During a CA

A competitive analysis begins internally. The mobile app developers must come to a value-proposition for their application-in-development before a proper analysis can begin. Defining the value proposition of the application prior to the market analysis is vital. Without the value-proposition clearly defined, the developers won’t have a lot of the information needed to properly move forward with the analysis.

Once the value proposition is defined, the developers will have a sense of where in the mobile market their competition lies. Once you’ve identified the competition, your team can begin drawing lines of differentiation between your application and that of your competitors. This is important. It’s important because it heavily influences your marketing strategies. If your team don’t understand what makes your application different, the end-user won’t either.

Other Competitive Analysis Tactics

Understanding the value-proposition and the differentiators between your application and the competition is just the beginning. There are an endless amount of insights that can be drawn from conducting a thorough and comprehensive competitive analysis. In addition to the insights found regarding factors of differentiation, the market analysis also provides deep insight into consumer behaviors.

Through the process of the market analysis trends will begin to emerge. These trends will apply to a variety of application elements. Ranging from user-experience, to the most trendy color-schemes, paying attention during the competitive analysis will result in mountains of useful data.

One aspect to which developers should pay specific attention is the user experience. The user experience is one of the most significant and impactful factors of any mobile app. With as much competition as exists within the market, and how many variations on a single solution is available to the end-user, consumers are becoming much more likely to delete an app and switch to a competitor after a single negative experience.

A Final Thought

There are endless insights to be drawn from a thorough competitive analysis, and this article only scratches the surface. For more information on competitive analysis, or anything related to mobile app development, visit NS804 today.

Product Market Fit Mobile App Checklist

Conducting a PMF Checklist, Pre-Market

Market-research is arguably one of the most  how and when to launch a product, in any given market. No matter the market, or the product, entrepreneurs and investors should conduct their due diligence. This includes conducting a product market fit. In other words, this is a sort of another product-viability check. The product market fit checklist is one of the last steps to take before launching.

As such, the product market fit should be more definitive than the earlier product viability phase. Although the two phases will have some overlap in function. The product viability tests focus on developing a minimum viable product and finding investors. While a PMF is more about ensuring that the product serves the intended market.

Understanding Product Market Fit

To properly conduct a product market fit that yields powerful insight it’s important to comprehend what exactly a PMF is. ASAP Developers defines this in as simple terms as, “having the right product for the right market.”

Unfortunately, there are no real qualitative data points to track when it comes to product market fit, or PMF. This makes it hard to standardize a measurement process related to PMF. However, there are ways to gain qualitative insight on product market fit, and make informed decisions regarding marketing, product-launch, and other important factors.

For example, a company can conduct stakeholder surveys to gain feedback. Other PMF insight comes from engagement metrics.

In the mobile app market, conducting a product market fit should include a few standard tactics.

  1. Keyword Search Volume: The app stores track data that is very valuable to mobile app developers. One instance of that is keyword search volume. This is a list of the most commonly searched words in the app store. Access to this data is greatly beneficial to mobile app developers that want to know what the people want. Understand the need first.
  2. Conversion Metrics: Once the app is up and running, or perhaps a beta version of it, the developers can track important conversion metrics. These metrics relate to how many users the app is gaining, and other insightful data points. Having a full picture of this data allows app developers to further optimize their app for the app-store, and bolster their conversion rates.
  3. Retention and KPI’s: This is another element that can be tracked once the app is up and running. Hitting certain retention benchmarks is extremely crucial to mobile app developers. In such a super-saturated marketplace, users are a hot commodity, and retaining gained users should always be a main priority.

A Final Word

Understanding product viability is crucial to mobile app success. Developing apps that aren’t just entertaining, but solve a user problem is a sure way to increase downloads, sales, and revenue. With mobile apps seeing larger user bases than ever before, now is the time to turn your mobile app dream into a reality. Get in touch with NS804 today to start the conversation about your mobile app idea.