Tips to evaluate competition and draw analysis for your new mobile app

Launching a mobile app is not tough anymore. But, getting business through the app, to stay competitive in the market where millions of apps already exist is the toughest part. App developers should evaluate the competition out there first and do a thorough market analysis, even before starting the development part. The process of drawing the market analysis for a mobile app is a long process and there some several steps or phases involved into it. Also, there are different ways to follow for the same. We’ll cover here the overall evaluation technique in this article.

 

Before jumping into the real deal, let’s check out the reasons we should do a competition analysis before launching a mobile app:

 

a.) It helps in understanding the motivation behind the idea of your app and the client’s expectations clearly

b.) Before investing time and money, the analysis helps to understand if the idea of your app fits into the current market scenario

c.) You’ll get to know the factors of the success of similar apps in the market and the failure reasons for the same as well

d.) You’ll get the idea that what your competitor is providing through their apps, and what extra you can offer to the consumers through your app to take the place of your competitors.

e.) The competitive analysis will give you the roadmap for your app development journey

 

Now, let’s get into the steps of doing the competitive analysis for your mobile app:

 

Step 1 – Find and define your competitions

The first step of analyzing the competition is to identify the competitors of your app and the services you are providing through your app. The complete understanding of the competitions includes – what are the competitors are offering to the consumers, what you are offering them, the difference between their services and so on. What you need to do here is to open a spreadsheet and note information about your competitors.

 

Take the help of Google or any other search engine to find apps that are providing similar service and note down their name.

Note down the link of their websites, if there is any.

Link to their apps in the app stores

How many reviews and star ratings they have got.

How many negative reviews are there in the app store for them

Social media profiles of the apps if there is any. If there is no social media page, note that too.

 

Keep all the information in separate columns. This way you’ll be able to build a good competitor database of your own as a stepping stone to the latter part of the analysis.

 

Step 2 – Compare your app with other businesses

Now that you have identified your competition, the second step you need to follow is to compare your app to the other app businesses. Complete understanding of the competitors’ products, market, and strong features will let you stay updated about their market and you won’t be facing straight competition from the established apps. The following points should be compared when you are comparing your app with that of the other businesses:

 

• Product Features

Note down the features of the products your competitors offer to the consumers. If possible you need to write a brief description of the products or services.

• Web Presence

If the mobile app competitors have their own website, take the URL and paste it into an analytics tool or take the help of Google, to find its ranking or how is the web presence of the competitors. Web presence also includes online reviews and social media presence as well.

• Monetization options

There are many app monetization models like PPC ads, in-app advertisements, subscriptions, freemium etc. You need to check out what monetization model your competitors are using and what suits your business best.

• Position in the market

The competitor’s position in the market is very important to analyze, as you may get a straight threat when you are just starting with the services. Market perspective and users’ need are important to understanding.

• Swot analysis

SWOT analysis is the analysis of strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats. You have to ask questions like what are the advantages and strengths do they have, what could they improve to get more reviews, what are the interesting trends where you can sell your services, what are the obstacles your competitors face?

• Who is the target audience

Before launching and building a mobile app, you need to understand who your target audience is. Not anyone and everyone is the user of your app. Like a shopping app is not for gamers or a health app is not for shoppers and so on.

• Unique value offerings

Your app can get a position in the market when and only when you’ll offer some added value through your services. Therefore, identifying your best-suited target audience is important. This will later help you in the process of marketing your product.

 

 

Step 3 – Analysis of the app stores

You can check out the app store data for learning how your competitors are doing in the market. The data includes the ratings – average, good, excellent or poor, reviews, update cycles, last update date and the bugs fixed recently. User reviews are important for all the versions of the app. The bugs arrived on the apps and the fixed versions and additional features they are offering with each of the version releases is important as well. This will help you avoid committing the same mistakes with your applications as well. Always check out the negative reviews to find the problems with the applications of your competitors.

 

Step 4 – Analyze the need of your target audience

Every business has some services to offer and mobile apps are not the exceptions. You are trying to resolve some issues or providing solutions through your mobile app. Different users have different needs and expectations for each app. Therefore, you have to learn all the needs of your users to draw and improve services of your mobile app. For that, you may ask the following questions:

 

a.) Who are the users of your mobile app and services?

b.) What are the features your users look for in an app that provides similar kind of services you are offering?

c.) Identify your users by age, gender, income range or interests

d.) How are you resolving their problems or giving them what they want?

Using the information you have got from the analysis, define your value proposition.

 

 

Step 5 – Evaluating the marketing techniques for your app

Evaluating and identifying marketing techniques for your mobile app well in advance is very important. It will reduce the hurdles and hardships of marketing later when the app is ready for sale. There are marketing mediums like:

 

1.) Social Media

2.) PR Agencies

3.) Advertising Agencies

4.) Ad networks

5.) Content (blogs, articles, videos, audios, podcasts, infographics, images)

6.) Digital marketplaces

 

 

If you are a startup, social media, digital marketplaces are the best option for you where you can market your app for free or for minimal charges.

 

Step 6 – Tools for monitoring and analyzing competitions

There are many tools which you can take the help of the evaluation and analysis competitions:

 

• Google Alerts – You’ll get notified about the specific keywords that your users search on the search engines when you set up google alerts.
• App Annie – You can get reports on your competitor’s app marketplaces and reviews through the app stores.
• App Store – App store is another tool to get the nitty-gritty about your competitors’ businesses.
• SEMrush – If you want to know the strength of the online presence of your competitors or the source of healthy backlinks they are getting from, you must use this application.

 

So, have you got a great idea of building a mobile app, go ahead and prepare the ground for it through this guide.