“I have a great idea for an app…”
Unfortunately, that’s actually the wrong way to get started.
We’re taught in life that there is such a thing as “a million dollar idea”. We’re told that the if we just build the right thing and put it out there, people will immediately recognize the value of it and buy it. It seems reasonable, but it is just simply wrong. Let’s put this through a rational filter for a moment…
- When was the last time you saw something that was new/awesome and actually bought it?
- How many times did you buy something like that this week?
- How much did you spend on it?
Now, let’s rework those questions a little bit.
- When was the last time you bought something at all?
- How many times did you buy things this week?
- How much did you spend this week on things?
What’s going on there? Well, you buy the things that you buy. Everyone does this and this is how commerce works. The lesson here is that people buy what they want and need, so you should consider providing this as a product developer. Over the course of a week or so, you buy all sorts of mundane things that you need or perceive that you need, and the vast majority of all money is made providing these things. They’re not sexy, but they do sell and people do buy them. Go to Walmart to see how unsexy the products are there, but how many millions of dollars are sold each month in just one store.
The question you should be asking yourself during the process not “Will people buy this?” but “Are people buying this now?” and if they are and they do not have a good option for it in your particular app store, then you’ve got a solid product. Perhaps it means just doing something better than the next guy or just doing better market analysis to position your product higher up in the charts for a popular category.
So, to sum up, the question of “Will people buy this?” is automatically answered if people are already shelling out money for it somewhere else. Knowing what people are buying and how much of it they are buying is the best way to choose a solid product to begin developing. That’s just how it works, even if it’s a little less sexy than “I have a great idea for an app…”
Mark Mason says:
Wow — very illuminating. I am definately of the “killer app” mindset. So tell me, can you tell what is selling in the iPhone app store? Do they publish those numbers?
10th February 2010 at 5:28 pm
shaun says:
@Mark Yes! Apple shares this to some extent.
I should do a post on App Store rankings because there’s quite a lot to talk about. For any search in the app store, the sorting order corresponds to popularity. The app at the top will be the most popular (and therefor highest selling). There is a “long tail” or logarithmic drop off of sales for each position. For example a simple one would be if #1 is 100 sales/day, #2 will typically be 50 of that, #3 <25 , #4, <12.5… etc. and so on. Some drop off faster, some less so, but that’s a good basis to work from.
If you look at the overall categories, each one is its own vertical or business niche. Each search is its own vertical. Find an app you think is selling well, imagine the keywords people may use to search for it, execute those searches and score each app returned in order according to a logarithmic scale to estimate total sales in that vertical.
I’m advising for an app store market research / analytics company that’s playing chess way above this level. Fascinating stuff.
10th February 2010 at 5:50 pm
Andy Richardson says:
Shaun,
You bring up some good points here – which really apply to any business plan. We all want to create something that no one else has dreamed up and that is creative, etc. In reality, many ideas are just built on former good ideas. Many of the successful apps are things that were successful before, just in a different format/ medium.
So, if people are buying a particular app at a competitor’s store that makes it a good business strategy, and one that you should mimic (improve upon)? Or are you saying that if people are buying a solution for a product in a medium *other* than an app, then we should create an app for that? (Or both ideas)?
10th February 2010 at 8:38 pm
shaun says:
@Andy, good to hear from you!
In the broader sense, both are probably correct. The core point here is that if people are buying a solution in general (somewhere!), it is a good starting point for own product. In the case of app stores, if there’s a group of apps that are solving a certain problem and are doing well, you can see what you can add to the space. As with any product, differentiating yourself by adding value is always a good strategy. straight mimicking nothing I’d ever suggest, but raising the bar much higher is always a good idea. Everyone wins except the lazy developer in that game.
So, I’d say look to the apps that are doing well in the store first. That will tell you what’s actually being bought and sold today. After that, there could be other solutions out there that do well to solve the problem that just don’t exist in the store at all too. For example. if no one had built a scientific calculator app, but people obviously buy millions of them, that would be an obvious opportunity. Different market, same solution. I’d look first to the app stores though since it should be the most predictive in this case.
10th February 2010 at 11:47 pm