How To Test If An App Has An Audience Before Building It?

Humans have more than 6000 thoughts in a single day. And if you’re a creative start-up founder or business owner, there is a probability that a majority of your thoughts are about creating a business with a profitable app. 

It is not the ideas that are scarce, it is about what will really work for people worries most of the start-up guys. Will the audience like the app you’re building? Are there any users out there who might use my app? Such and many more like them are a constant companion for founders and business owners alike.  

Now you don’t know how to be sure that your app idea is worth investing in. What do you do?  

You ask the internet experts. You can go to google or YouTube and find tons of blogs and videos explaining how to analyze the market for an app or the top 10 questions to ask before building your app in 2021 and some channels also take you to the future making predictions about 2022. Right?  

But the problem with such predictions is that nobody can tell for sure how human behaviour changes after 3 months let alone a year.  

You don’t need predictions; you need real-time data and insights into the current behaviours and habits of your users. Also, the answer to the question of whether someone will use your app or not? 

Today we will discuss three unconventional and effective ways to validate your app idea or other digital product you are trying to get off the ground and whether it has an audience aka a real market or not?  

Before we move on to the methods of validating whether your app has an audience or not, let’s discuss one critical mindset shift for your success.  

One crucial mindset shift for app creators  

Everyone thinks that their idea is the best and it’s probably the first of its kind. This might not be true for a lot of people. the chances are that it’s not a unique idea. Someone out there has already started building an app like yours.  

Don’t be disheartened. Stop thinking that you have already lost because someone has beaten you to it. This is not the case.  

The tech and start-up world is full of stories of smart execution followed by success and not tales of just a brilliant successful idea. Think about it. Instagram didn’t invent the stories features or the short video format but still the Insta stories and reels features have a user base of a billion people on a daily basis.  

Also Read: How To Reduce the Cost of Mobile App Development for Business?

The moral here is that your app success is not determined by whether you’re the first one to think of the concept, rather it is ensured by whether you work hard to build an awesome product and get it to the right audience or not.  

Now that we have solved one of your problems, let’s dive into the geeky stuff to tackle the rest.   

Three unconventional ways to validate your app idea 

• Data aggregator platforms  

Websites like Crunchbase and CB insights collect and analyze massive data regarding companies, investors, and investments. These are basically finance platforms that give insights into the funding of different start-ups and companies.  

What you need to do is look into the funding activity that has happened for similar start-ups or apps as yours in the last one or two years. Check if it’s good. Apps like yours or the ones in your niche should have received a good funding amount like a million dollars or more.  

If they have, then you have validation that your app idea has a market, and its business model works.  

The unspoken truth about such funding is that startups usually don’t secure funding until they have a good retention rate.  

What is the retention rate for apps? 

The retention rate of an app is the number of users that come back repeatedly to the app after downloading.  

Big investment firms and investment giants bet their money on apps that have a good retention rate, that is users are actively engaging with the app. Thus, you can be sure that if an app similar to yours has received funding, it also has an audience. So, it is not wrong to conclude that your app idea will also gain traction easily.  

• Crowdfunding platforms 

Another way to test whether your app has an audience and validate your app idea is to check on crowdfunding platforms like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter.  

What happens is there are thousands of people making digital products and apps, make a presentation or a landing page explaining about their product and how it solves a certain problem. The landing page also has videos for a further in-depth demonstration of their product or service functionality.  

Some of the creators also put videos of users using the product and there are testimonials of the first few users of the product, who are generally friends and family.  

Also Read: Top 10 Mobile App Development Mistakes To Avoid For Market Success

Then there is an email opt-in where one can preorder the products if they like. It’s like a beta test for the entire app and not just some features. 

As a company or start-up founder with an app idea what you should do is create a landing page on these crowdfunding platforms and see if you can also get a few hundred or thousand email optins (whatever is a good threshold for you) from people interested in your app services.  

Thus, you will have real people opting for your product. Now you can get to developing your product because you have the numbers supporting your idea.  

This is a more hands-on fashion to test yourself if you don’t want to rely on numbers only.  

• Play Store and app store 

You can check the google play store and apple app store to see how apps similar to your idea are performing. Are they resonating with the users, how many downloads they have. Also, read the reviews from users, this will give you an insight into what the users really looking for and what they liked about the app and which feature is still missing.  

This process will tell you about what kind of apps are trending and what users are looking for.  

Wrap up  

It is always a good idea to test the waters before jumping with full force. As an upcoming start-up founder and business owner, you must always validate your app idea and see if it has a real audience because it’s going to cost you money and time to develop a functional app. Do try the methods we discussed in the blog. 

And let us know if you also have an app you want to build, our mobile app development team would love to help you out with it.