How User Research Impact the Success of a Mobile App?

With the increase in mobile users, it is well understood that mobile has become the fastest way of accessing internet. And in today’s technology-driven world, most of the businesses are busy in developing and launching their mobile apps to reach millions of customers, quickly and cost-effectively. In the course of time, the mobile app market is making breakthrough expansion and getting more competitive. And developing mobile app is not as easy it may seem. For any successful a mobile app, the requisites are a strong programming language, platform, developers, and budget. However, many forget about the most important aspect of the mobile app, which is the “User.”

Whether it is the developers, programming languages or technicalities, all of these may upgrade or change according to the market demand. But the factor that remains constant throughout is the “User.” The app is successful only when it satisfies the demand of the users and if it neglects, the success ratio of the app is sure to dip down. So, as everything revolves around the user, while developing an app the primary attention should be given to user research.

What is User Research?

While developing an app strategy, focus should be given to the users – from the initial stage to the final. There are many reasons to convince you why user research is important for the mobile app development and how it steers its success. But we need to understand the term user experience. Often also called as “design research,” user research involves various methods like quantitative research, which is doing surveys and formal experiments, and qualitative research, which includes interviews and usability tests. Through these user research methods you can measure user behavior, get an in-depth understanding of the experiences of an individual user or a group. The research will help you to statistically analyze your mobile app - if it meets your targeted audience, assess your solutions - if it fits the purpose and gauge your impact – if it is easy to use. 

Depending on what you want to achieve, you can apply the right user research method.

How can you gain from User Research?

Without understanding what others want to experience, designing something is a pointless task. So, user research guides your work process and helps in creating a winning mobile app. There are numerous benefits that can you can earn from user research.

1. Assists in creating mobile app that is truly relevant

One of the important reasons to do user research is that it is the only way through which you can understand who are your end users. If you understand your users, you will be able to develop mobile app that are relevant to them. And if you do not know who your users are, you will not know whether the app is relevant or not. A mobile app that is not relevant is never a success as it cannot reach the targeted audience. By conducting interviews or observing users, you will have an idea about how you have to develop your mobile app. This sort of research is generally done in the beginning phase of the development to ensure that mobile app is used by relevant users and you are on the right track.

2. Helps in making mobile app easy and user-friendly

Not all the users using your app are tech experts. User tests can help you to understand if the developed app is easy to use or not. The app needs to be easy to use. Earlier programming tools were only used by the experts, but now people too expect apps to be easy. They just want to use the product without any technical hindrance. If your app does not provide good experience, then there are just chances that they will prefer another mobile app to answer to their requirements. When you design an app, you have first-hand knowledge of how to use it and all functions it has. Because you have developed it and may have some guidelines in hand, you can blindly navigate the functions of the app that is difficult to use and avoid a lot of issues related to its usability. But there will always situations where rules related to the functionality will not apply. And in those situations, you will need to have user experience of that app. User research works best when they are integrated in the development process of the app as you can test your product iteratively. If you start testing your app when you have already finished it, then you run into a risk where making changes in the app becomes little too late for you.

3. Help in showing the revenue generation of your design efforts

Sometimes, many developers fail to understand the need of investing in user research and UX design. Most of the businesses develop an app with an aim to make big money out of it. But if you look from a user’s perspective, they do not use your app to earn money. However, you can develop different analytics that will help you understand different user patterns. From user research, you can make those changes in your app, get more customers to your mobile app, make the functionality more effective and understand where to invest to generate revenue.

The app industry is an ever-evolving domain and user research is definitely one of the major points when developing an app. This approach can help you to in track and let you enjoy the ultimate result from your winning app.