5 Best Ways to Perform Market Research

So your company brainstormed a great idea for a compelling digital venture, delivered as a mobile app, website. Your project team simply needs to code, build, and deploy the applications. This software product easily goes viral leading to massive revenue for your organization. However, things in the real business world rarely work in such a positive fashion.

Simply stated, significant market research needs to happen before you even start crafting the specifications for your applications. After all, no matter how enthralling your final product is, if the market for it remains nonexistent, expect few downloads and/or visits to its website. All the money and other resources spent on developing this digital venture just vanish into the ether.

Ultimately, market research remains as important on a public-facing software project as its specifications, design, and code. If your company short-shrifts any of those items, expect the effort to ultimately result in failure. So let’s look more closely at a few of the best ways to perform market research. Leverage this advice to build something able to attract the attention and revenue your company wants.

Work in The Industry Your Digital Venture Wants to Target

Understanding the business domain your company hopes to target with its app or website remains a great way for researching a target market. Not surprisingly, you gain this level of knowledge and insight from actually working in the relevant business sector. In fact, if observing the operational issues and pain points of this industry inspired your product idea, it informs any subsequent market research. 

If not, consider spending some time working as a consultant for a company in this market sector. Forming your own digital consultancy provides a business structure to explore these potential opportunities. The insights you receive pay dividends in designing something able to truly make an impact in your target market. 

Clearly Identify What Business Problems Your Idea Hopes to Solve 

Part of any market research effort involves clearly determining the business problem your company’s app hopes to solve. Perhaps your idea provides a solution to significantly reduce costs? It might be a significant operational improvement to boost the productivity of a business process. 

Whatever positive impact your digital venture hopes to offer users, market research plays a crucial role in clearly identifying it. It’s another case where relevant business domain knowledge helps your company before crafting specs and writing code. 

Leverage The Lean Startup Software Development Methodology 

Modern software development methodologies focus on constant interaction between project teams and business stakeholders throughout the initiative. At NineTwoThree, we leverage our own bespoke variant of Lean Startup, reversing the original’s main loop into a Learn-Measure-Build concept. Notably, the Learn phase resides at the beginning, allowing us to fully research a potential market before one line of code gets written.

This methodology also uses a minimum viable product (MVP) to put a prototype version of the app into the hands of users within each iteration of a project cycle. This work happens in the Build phase. The Measure phase is used to determine the metrics identifying success when users test the app’s design and functionality. In essence, it provides the means to conduct meaningful research throughout the entire project. 

Use Wisdom Gained From Earlier Projects Targeting a Similar Market 

Maybe another company attempted to build a similar digital venture targeting the same issues in your target market? In this scenario, fully take advantage of this opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes as that other organization. The same concept applies to earlier projects from companies where you previously worked, or even your own digital agency. The latter case provides another great reason for forming your own startup digital studio. 

Any software development process focused on continuous improvement enjoys an opportunity to glean market research from earlier projects. In addition, it also benefits from more efficient code and more effective UX designs. In short, this approach prevents you from mistakenly reinventing the wheel. 

Starting a Digital Venture Studio Provides Exposure to Multiple Industries

We’ve already hinted at it, but let’s reemphasize the fact that starting your own digital venture agency provides many significant benefits when it comes to market research. Most notably, it exposes your employees to a variety of industries. This knowledge informs your market research efforts, helping discover pain points to be solved or inefficient business processes needing optimization, both in other domains. 

Other benefits include giving your developers experience in writing efficient code, designing compelling user interfaces, and interacting with business stakeholders. Don’t forget it also serves as a critical source of revenue, helping you avoid the hassle of raising venture capital. 

If your company needs help turning a great business idea into a compelling modern software product, connect with our team at NineTwoThree. As experts in state of the art software development, we provide the technical know-how and business acumen to help your success. Connect with us soon to discuss your plans for the future and how we can help.