Best ways to think of what niche to target when building an app

TL;DR:

With smartphones now very ubiquitous in today’s era, so are apps. Whether it’s for entertainment, fitness, or texting, there’s an app for everything. Apps target all sorts of niches, from specific age group demographics to all ages. But with the market for most variations of apps highly saturated, how do you determine what’s the best niche to target when you’re building an app?

Essentially, niche is merely a specialized segment of a larger market that in this case, you design an app specifically targeting them by catering to their needs and preferences. Depending on the niche you target, your chances of success can increase noticeably by reducing competition, enhancing user engagement, and improving your app’s discoverability.

Start by examining what is hot right now in the market. You can do this with methods such as looking at the Top 10 apps on the Apple Store or Play Store for the past week or month and identifying any trends in the genre or demographic being targeted. Analyzing consumer behavior changes is also a great way to look for evolving needs in the current-day consumer and what the attributes they’re most looking for right now.

If you’ve decided on the type of app you want to build, study and analyze your competitors and look at the niches they target. Understand their strengths and weaknesses by researching what their current and former users have had to say, and pay particular attention to flaws in the area they point out, and leverage that to get closer to finalizing the ideal niche to target.

Once you’ve collected the data to leverage over competitor apps, create highly detailed user avatars that represent your target audience. Consider factors such as demographics, common interests shared, tastes, preferences, and pain points. Use any publicly available surveys and/or interviews available to better articulate your user avatar. Or better yet, conduct your own surveys and interviews if possible, and use data analytics tools to gather insights on potential users.

After you’ve collected all the relevant data for the niche you intend to target, utilize keyword search tools to identify popular search terms and phrases that they frequently search. Analyze keyword competition and search volume to properly gauge the market demand of your niche.

Dive into reports specifically on the industry of the app you’re building, and read articles from reputable publications that specialize in that industry to deepen your understanding of its specific market dynamics, trends, and forecasts.

Market research provides you with high-quality insights that can help you identify niches with high growth potential and low competition, or even help set all the data you’ve gathered in motion to build your app seamlessly. Think of market research as the foundation upon which you’ll build your app’s success.

It is certainly a big challenge to decide what niche to target and how to make their user experiences feel right at home from the moment they first use your app, but as Alex Hormozi says, the “riches are in the niches,” especially when you can niche it all the way down.