How to ship a great app (by using target groups)
It’s not enough to have a great idea and build a beautiful app. It’s important to create value for your probable customers. It doesn’t make sense to market to everybody.
By defining who your target group is, you can focus on the users that actually use your app and through that, save time and money.
Don’t just design something that could fit any audience, design something that fits your target audience!
Impact of defining a target group
A target group is the core set of users of your app. This is the group of people that you concretely have built the app for.
While defining your target group you have to answer questions and make decisions. You have to understand the motivation and issues of this group. It defines which features you implement and how you design the look and feel of your app.
Benefits of defining a target group
Identifying users interests and issues
When you deal with your target group, you find out what their issues are. Moreover, you will find their motivation to use your app.
The result of your research should be to figure out which features you should implement and how you should design the feel of your app to solve your target groups issues the best.
When your app fits the expectations and needs of your target group, you decrease the number of uninstalls of your app.
Save marketing money
You probably spend a lot of money on marketing and you want to spend it well. When you know how to approach your messaging, the money is spent better.
Who is your target group?
Check data and statistics
It is important to find out how the industry of your app works. Moreover, you have to find out how large your potential market is.
There are a lot of Analytic websites like Statista that help you to find quantitative data.
- How large is your potential market? How many users are there?
- Which pricing does your user expect? Which profit can you expect?
- Which marketing and sales channels do your users prefer?
- How many competitors do you have?
Analyze user behavior
Tracking the user’s behavior can give you useful insights into how the users act with your app.
Interacting with your app can range from visiting your app for a couple of seconds to being a daily active user. With tools like UXCam you get a thorough qualitative analysis of your app.
- How do your users interact with your app?
- Is there any point in your app where you lose a lot of users?
Create customer profiles
Your app users often have similar characteristics. By creating profiles of your probable users, it’s much easier to design your app for them.
The profiles should include demographic criteria as well as psychographic criteria.
Demographic criteria: general information about your target market
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Educational level
- Income level
Psychographic criteria: get a clear picture of who exactly you target
- Hobbies and Interests
- Behaviors
- Problems and Issues
- Pains and Gains
This list doesn’t claim to be complete, but it gives you an overview. Every industry, market, and niche is different. If you find any relevant information, just add them to the list.
Don’t be afraid of adding seemingly obvious criteria or making assumptions if you can’t find proven data. The more detailed the profiles are, the easier it gets to design a fitting app.
Conclusion
Using gained knowledge about your target group in your app will lead to higher retention and therefore save you money in the long run.
Put the following activities on your to-do list to get a basic overview of your target group:
- Check existing Data to analyze your industry
- Analyze user behavior
- Create customer profiles
