3 Ways To Rapidly Assess Mobile App Competition

Are you working on a great mobile app idea? Did you perform a comprehensive research or a competitive analysis to assess the peers for your app?

Finding and evaluating competing apps can give you a clear idea about what customers are exactly looking for in the market, how similar apps and companies are performing and what mistakes they are making. This article talks about the importance of competitive analysis and the strategies that can help you do a quick and effective market analysis for your application. Let’s get started:

1. App Features: It is easy for app builders to get attracted to certain features in the competing app. But the difference between what they think is great and what the users want can be huge. So, prior to adding the same feature in your application, it is important to carry out some market research to get an idea of what people are talking about. For this, you can survey your users or check out user reviews on competing applications. App Store and Google Play Store are the best resources to look through the reviews. Manually going through the reviews can be time-consuming so consider using ‘Review Analysis’ tools to search for specific keywords in reviews and uncover new ideas.
2. Bugs: Bug reports are closely related to application features. You can look for keywords such as "bugs" or "crash" to discover the kind of troubles app users face while using an app. Information derived from bug reports and reviews can help you quickly fix similar bugs in your application. Additionally, debugging a vague bug report can take up several hours but a precise information about the bug in an app, device or an operating system can save hours of testing time.

The ability of quickly identifying and fixing the bugs also helps in improving your app ratings, which in turn enhances the app store keywords and rankings. Consistently research the bugs in other similar apps to understand what annoys the app users.

3. Software Development Kits (SDKs): This is a bit technical but you can find out which technology has been used by your competitors. One quick way to do some research is to use a service like Mighty Signal. The free version of this site will provide a brief list of installed and uninstalled SDKs. For the applications that are less complex in nature, the free list will suffice to understand their stack. You can even implement some of the similar elements for your application.

For more complex applications, a complete list of technologies your rivals have used can be of great help. It will help you identify best solutions for your application including the type of database, programming language, on-premises or cloud development, etc. Another way to ensure you choose the right technology is by consulting a professional Xamarin cross-platform app developer who can guide you on the native and multi-platform app development approach, different mobile platforms, features and more.

Some additional strategies for competitive analysis can include gathering information on the competing apps’ keywords, downloads, app revenue, daily and monthly active users, audience location, and social media engagement. Accurately analyzing all the collated information can help you get insight into some unique and untouched elements which you can implement for your app to increase downloads and revenue. So, keep analyzing and uncovering new ideas to stay on top of the competition! Have any other ideas to perform competitive analysis for Android apps?

Please share with us in the comments below.

Passionate writer. Love to explore new topics...