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How to validate mobile app ideas?

I'm thinking of making a mobile app for my next project.

Those of you who have done it, how do you find ideas/domains people are searching for on app stores?

How do you make sure these people will find your app?

I guess doing keyword research for the web and directing people to your website which then leads to the app store is one way. 

But I'm looking to learn more about native distribution on app stores.

Any advice?

Imran Khan
@ehthing

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Its really hard to get attention from the app stores themselves until you've been on there a while and have good ratings and user history. The exception to this is that you go viral, which is unlikely of course. You want to think about distribution early on the same way you would a web app. Get it out there on all the standard GTM channels and get those early downloads. The rating is probably the most important thing. If you don't actively pursue positive ratings then the only ones you will get are bad ones from upset users. My advice is to deploy, develop a strategy day 1 for getting positive app store reviews, and then of course play around with paid ads if you have a subscription based app you can monetize and get a positive ROAS on.

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Imran Khan
@ehthing

Thanks for the info. It seems apps are at the mercy of user ratings.

Reply

the reason for this is that you will get 3 bad reviews for every 1 good review if you're not actively asking happy users to leave a positive review. a negative review is the first thing ppl want to do when they hate something, but a positive review is the last thing happy customers think to do.

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Imran Khan
@ehthing

Well, that's how I treat others' apps so I guess I must accept the same treatment. 😅

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Sven van der Zee
@Svenvdz

Ship it and you'll see. I've shipped many apps, most of them failed only a handful succeeded.

Don't expect anything from the appstores look for other ways to distribute your app for example let users invite each other, add watermarks to content generated with the app etc.

Also be sure to optimize for a positive reviews. Make dissatisfied customers email you instead of placing a review helps a lot.

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Samuil Petrov
@PetrovFeed

My 2 cents. I haven't built a mobile app but this is how I would do it:

Principles:

  • Mobile users spend little time on the AppStore.

  • They search directly for what they need to download.

  • Like Amazon, search terms are very specific.

  • The AppStore featured page is where you can capture the most traffic.

Steps:

  1. Gather new app ideas from closely watching trends on explodingtopics.com/ or meetglimpse.com/

  2. Check popular keywords on Google/AppStore autocomplete and discover sections. Verify these keywords via Google Trends to gauge interest. Then gauge traffic and competition in SEMrush or similar tool.

  3. Competitor keyword research in SEMrush to see which keywords they are using.

  4. Study what type of apps get featured and why. Then adapt your app to qualify to get featured on the main page:
    developer.apple.com/app-store…
    appfollow.io/blog/how-to-get-…

  5. Once you get enough sales you will rank higher in your category so you will depend less on being featured and more on brand awareness and SEO.

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