Defining your Apps Competitive Advantages

In our last post, we discussed how to choose what type of app to develop as you begin your #appreneur journey. Once you have picked an app to develop, how do you research your competitors and separate your app by providing competitive features?

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it. – Walt Disney

Do a Little Competitive Snooping

To build a better app, you need to objectively analyze the competition and understand their strengths and weaknesses. You can do that by visiting their website, downloading a free trial of the product, and in some cases, purchasing their product to see how well their paid products work.

By downloading a trial, you get to see several things. You get an inside view as to how they manage their prospects. They will send you emails during your trial, they may even call you to nudge you to buy. You can also determine how much help they provide as you are learning their product, determine how easy their product is to use, and you can see things you like and dislike about  their product.

Create a Competitive Matrix

Once you fully understand your competition’s features, create a matrix so that you can more easily see who has competitive features.  It might look similar to this for each competitor:

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Define your Features

Once you understand your competitors, you can define your features. Here is how we defined this for our product:

aMemoryJog allows tech savvy consumers that own a computer, phone or tablet to keep their easily forgotten information accessible at their fingertips. This includes passwords, account information, frequent flyer details, and an endless list of other critical info. The benefit is that this hard-to-remember information no longer has to be remembered – they can find it in seconds.

Features of aMemoryJog will include:

  • The ability to enter personal information separated by easy-to-set up categories and personal data attributes, and a large notes section to enter more detailed information
  • Automatic cloud backups and encryption of all stored information
  • The ability to access websites with a single click and single click copy userid / passwords
  • The ability to restore a deleted entry from the recycle bin
  • The ability to quickly find information by searching by keyword and by automatically showing recent items.
  • Localized language support for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
  • Friendly password generator that uses real words instead of hard to remember letters.

Our competitive advantages are:

  • More stylish and user friendly interface than competitors
  • Lean, value added features without feature bloat
  • Recycle bin that allows restoring of deleted items
  • Simpler import feature than our competitors (web edition)
  • Simple to use, easier data entry than our competitors, less options to configure
  • Multiple language support (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian)
  • Friendly password generator that uses real words instead of hard to remember letters.

Related article: How to Build a Product Website for your App

Conclusion

We now understand our competitor’s strengths and weaknesses and have defined our feature set to provide our own set of competitive advantages.  We are now progressing in the development of our business plan. In our next blog, we will begin to discuss the  financial viability of your app and how to forecast costs and revenue.

Shameless Plug

The app I am creating is slated for production in the App Store around July or August 2014. However, the web edition is already available at http://www.aMemoryJog.com. Once the app is done, it will seamlessly sync with the web version. Download a free trial and check it out!

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  1. Pingback: Putting the final touches on the Business Plan | 2 Hour Appreneur

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