The Importance of Concept Validation in App Development

Concept validation is a critical step in the app development process that should be taken at the beginning of the journey. It is the process of testing and validating your app idea to ensure that it is feasible, viable, and desirable. Simply put, it helps to determine if the idea behind your mobile app has the potential to succeed in the market and if there is a need for it.

In this blog, we will discuss the importance of concept validation in mobile app development phase and how it can help you build a successful app.

This guest blog has been written by Geeklab.

Why does concept validation matter?

Before you launch your app, you need to find out if your app is any good and whether users will use it:

• Time and money efficiency are the two most important benefits one can get out of concept validation for their app. The earlier you start the validation process in the development phase, the earlier it is possible to detect potential pitfalls. This allows for necessary changes to be made before investing a significant amount of resources into the development process and help avoid costly mistakes and ensure the app’s success.

• Concept validation helps you identify market needs and understand your target audience better. The process involves researching your potential users, understanding what motivates them, and identifying what they are looking for in an app. Although the app isn’t out yet, the audience is, and which is why learning from them early on can help create an app that meets the potential users’ needs and adds value.

• Knowing what motivates users is a way to enhance the user experience of the app or game. Making it as holistic as possible also increases your chances to reduce churn. This, in turn, can increase user loyalty in the long run, as it builds trust in users when they can rely on a good user experience.

How to conduct concept validation?

Before developing an app idea, there are a few factors you need to consider. For example, which features should you add into the app, or how do you make your app innovative. Here are a few ways to validate your app with users:

• Find out your target users: Identify the target audience that your app should target. Ask yourself questions like:
  a. Which demographic should my app target?
  b. What should the age group of my target audience be?
  c. Should my app target one or both genders?
  d. How much disposable income do they have?
  e. What do they expect from my app that will serve their needs?

• A/B test your app store product pages: Using a testing platform, such as Geeklab, allows you to create look-a-like pages of your concept app’s app store pages. This way, you can create actual store page assets reflecting the nature of your app to see how much potential it has. You can create different variations to see which approaches work better. For example, you can A/B test the art style, player motivation, or theme for your mobile game. For apps, you could test core features, design, etc.
• Conduct market research: Before launching your app, the most essential step is to research the market you’re planning to launch your app in. This could include keyword research and competition monitoring. Type out a few keywords that best describe your app and see how popular those keywords are. Next, find out who your competitors are on the app stores and study their marketing strategies. Take a look at their app store visibility, the keywords they’re using, and the ratings and reviews users are leaving for those apps.

Discover the valuable ASO insights you can find through monitoring your competitors on the app stores

Based on this research, you should be then able to build a strong hypothesis, which essentially means the desired outcome for the test. Next, it’s time for A/B testing. Test different app metadata elements such as screenshots, title, description, icon, etc. for the app product page look-a-like store page. This can be somewhat resource-heavy as it needs to be done for each variation. Once that is done, you are able to set up the A/B testing campaign and wait for the final results.

Drawing on the results, you can come to a data-based conclusion about what your next development move could (or should) be. It helps bring value to each decision you must make, as you have learned from your audience what they like and don’t. This can be repeated throughout the development process as it essentially is an iterative process.

What should you avoid during app concept validation?

While carrying out the process of concept validation for your app, avoid the following:

• Don’t test significant design elements too late in the game. The further along the development process, the less it could be worth making any changes accordingly.
• Don’t start the testing process too late. Failing early means failing small and winning big.
• Don’t expect a huge win in the first test. Concept validation is a process, and an inconclusive test is still valuable because of its data.

Conclusion

Concept validation in app development is thus crucial to ensure data-driven decision-making throughout the entire app development process. By A/B testing your way into decisions, you already tap into the minds of your audience early on. A/B testing on Geeklab, for example, is beneficial in that no app needs to be published to be tested, as you are able to create all the app store assets on the Geeklab platform.

Everything starts with extensive market research to help build a strong hypothesis. After that, a campaign can be built followed by the different variations that reflect the hypothesis. The campaign should run for a minimum of 10 days to capture the difference in behavior during the week (and the weekend). Ultimately, you are left with data that is worth analyzing as deeply as possible to be able to notice patterns, trends, and what the audience likes or dislikes.