Even though it was the weekend, ideas and thoughts always drift through my mind. While out on a walk, I started thinking about the previous week's work, and some ideas sprung to mind.
I'm helping a client with building a mobile experience app. However, I wanted to do some competitor analysis for them to see what was already in the marketplace so I could understand what I should consider when building them a solution (building on their USP), what they should be considering for other mobile technologies and seeing what their competitor peers are doing to get a few ideas. While they had mentioned two apps they had seen, it was a top-level brief, with a few short paragraphs of what they hoped to achieve, so I needed more context to build a better picture.
Using Appnalysis to do market analysis, I created a new group and chose iOS - I mainly use iOS. I typed in the name of the first app the client had given me and used this as a lead app. I then added other apps that Appnalysis recommended, which were similar to the initial selection.
I iterated on this a few times by choosing a few different keywords to help build up the market research group and collected 19 apps, with nothing more than a few clicks, and when I needed clarification on an app, I used the in-built store listing to check if it was a suitable addition.
Increasing the size of your data set, which is apps in this case, ensures you get the most thorough and accurate results. Having worked in the industry for over 25 years, I feel I have a good knowledge of the apps on the market, but with nearly 2 million apps in the AppStore, it would be foolish of me to assume I'd be aware of every similar app that exists on the market for this research group. Appnalysis was able to suggest relevant apps to add to the group I wasn’t aware of, which significantly improves the conclusions I could draw from the data.
(The above group is not the client group for NDA purposes)
After 15 minutes of invested time, I had completed my research group. I decided to stop, it was the weekend, after all, and I wanted to spend some time with my other half and enjoy some food. I couldn’t help but think about the dread of embarking on a week-long mission of manually researching and sourcing all the information from each of those 19 apps, but I was grateful that that arduous journey is now a thing of the past. When I returned to my Macbook after dinner, Appnalysis had done it all for me in record time.
Despite investing only 15 minutes of my time, an hour later, Appnalysis had completed all the tedious work of finding and collecting research data for me. This automation now allows me to focus on more creative and strategic tasks, interpreting the data as needed.
As the founder of Appnalysis , I can honestly say that I love this product, and it aids me greatly in my day-to-day work. I feel that creators using their own products is a great indication of the product’s authenticity, and I feel that sharing the way I use Appnalysis would give great insight into how you may be able to use it to aid your work, too. With that in mind, i’m going to share my steps so you can see how I use it in a real scenario. Keep your eyes peeled for the next instalment!