There are many reasons why an application can fail, but most of the clues appear at the beginning of product development. Most often, it happens during the strategy planning stage.
In order to attract the required number of users, you must first study the market well, and offer an up-to-date solution to the problem you want to solve. Also, do not load your app with unnecessary functionality, and do not forget to update it regularly. In short, that is how to make a live selling app work best for you.
Many startups do not take this into account when developing a strategy, or avoid strategic planning altogether. In the article, we will analyze why this is bad and what it can lead to.
1. The lack of a unique selling proposition
Before creating a mobile application, it is worth asking the question: What is the main value you offer your users that others do not or cannot provide? This will help you stand out from your competitors and show your uniqueness.
It doesn’t have to be something completely new. You can improve what already exists. For example, you can find an audience that is dissatisfied with the service in a competitor’s application and offer a better solution. Or offer the same product to the market, but at a lower price. Many well-known and well-funded companies use this tactic. It’s a strategy used by businesses at their early stages too.
Here are a few steps to help you determine your USP:
- Market research: Conduct competitive analysis, study competitor strategies, test their applications and services, highlight their strengths and weaknesses, and read user reviews. The disadvantages in your competitors’ products and user complaints might help to find a new solution for the market advantages.
- Study of user needs: Try to find something that your competitors haven’t done yet. Or maybe they’ve already done it, but not well enough. Information can be obtained through questionnaires, interviews, and observation of the behavior of potential users.
- Search for opportunities: After collecting the necessary data about the market and target users, you need to consider a foundational set of features for your new application. It is useful to get the whole team from product creators to marketers to designers to developers to technical support in order to brainstorm. Weigh the potential opportunities and risks. It is better to get feedback from member of each team so that after a while it does not turn out that some crucial ideas cannot be implemented for some reason or the other.
- Feature selection: From all the ideas collected, you need to choose those that will be implemented first and reflect the value of the product.
2. Solving too many problems at once
Many startups make the mistake of trying to fit as many features into an app as possible. It may seem that this will help to reach more users and satisfy the needs of everyone. It may seem logical since your app will be targeting a niche in the first place. But in reality there are several problems with this approach.
For example, people may develop cognitive overload. When a person sees too many features and functions, their attention is divided. It might be hard for them to choose one thing and remember what the main point of the application is. As a result, they may feel overwhelmed and go for a simpler product that quickly solves their problem.
A diverse and unnecessarily high number of features will also be technically difficult to include: each of them requires time and budget to implement and maintain. Considering that not all of its functions might be in demand, the application runs the risk of becoming unprofitable.
3. Useless features
There are also cases where a company offers an interesting, but absolutely useless feature in their app.
For example, Samsung Galaxy smartphones allow controlling certain functions with special Air Gestures. At first, users enthusiastically accepted the idea, but then most realized that waving their hands was not so convenient and rather useless. The usual screen touches still remain the preferred option.
When creating an application, it is better to stick to the golden mean. Choose a few basic useful features, and implement the rest as needed and the product develops.
4. Lack of updates
Even if you have created a product that has become popular, this does not mean that it will always be so. Competitors do not stand still and are also trying to find ways to increase their market share. Many well-known brands with good products have ended up losing ground due to a failed innovation strategy.
To avoid such mistakes, think about development at the beginning of the journey and ask yourself basic questions such as:
- What growth direction will you choose for the product and each feature?
- How will you react if competitors start using your ideas or do something even better?
- How and due to what will the product grow in the next 5 years?
- What innovations can you use to increase market share and improve service?
The answers to these questions will help you create a long-term strategy and survive crises.
5. User readiness for new products is not taken into account
When you introduce a great new product to the market, you might expect the audience to immediately accept it and start using it. Yet, fast growth doesn’t always happen. And this does not mean that the application has failed. You need to study the speed and extent of decision-making by different target groups in order to ascertain how fast you will be able to grab the desired number of initial users.
Final thoughts
If you manage to avoid major mistakes in the product development process, you will be able to profitably stand out from the competition, ascertain the value of each feature in the application, and keep updating it for the market.
Here are some basic tips to help you when launching a new product:
- Know the market and target users well;
- Solve real, not fictional problems;
- Create unique value that competitors do not yet have;
- Understand who will be the first to use your product, and how long they will take to get used to it.
