As an app development agency, we get clients asking us lots of questions about design decisions. Whilst our 25 years of experience in the industry aids massively with us being able to answer our clients’ queries, often the answers rely on competitor and sector research and mobile-oriented solutions. Clients ask ‘should my app support different languages?’, ‘what device sizes should my app support?’, ‘what OS features should my app be utilising?’ and realistically, the answers are not a one-size-fits-all. App design choices should be specific to the target audience, territory, industry, type of app and more, and usually, being able to make informed, data-backed decisions requires hours upon hours of manual competitor research.
It’s not just the duration that makes manual research so arduous, sometimes the data needed is tricky to obtain. As well as this, often market research is only carried out at the start of a project, instead of monitoring the marketplace to react to what has changed both from your competitors but also the change in technologies, which often evolves at pace. App stores often don’t make it easy to access the information that is needed, so project owners and developers may choose to continue without it.
Upon embarking on a journey to build your own app, you may already have identified which apps you feel you are competing against, but how do you know that those are the only ones doing something similar to you? With 1.8 million apps in the iOS AppStore and 1.6 million in Google Play, it would be naive to assume that you’re aware of all your relevant competition. Finding competitors you didn’t know about is imperative to making sure you are monitoring the right apps and following the right trends.
As a mobile app development company, we always want the best for our clients and that means accurate, in-depth research data. However, the long, strenuous hours put in by our talented developers to get this data felt overly manual, time consuming and not an ideal task for a developer’s skills or an efficient use of their time, especially when working to tight project deadlines.
So - how do we alleviate the problem? Fortunately - solving problems is what we do, so we came up with a solution to help everyone in the mobile development sector, and the solution: Appnalysis.
What does it do?
So, how does Appnalysis work? In short, we are a SaaS product that collects app data from the app stores using our custom in-house algorithms, based on a group of apps of your choosing. This bypasses hours of manual installing and collecting the data manually, removing room for error or missing anything out. Appnalysis is primarily a self-service tool (however we do offer a consultancy service if you prefer something more bespoke), so we have laid out the steps below to illustrate how it would typically be used.
Step 1: As a user, you would choose a group of apps from either iOS or Android app stores with our easy-to-use portal. This can include your own app, if you have one, or maybe you are still in the infancy of your project and just want to choose a group of similar or competitors.
Step 2: Appnalysis then automatically profiles the apps in the group and runs a series of detector algorithms for each app. This is where you avoid having to individually install all the apps and pay for any of the ones that require payment, as you would if you were completing manual research.
Step 3: The information gathered about the apps in the group is then made available via any data visualisation tool supporting ODATA Integration. We have reports for Looker Studio, or this can be viewed in Excel or PowerBI. You can use our free actionable insight templates on Looker Studio to view and analyse the data, or you can make it work for you, allowing a fully customisable set of analytics.
Step 4: Keeping up to date. Appnalysis is not a one-time process. The apps in your group are kept track of, gathering data every time one of them makes a release, so you can stay informed of trends, new features and make informed decisions about your own project.
There are a lot of insights made available by Appnalysis, and we are constantly adding more. Some examples of what we currently make available are:
- Which operating system features does the app use, for example, does the app support the predictive back gestures added in Android 14? Does the app access the calendar? Does it integrate with Apple Pay?
- Store listing information, such as app descriptions, ratings, number of downloads, etc.
- Which device hardware features does the app use, for example, Bluetooth, biometrics, or the camera
- What libraries the app uses
- What operating system version the app supports
- What are most popular devices in different territories, which the app supports
We are adding and evolving our insights available through Appnalysis all the time, striving to offer everything you need to know to make informed design choices for your app development. Our experience with mobile app design at Coderus means we understand what is needed, and why.
Coderus have recently released a video to explain Appnalysis which can be watched here: What is Appnalysis?
Who is it for?
We built Appnalysis for anyone involved in the process of creating a mobile app, be that researchers, developers, analysts, product managers, or even senior management who want to get granular about the app project they are embarking upon. Appnalysis is a great tool for competitor analysis both before and during your mobile app journey, whether that be at the inception, development or maintenance stage. Letting data be the informant of your design choices whilst planning your app is crucial, to make sure you are providing what your target audience want, and not leaving out any features that they can get from your competitors, however it is important not to forget about the part competitor analysis plays in maintaining high standards even when your app build is complete.
Apps are changing and evolving all the time, and with Android and iOS constantly bringing out new OS-specific features that can be utilised by developers to bring new features to the apps, it is important to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing with these. If your main competitor releases a brand new feature that could draw your users over to them, you don’t want to be far behind in implementing a feature that rivals or improves upon theirs, therefore keeping or regaining your users. Or find another technology which your competitors are not using, but this mobile technology is building in popularity watching the trends.
As well as allowing you to make sure you do not fall behind, Appnalysis also helps identify opportunities for USPs. If you are utilising features that none of your competitors currently have, having this knowledge opens up opportunities for marketing angles.
Alongside the above, Appnalysis provides charts for a more generalised overview of the current technology trends being used, to help you make decisions about what you should be considering for your own app. For example - is VR/AR just a fad, or is it getting a large uptake? Are the highest rated apps implementing AI, and if so, how so? With access to data trends across the top apps in each app store, developers and product owners are able to apprehend what is likely to become popular in the near future and put plans in place to implement features so your app stays current and potentially beats your competitors in introducing new features.
How would someone sign up and use Appnalysis?
Currently, users can sign up for a free trial account, to try Appnalysis for themselves. There is tiered pricing which you can see on our pricing page, this explains what each plan has to offer and which one would be right for your business.
Simply visit our website, choose your package and sign up.
Any questions? We’d be more than happy to answer them. Get in touch with us at support@appnalysis.com for more information or to book a call!