This is the first and foremost phase of mobile app development. And this stage is all about identifying the key areas of business. An enterprise app development company organizes brainstorming sessions to come up with an excellent app idea, do a SWOT analysis, conduct extensive market research, understand more about your target audience, and lastly decide upon your monetization model.
Value Proposition
Let’s take a look at the initial step that plays an important role in mobile app development, which is known as the value proposition. It refers to a simple summarised statement that represents the customer’s point of agreeing to buy a particular product or service.
A good value proposition is needed because it helps you highlight where you are standing better compared to your competitors. The app development company realizes this and helps you plan a customer-centric value-based proposition framed around brand strategy. Here are the five factors that should be considered when framing a value proposition for a mobile app:
Customer Loyalty – Mobile applications of various brands play a pivotal role in earning customer loyalty for businesses. Due to the easy accessibility of the application at the fingertips of the customer. Hence, while designing apps this point must be kept in mind.
Brand Value – A mobile app’s rating is directly proportional to the company’s brand image. Hence, it is pertinent to take care of the quality & maintenance of the app throughout its life cycle after creating it.
Consumer Insights – A mobile app development firm can help you obtain valuable customer insights via user behavior data while navigating the app. Hence, it can serve as a way to ameliorate customer experience.
Role in Promoting Other Brand Channels – A mobile app can also serve as the medium for promoting other advertising channels of the brand.
Customer Engagement – The mobile app is the most essential tool to measure customer engagement metrics and is an excellent indicator of the same.
Finally, it can be said that the five value propositions can be tied to the most essential metrics of your business with a mobile app development agency. That can in turn help you decide upon the mobile app budget.
Market Research and SWOT Analysis
Determining a few things before getting started is essential and they are:
- Who is going to be the target audience?
- What’s your competitive edge over other apps in the market?
- The business model that you would follow to get a better ROI?
- What technology stack and mobile app development approach would you use?
- What would be your budget?
- How much time do you need to design the app and launch it?
- What would be your marketing strategy?
To know the above answers, your enterprise app development company will conduct extensive market research for your app project. Because detailed market research can help you identify the gaps left by your competitors. And can save you from making many preventable mistakes.
It is also advisable to do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. This would help you make strategic planning and identify your present and future potential.
Defining Mobile App Objectives and Goals
After the research phase is over, the analysts from your app development company will help you identify, define, and finalize your project goals that are in line with your business objectives. While doing so, you can determine the following:
- How will your app be useful for your customers?
- What would be your app’s offerings?
- Where would your app’s USP lie?
However, you need to remember to prioritize user experience while finalizing your product plan.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming the idea for your mobile app is crucial once you are done with the market research phase and have identified your objectives. As it can help you figure out the best way to design the app within the constraints of budget, time, and competitor opportunities.
Target Audience or User Segmentation
Having a comprehensive idea about your target audience can make a huge difference to your mobile app’s fate. A well-defined mobile app development services will make this a hassle-free process for you. Here are a few key things to take into account while determining your target audience.
Based on Devices – Gaining a clear idea about whether your customers belong to the Android or iOS user groups can help you figure out which development approach you must follow, what tech stacks to use, and a lot more.
Geographical Location – Geolocation or geotagging is a robust process allowing your mobile app development company to design apps that can stand apart from their competitors.
Most organizations focus on geolocation-based mobile application development. As all smartphones have in-built GPS chips, app developers can take its help to do the following:
- Detect the user’s exact location to help with delivering personalized experiences.
- Target relevant customers.
- Attract new customers.
- Prompt location-based content and adverts.
- Facilitate offering on-demand services easily.
- Leverage AR technology to enhance user experience.
User Info – Demographic information helps in imparting a customized user experience. It also aids in earning customer loyalty and fostering long-term relationships with the customers. And your custom mobile app development company will assist you in understanding the user persona & help in improving the user engagement faculty of the mobile application.
User Behaviour – User behavior refers to how users interact with an app or product. It could be how much time the customers spend using various types of apps daily, what they like and don’t like, and many other things. Knowing how to track and analyze user behavior can help you achieve enhanced conversions and ultimately generate leads.
Monetization Model
Your mobile app is either directly or indirectly going to generate money for you. But have you decided on the monetization approach to adopt yet? Before going to the phase of creating your MVP and the designing phase, you need to explore several options of monetization, so that it can help you reap back the cost of development and app maintenance. Here, your app development company will help you effectively implement a variety of monetary modals to turn your apps into revenue-generating machines.
Below described are the common monetization techniques for your mobile app.
Ad Revenue – The most common way to monetize your app is through advertising. Even if your app is free to download and use, still displaying ads would help you reap your mobile building cost. So you don’t need to make an exquisite and unique application for advertisements as even a simple application is eligible for ad placements.
Types of ads include display ads, banner ads, video ads, interstitial ads, native ads, text ads, etc.
If you want to take this path of monetizing your app, then your mobile application development agency can consider using the following platforms for ads. Moreover, these platforms will help you get connected to the ad buyers automatically.
- Google AdMob
- Unity
- AdColony
Freemium Features – Using this model of monetization allows you to create a mobile app that can be downloaded for free and even used with limited functionalities. However, customers would need to unlock the full version of the app by paying for it and accessing the premium features completely.
These apps may or may not function without ads. Often, your mobile application development company builds these freemium features around to enhance customer experience.
Example – Canva
Subscription Model – This technique of monetization can be employed by enterprises when they are offering a SaaS (Subscription-as-a-Service) product in the form of a mobile application.
Only about 5% of businesses are employing this monetization model. As this model is deemed fit for cloud-based services and several music & OTT platforms. Here, the users get the option to subscribe to the service either on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis to gain access to its content.
Example – Disney+ Hotstar, YouTube Music, etc.
Affiliate Programs – These affiliated programs become a monetization technique in the form of a sponsorship model. In which you partner with a few businesses and agree to place their reference links in your application. As users click on those links, it generates leads for those businesses and you can, in turn, earn a percentage from their profit for yourself.
Whereas in sponsorship, you enter into a deal with one business alone and sponsor their products & services through your app. In return, they pay you for doing so which helps to recover the production and maintenance costs.
In-app Purchases – This model is popular in gaming apps. Here the developers permit the free download of the application to increase its popularity.
However, they restrict the full usage of the app which can be accessed only via in-app purchases. For instance, unlocking extra features, earning game currencies & extra lives, ad blocking, gaining special rewards, and other content.
Examples – Pokemon Go is estimated to have $4 billion from in-app purchases and Clash of Clans earned more than $1 million per day.
Paid Apps – These apps pay per download apps. Usually, the App Store has a huge collection of such paid apps compared to the Play Store.
Hybrid Model – Your enterprise app development company can let you get the best of both worlds with a Hybrid model. This way of revenue generation involves using a mixed approach. Here, many mobile apps are seen combining ads with freemium features or the subscription model.
Example – Spotify plays ads for free users along with restricting offline listening.