Your Handy Guide to Identify User Problem Areas before Going for Mobile App Development

A customized mobile application has become an integral part of the overall branding strategy for many companies globally. The reason is simple: an enterprise-grade app with a flawless functionality can enhance the company’s reputation online by enabling the management to provide positive brand interactions. But, here is a catch: when it comes to improving customer satisfaction through a mobile app, the business persons need to go the extra mile as the number of apps is surging across the app stores. When an app fails to deliver as per the user’s expectations, it can mar the company’s repute. There, the User Experience (UX) comes into the picture.

It is expected that the number of smartphone users would pass the five billion mark by 2019, In such a scenario, the mobile UX will play a significant role to make your business app a big hit among a huge audience. Therefore, a reputed mobile application development company always keeps the user experience at the center through identifying and resolving the user’s pain points. Here we give some noteworthy tips to define the user’s requirements and their problem areas. But, before that let’s start with the basics: Defining the audience.

Define Your Target Audience

You need to define the audience you want to address prior to hire mobile app developers or consult a mobile app development company. It is the first and foremost aspect to consider to ensure your app’s success. Even if you want to find out the pain points of the users, it is necessary to define the target audience. You can make the app suitable to meet the needs of specific user set after defining the group.

Research, Research, Research

An extensive research is essential to find out the problems faced by the users after determining the audience. Remember, the app users always want a solution to solve their difficulties or problems. Difficulties can be anything ranging from flawed checkout to inconvenient personal banking experience. You need to do research to identify the problems and find out the solution.

Your research can lay a solid foundation for developing a user-centric business app. You can utilize the following techniques to do proper research:

#1  Ask Experts

You can ask business experts or entrepreneurs who have got a mobile app to get more insight. Such insight can help you understand the user’s true requirements along with the necessary things to be done to satisfy the end users. You can also consult a reliable and established mobile app development company.

#2  Examine Existing Products

The study of existing products can help you in two ways: One, you can know the market trends and two, you can find out the solutions that your competitors do not offer. Let us take an example of a food ordering app. Apart from basic features, you can consider integrating GPS and notification features that can inform the users about your specialties as and when they come in the vicinity of your restaurant.

#3  Go to Customers

It is always better to opt for a survey or interviews of the groups of customers. You can find out the user’s requirements through such efforts prior to development and can bring an app better than that of your competitors.

After conducting a large-scale research, you can come up with a better product discovery that can resolve the pain points and frustrations of the users with ease.

Now, we will go through two different aspects of defining and validating the users.

Define Your Users

The user behavior and attitudes matter the most when you opt for developing a customized mobile app. Once you get to know what your potential app users want, you can readily provide them in an app while addressing their difficulties.

Here are a few techniques to read the mind of users:

A) Create User Personas

One of the best ways to find the hidden pain points and reveal truths about the user’s requirements is to create user personas. Such personas are basically users profiles based on the demography, behaviors, needs, and objectives. The user personas help your management get a complete idea of the type of users and their objectives.

You can create the user personas by finding the answers to the following questions:

• What does the user need and expect?
• Which daily needs can be fulfilled by your app?
• What major problem can your product or service address?
• Which pain points can your app resolve?

You need to approach the real app users and create personas by using the data collected from the interview.

B) Map Customer Journey

Your customers should not bounce off during their journey. Therefore, you should track their journey and stay informed about their behaviors. While working on the app idea, you can implement a user-centric strategy on the basis of your customers’ journey and ensure the smooth user experience.

When you map the customer’s journey, you will get an idea of customer experience from the user’s viewpoint. It also helps you improve services and focus on what annoys users. When you study the customer’s behavior carefully, you will be able to take the steps necessary for retaining them on the app, and as a result, you can get the loyal app users.

Both user personas and mapping of the customer journey are important techniques to meet the user’s requirements and address their pain spots effectively. The next step is the user validation.

How to Validate Users

After completing the research on your target audience, it is time to validate all your assumptions. Only the end user can describe their pain points genuinely. Though user personas and mapping of customer journey are highly effective methods to understand the customer’s expectations and requirements, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) strategy is the best technique to cope with their changing demands and expectations. You can improve the final app on the basis of a feedback received on the MVP.

You can either involve an MVP, prototype, mock-up, or all of them together in an alpha or beta test mode. The user can give the feedback during the testing phase and you can readily identify the hiccups while developing an app. In a way, you can get a good understanding of pain points straight from the users. It is also known as UAT (User Acceptance Testing).

UAT can serve the following core objectives:

• Ensure that the app requirements are in line with the business goals
• Identify any bugs or loopholes during the development stage
• Verify the final app before release

Google’s new keyboard for iOS, Gboard, is an epitome of what the research and validation can do to resolve the user’s problems. The Google keyboard can do multitasking thereby eliminating the problem of switching apps to find information and pasting it in the keyboard.

Remember, if a mobile app fails to meet the user’s expectations, users can switch to the app that can do so. As every target audience has specific requirements, you need to focus on the USPs like usefulness, desirability, credibility, and usability to suit every user. After all, the proper redressal of the end user’s problems holds a key to a great user experience.

Wrapping Up

The UX design alone cannot work wonders. You need to identify and resolve the user’s problem areas to make them satisfied. Remember, consumers are in a search of a brand that can meet their requirements, and such brands can expect repeat visits as well as new customers. In brief, as a business person, you need to identify the user’s wants and keep the pace with their ever-changing expectations regarding the UX.

At Solution Analysts, we strive to match the user’s expectations while addressing their difficulties during the entire mobile app development process. Our experienced mobile app developers are expert in providing a pleasant and personalized user experience irrespective of your business model and size.

An engaging and user-friendly app for your business is just a click away! Connect with us to get the excellent, enterprise-grade mobile app in a cost-effective way.