Mobile App Market: How you throw the net where the fish is

Why are we giving these tips – because there is more to benefiting from the mobile app market than the mere creation of an app. The app that will most likely generate you money has to be new, innovative and relevant to a targeted market. You want people to download it, there is therefore a need to undertake a preliminary research to make sure that a good number of people will want your app. Next you need to go over optimum ways of creating your app, by optimum I mean affordable and time efficient. After you have created the app you need to upload it onto the appropriate application store or a number of them. Lastly you need good marketing for your app, there are already a lot of apps out there make sure people know about yours.

Market Research

While it is all good to start working on a project that really excites you, you however need to research on the relevancy of the app you are imagining. Do people want it? Are they already looking for it? If not, then the app might not generate you much income.

One way to go about this is using Google Trends to find out what people are search for. Then go to app stores and find the number of apps that match those searches. Your choice of app should be the type that is found least in the app stores but with functionality that is most searched for on search engines.

Naming your App

It is all good to name your app after your name, TinasheMbare app, however it is not likely that many people are searching for that name on Google, unless you are famous. A wiser way of naming your app will be using Google Trends and identifying keywords/phrases that people are using for searches. Then name your app using those keywords/phrase. If the keyphrase is too long then you will just have to include the keyphrase in the description of your app.

Let’s say a thousand people are searching for African delicious recipes. You can name your app “Afrilicious” app and in your description say “A real guide that helps you prepare the best of African delicious recipes” . That will likely improve your app’s Google search ranking when people search for African delicious recipes. Again look in the app stores before going ahead with any name.

Similar apps

Research on similar apps with roughly the same functionality as what you are aiming to achieve, most likely they will be there. Studying their download statistics will give you a rough idea of how much people will be interested in your app’s concept. You can use Top App Charts. If similar apps are adequately famous, then work on how you can make yours better. This is either by giving your app more features to make it fancier, or in some instances, less features to make your app lighter and compatible with lower-tech phones e.g. feature phones.

Project planning: Requirements analysis

Requirements analysis just means research and come up with what exactly you want to achieve.

Let’s say you want to create the Afrilicious app, an app which guides a chef on preparing African dishes, roughly part of your requirements list would be:

1. The app must run on Windows phone, Android and Blackberry
2. The app should be able to time and tell the chef when to add ingredients e.g. if recipe is sadza, output: heat water… wait for 10 mins… buzz and output: Add mealie meal…
3. The app should have a nutrients content calculator and thus be able to suggest the best African recipes based on specified number of calories, time to prepare and available ingredients
4. The app should communicate with the server and download recipe updates when new ones are available.

Of course your list will be a whole lot longer and more precise than mine. Such a list will guide you (the developer) through the creation of the mobile app to ensure that your end-result will be exactly what you intended. There tends to be a lot of compromise and deviation during development if you don’t make your requirements list clear-cut.

Developing the app

This is the part where you develop your app based on your requirements list.