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A 3-step guide to starting your mobile app business
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You have an idea on how to start a mobile app business, but don’t know where to start from? In this article, experts from Mind Studios development company explains how to start your prosperous mobile app business.
1. Start With Business Analysis.
Imagine you are building a huge house. Where are you going to start from? Are you going to start from the window placing? Of course no – you’ll be laying the foundation first. And in terms of starting an app business, business analysis is like a solid basement for your future app. It consists of a few components:
a) Business Model
It is extremely important as it helps to construct a working business, not just an app. An excellent tool to help with an app idea would be Business Model Canvas, with the sections like “key activities”, “value proposition” and “revenue streams” to help you. We would also recommend to write a business plan – this ensures the course of your product will run even more smoothly. Mind Map creation would also be handy – expanding on the analogy drawn with a house, Map is like a crown of a tree, where all of your ideas are hanging. Typically a work on a Mind Map is done together with a team of business analysts, who help you generate and grow ideas; we recommend to try on this great tool as well.
b) Market, User and Competitor Research
Market and user research will help you better understand your customers. You need to know who are your future target audience – and why they will use your product. You will as well need to take into the account your competitors – study the market, profile your opponents and realize why you are better than they are. If you have the foggiest idea on how to do it properly, hiring a team of experts will be a solution you seek for.
c) Unique Value Proposition
Plenty of current market-present apps fail to succeed with the main purpose – to satisfy the need users have. Which is why every successful application creation begins with a basic understanding of the user’s demand. What will your Unique Value Proposition be if you simply make an app like Tinder? Which problem does your app solve? After studying the competitors, you’ll be able to answer that.
d) Prototype
Now you are ready to place windows. Only after all these you can have prototyping started. User Experience is the most important focus of this, so ensure a UX-expert you hire understands every step your users will make on the platform, according to the user research your team carried out. After completing the first prototypes, use an online service like Helpfull to receive real user feedback before spending money on development.
2. Congrats! Now Build, Analyze and Implement.
Once you realize your test groups interacts with your product in the way you wanted them to, go in for design and development. Use tools like Google Analytics and Fabric to analyze evaluation, reconstruct and implement changes to your product.
Important note: Remember, hiring a development team to make an Android or iOS mobile app is the easiest task to perform; the market is full of agencies competing for your attention. What’s more important is your strategy – your business plan, your marketing strategy and your revenue-generating channels.
Also, don’t launch if your product failed during testing.
Otherwise, you are risking to repeat the Vasa shipwreck – the ship that sank 20 minutes into her journey, having even left the port. Only fair preparation results in a smooth sale later on.
3. Think of Marketing Before You Kickoff
The romanticism of Silicon Valley startups has it – many of us believe that having only a brilliant idea (transformed into an app) is enough for you to succeed. In fact, it is not – and only marketing strategy and a thorough “enter-the-market” plan can get you there. You can hire a team of seasoned pros here as well, to optimize your strategy and help you conquer an existing market.
A point to consider: a great part of pre-launch works would be alpha (20-30 users) and beta (up from a 1000) testing, to see how users interact with your application; because our predictions, even the most clever ones, are inescapably uncertain.
That’s it – a few advice for a successful mobile application entrepreneurship. This the approach formed in Mind Studios, the one that helps to create working businesses instead of “just another app on the store”. In the modern era if one is doing something – he needs to ensure first that people need this innovation; maybe, in this case, our future apps will become much more memorable.
Hope we helped you with what to do when you have an app idea dilemma.
If you have already created an app for business, or have comments on app building, please post it in the comments below.