4 Reasons to Embrace User Research in Mobile App Development

A mobile app development project can become a success only if it involves sincere efforts to get into the mobile app users’ mind. Here, you will explore why user research is a crucial step to ensure the mobile app you make is relevant to its users.

Are you sleeping on a mobile app idea and waiting to breathe a life into it soon? Are you a mobile app development company excited to deliver a custom mobile app development service to your client? Hold on for a minute!

Read here the importance of doing user research before going ahead with your mobile app development. Remember this:you’re creating an app for your users, not for yourself. Conducting user research is the only way to learn about the people you’re building a solution for. That’s the only path to boost the likelihood that you are creating something they love!

Many mobile apps fail to make a mark in the market. And the reason for their failure is the lack of proper user research. It doesn’t matter if these mobile apps are backed by tech giants or start-ups. Without user research, mobile apps are meant to fail. Apple Music, Hailo, Vine, Yik Yak, FriendFeed, etc. are a few to mention.

Now, it’s time to move on to what we are talking about.

Why Is User Research Vital for Successful Mobile App Development?

While a product owner ideates a mobile app, he should base his vision on user research. It will help him to have clarity on users, their preferences, the features and functions that they look for in a mobile app, and so on.

You can give a momentum to your mobile app idea by building a prototype with the assumed user preferences. Doing user research on this prototype will help you roll out a final product that your users actually want.

Keep in mind these principles while doing user research:

· In the end, you’re creating an app for your users, not for yourself

· It’s crucial to discover what inspires your target audience (users), what pain points they are looking to solve, how they interact with technology, etc.

1. User research helps in giving the best user experience

Before jumping straight away into mobile app development, a mobile app development company should invest time in conducting customer research. This will shed the much needed light on mobile users, their needs and wants. This will also help mobile app designers to create designs that your target customers are going to use and love.

Business owners should be vigilant in choosing a mobile app development company. They should choose the one with good mobile app developers and designers, who understand designing and developing with empathy. Mobile apps that are designed based on empathy will win hearts. Empathy is the ability to place yourself in the place of the potential users - to feel what they are feeling and see what they are seeing. This valuable ability empowers designers to create things that solve users’ problems, satisfy their wishes, and achieve business goals.

2. User research helps in developing easy-to-use and fun mobile app features

User research is the best strategy that gives a mobile app development company a clear picture on the preferences of users. Knowing the qualities, behaviors, demographics, work environment, social culture, etc. of users is the best way to deliver mobile apps that will be in huge demand.

No matter how experienced the company is, it would be difficult for them to create a product that the users will love to use until they know what their preferences are.

Imagine integrating fabulous and revolutionary features into your mobile app but your users have no knack to use them! Mobile app development is not an opportunity to display your technical marvel, but to quench your users’ needs. A proper user research will equip you with all the knowledge needed to include the right mobile app features and functionalities. An app with the right features is the best way to improve its usability factor and success rate.

3. User research helps you choose the right mobile platform

The mobile app platform that your mobile app should get hosted on is a crucial design. This decision plays an important role in the success of your mobile app development project.

Users in Android and iOS are of different characteristic features. The former attracts a great number of users, while the latter enjoys more loyal users with great spending power. A general advice is that if you’re looking to target a global audience, Android could be your best choice. If you are targeting an elite audience, or if you’re designing a paid-app or targeting the USA or Australia, Apple should be your ideal choice.

4. Consumer research helps in producing great ROI

Generation of better ROI is the ultimate purpose of integrating diverse features and functionalities in the mobile app. As mentioned above user research is the best way to decide these features.

However great and usable you feel your mobile app is, it is of value only if your users find it worthy to use. Remember that you can find a bug while testing, but you will detect a design flaw only after it reaches the hands of users.

As you invest huge money to design an app with the intention of boosting ROI, give priority to user research. Find the right audience, build effective features and functions more effective, and decide the right platform. These will eventually help you have a great ROI. Let your users find that the mobile app you make solves their pain points. They will spread the word and will get you more downloads, sales, and overall profit.

Conclusion

Conduct an extensive user research when your brain sparks a seemingly fabulous mobile app idea. Make sure to have sufficient research material about your target audience when you approach a mobile app development company. This will help them to have a clarity on the whole idea and will help you refine the idea to suit your users’ preferences.

User research is undoubtedly the best way to build mobile applications that provides a great user experience (UX). Call us to get more insights into how to turn your mobile app idea into a viable reality.