Market research and looking for a designer — The app experiment: 02
Two weeks have passed since my last story so it’s time for another update :) Here is the previous post in case you’re interested.
Last week was a bit harsh. During this week I was thinking about whether I should be building a motivation app altogether considering that there are many analogies out there that are doing the same thing. That’s when I stumbled upon this article.
The gist of this article is in case you do have a lot of competition — that’s not always a bad thing. That means that there is a market already for the product that you’re selling, and that’s good. Oftentimes we think that some app will be popular / useful based on our own demand for the app and sometimes that’s true. But most of the time we succumb to our own bias and build something that’s not as useful as we think it should be. However, when there is a market already present for your business, you know your product or service will be in demand.
Analyzing the competition
Another great idea that I took away from this article is if you’re not the first, then you can at least see what you can do better. I decided that I would analyze the most successful and unsuccessful apps (in order to not fall prey to the survivor bias). I knew only one way of doing this at this moment — by going to the Google Play / App Store and seeing what people have to say.
Initially, I thought I would not get anything out of this — App Store reviews for certain apps are just plain empty! I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or what is the algorithm for showing the reviews, but I couldn’t get any meaningful info, and that’s when I checked Google Play…
I don’t know why but there are thousands of reviews on Google Play compared to a few dozen at most that I was able to see on App Store.
Another great feature about Google Play is that users can vote on helpful reviews. This made my job tremendously easier as I could scout only for the reviews that were upvoted the most.
I decided that I would analyze the 4 most popular apps. My main focus was actually on the negative reviews. This would allow me to find things I can do better. Here’s what I managed to come up with:
Can I find something to improve?
So in my “research” of the apps I concluded that three problems were the source of 90% of the negative reviews:
- Unfixed bugs. This is by far the biggest contributor to poor reviews. Seems obvious, right? I understand that as long as you’re writing code — there will be bugs. Nonetheless, I was amazed to see how many of these comments were actually something that should be the 1st priority on any dev team's backlog.
- Abusing ads. Too many developers seem to abuse this topic, especially when the apps are free. I get that you guys are trying to make money, but if someone uses your app with constant anxiety that a screaming ad will pop up out of nowhere — then maybe you do deserve their wraith.
- Saying your app is free when in reality it’s not. I don’t know whether this is something that only these kinds of apps use to lure in potential customers, or whether other apps use this strategy as well. Actually, this kind of technique has been used for a while quite successfully in other business areas as well. So, besides being a questionable moral dilemma , this approach seems to be damaging in terms of your rating in Google Play as well.
Also, I found this gem, while looking through the reviews…
Guys, filter your quotes :)
Looking for a designer
Considering that I’m entering such a competitive market it makes sense to invest in a great design. There isn’t really anything innovative that I can bring into such an app, but I can make it look beautiful and easy to use.
Initially, I thought that I should hire someone in my circle of acquaintances. While this idea was attractive my experience has shown me that sometimes it’s best to keep the relationship formal. I’ve built my own agency on UpWork and I’ve learned the hard way that while working with friends is comfortable and fun, it can also occasionally come back to bite you. This is due to the fact that if they’re too relaxed with you, it can lead them to believe that they can cut corners, etc. Another reason for hiring someone I don’t know is that platforms such as UpWork provide a great way to track the freelancer via a timer. This is a great feature during the period of establishing trust with a freelancer.
Anyways, here’s the job post that I posted.
Besides just posting the job, I made it “featured” and also I made sure to invite freelancers that I liked so that I got a good selection to choose from later on.
In the end my funnel looked like this:
45 applications -> 12 chats -> 4 interviews -> 1 hire
To be honest, I didn’t expect to have that many responses to my job post. My initial concern was that I would not have a sufficient base to pick from. On the other hand, it was becoming increasingly harder to shortlist candidates the more of them applied. The 4 freelancers that I picked were for the most part chosen based on my gut feeling, because I objectively coudn’t review all of them. After the 4 interviews I’ve conducted I still liked 3 of them. In the end, I decided to go for the designer with the most extensive experience. She was also the only one that actually inquired as to what is the purpose and the vision behind my business.
Conclusion
So far right now I’m at the planning stage of building the app. At this point, it might be too early for me to hire a designer, but I decided that it’s best to start consulting a professional before finally deciding on the feature set and how it might look like.
As for the feature research, there will be more to come as we’ll work closely with the designer that I hired. Until now my research of the users’ satisfaction of the app can be applied to any app I guess — fix your bugs, don’t abuse ads, don’t lie.
For the next two weeks I will be focusing on deciding what features will be in the MVP and building the preliminary designs.
