Deprioritizing Market Research in Mobile App Development Can Be Deadly for Your Business. Here's Why?

The dependency on mobile apps is increasing significantly as various businesses around the world continue making their services more accessible via their apps. Industries worldwide are rushing to find reliable mobile app developers to build an app for their brands that will help in gaining customers, making services more accessible, and earning higher profits. 

The market has become more challenging with the meteoric rise in mobile app development. Every day a mobile app is launched, but the number of apps that emerge successful in the end is relatively few. Based on a study, it was found that almost 9999 apps out of 10,000 apps fail, citing a variety of reasons. This directly implies that only 0.5% of apps are successful.

This post will discuss one of the primary reasons most mobile apps fail. We'll discuss market research and its importance in mobile app development. We'll also try to learn the consequences that mobile apps suffer because of poor market research. 

So, let's move forward and start by getting an overview of market research. 

A Brief Overview of Market Research

Market research is one of the essential tasks that every business needs to conduct before launching a new product or service. Market research helps you determine the target audience your product or services will serve. It allows companies to determine whether their product will genuinely appeal to their target audience. Whether their target market needs the product/service or not. 

The market research also helps businesses determine the budget they'll need to build a product or launch a new service and the amount they'll need to market it. Hence, market research is the first step businesses must take when considering any new business venture. 

Similarly, market research must be the most fundamental step when building a mobile app. Let's move forward and discuss the role and importance of market research in mobile app development.

Market Research in Mobile App Development

Market research is crucial for every business and its ventures, but this task becomes more critical when it comes to mobile app development. In-depth market research allows companies to predict whether the app they are considering developing is genuinely needed. And if it is, what features and functionalities must it have for it to be helpful for the target market? 

Let's discuss some benefits of market research in mobile app development.

#1 Helps in Figuring Out the Right Target Market

For any business planning to invest in mobile app development, the first thing that needs to be figured out is the demography for whom they are building the mobile app. Developing an audience-friendly mobile app is impossible without precise knowledge of the target market. Hence, an in-depth market analysis before moving to the app planning and development phase is crucial. 

This step also involves deciding whether a business should invest in iOS app development, Android app development, or Cross-platform development. This can be determined by looking at the demography and the operating system which is most common in them. 

#2 Helps Understand Target Market Better and Their Needs

A thorough or, say, in-depth market research & analysis not only involves figuring out the target market but also involves learning about those people and their specific problems that the mobile app shall try to solve. In particular, one needs to figure out how or say in what manner the mobile app will help the target market. 

For this, you might conduct a survey asking the target audience what types of problems they face, brief them about your idea, and ask them what features they would love to see in your mobile app. 

This knowledge helps you understand your customer better, thus allowing you to serve them better. This will not only help the audience but will also improve the chances of your mobile app's success. 

Suggested Reading: How Important Is Emotions Mapping in Mobile App Development 

#3 Assists in Budget Planning and Allocation

Budget planning and allocation are crucial tasks in the mobile app planning phase preceding development. Budget is a significant factor affecting overall mobile app development, especially its features, and functionality. As we know higher the number of features and functionality a mobile app has, the more will be the cost of its development. 

Hence excellent in-depth market research that helps understand the customer needs better will help you derive the number and type of features/functionalities you must have in your mobile app. This type of knowledge will help you avoid adding unnecessary features that will complicate the app and add up to increase the overall cost. 

Hence proper market research and analysis will help businesses correctly allocate budget and will also help reduce the overall mobile app development cost by reducing unnecessary expenses. 

Businesses can take help from Goodtal's list of reliable iOS and Android app development companies to build excellent mobile apps in minimal time and costs. 

#4 Provides Useful Insights Related to the Venture

Market research doesn't always take you forward with your business idea. Sometimes it provides you the clarity related to the fate of your venture, suggesting whether to follow the idea or throw it out of the window. 

That's right. A properly conducted market research will provide valuable insights into your idea. It will help you determine whether the venture you plan to work on is needed in the market. And in case the app idea is genuine, market research will help you understand the competition your mobile app faces by providing you with the details of existing similar ventures. 

In-depth market research will provide you with details related to the performance of competitors in the market, their weaknesses, and the things or features that your mobile app will require to stand out. 

Similar to this, market research helps you find valuable and credible insights into various aspects regarding your mobile app idea that will help you outline the path towards creating a great mobile app that is bound to succeed.

#5 Prevent Failures 

We always try to learn from those performing well in their ventures. We learn things they did right and then follow the same. And it is the right thing to do, but the next great thing will be to learn from the mistakes of those who have failed. The things they did not do right that led them to failure. 

This kind of knowledge can prevent you from committing your competitors' mistakes. This will save a lot of money and time for your business. 

Consequences of Neglecting the Importance of Market Research

Deprioritizing market research in mobile app development can bear grim consequences. Those consequences will not only impact the mobile app's future but also ruin your business's reputation. 

Let's take a quick look at some implications of the poor market research on the future of a mobile app.

#1 Lack of Authenticity in App Idea

Proper and in-depth market research helps businesses come up with the idea that is not trite and solves a unique problem that is very common amongst the population but has no solution. It enables you to find a new concept to work on that genuinely solves human problems. 

But lack of research will lead your business to app development based on a common idea lacking originality. Ultimately, you'll create a mere alternative to popular mobile apps. 

#2 Mobile App Unable to Withstand the Competition 

Mobile apps with unoriginal ideas are bound to have many competing apps. For example, assume without any market research, a business has decided to invest in building a messaging app. It is imminent that in the presence of giants like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Discord, WeChat, etc., your mobile app stands no chance of standing apart. 

Unless you've got a set of striking features that non of the existing messaging apps provide, which again is impossible without appropriate research. Hence it all sums up the fact that insufficient market research can lead to the failure of your mobile app. 

#3 Waste of Money and Human Resource 

A mobile app is doomed to fail without market research or improper and insufficient research. As discussed in the above two points, lacking market research will lead to an unoriginal/inauthentic idea with much market competition. Hence lack of market research will lead to the development of an app that is a mere copy of an existing app. One that won't fit as a proper alternative to any existing popular mobile app in the eyes of the customer. 

All of these points point towards one thing your mobile app will not be unique and very much imminent that it won't be able to make the top 0.5% of apps that end up successful. Hence leading to a loss of capital, human resource time, and productivity in a useless mobile app. 

Wrapping Up

Behind every successful mobile app, there lie various factors that need to be done right. One such factor is market research, the fundamental step that must be done before any new venture starts. In this post, we discussed the importance of market research in mobile app development.

We discussed some key ways market research contributes to overall mobile app development. We learned how market research helps businesses determine the right target market for their mobile app. Market research enables companies to understand the target audience better and figure out the correct elements their mobile app needs to be helpful for the public. 

Strong and in-depth market research helps businesses get valuable insights that can help them to plan their mobile app development better and hence achieve the results they expect from it. Meanwhile, we also discussed that neglecting market research could bear harmful consequences. 

As an end note, market research is a crucial task and needs to be prioritized in mobile app development.