Why Your Mobile App Needs a SWOT Analysis And How To Conduct One

So, you’re currently running a business and just came up with a fresh app idea for your brand. Your first instinct might be to dive deep into market research to define your niche, identify your target, and establish your unique selling point. However, before you begin researching the external app market, it’s important to internally examine your brand.

Why, you ask?

It’s no surprise that the success rate of creating a profitable mobile app is quite low. These odds can be defied by:

• allowing a reputable app development company or mobile app developer in Kuwait to assist in the app development process,
• and by conducting a SWOT analysis to understand your business at its core

Truly understanding your business means exploring and questioning the potentiality and eligibility of your app idea, finding and analyzing issues affecting your brand, and increasing app response by better targeting audiences and market trends.

What is a SWOT Analysis?

SWOT is an abbreviation for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is a core element of any business or strategic plan. Your brand’s strengths and weaknesses are considered its internal factors whereas opportunities and threats are the external factors that affect your business. Basically, a SWOT analysis helps you reflect on what your business is already good at, and what it can improve upon.

A SWOT analysis is not only done at the inception of a new business or before an app is given to mobile app development companies in Kuwait. It can be done even after achieving considerable business milestones or after several app iterations, versions, and updates have been made.

Benefits of Conducting a SWOT Analysis

Although a SWOT analysis is not a problem-solving methodology, it is pivotal for helping businesses identify and analyze their market challenges and create business strategies. It also raises flags on any potential or impending risks that can negatively affect a business. It gives business owners a deeper insight and a unique perspective on their business, helps them exploit emerging opportunities, and eases identification of their key differentiator.

The 4 Factors in a SWOT Analysis

1. Strengths

   This is where you will try to identify your app’s strengths and critical success factors. Once identified, it is important to build upon these strengths and grow your business. It is highly likely that most of your app’s features will fall into the strengths category. Here, it is important to go through your advantages, unique selling proposition (USP), and any unique resources your business possesses. During this initial stage of the SWOT analysis, ask yourself:

   • Are your business advantages conveyed by you and received by users through your mobile app features?
   • What is something your app does exceptionally well?
   • What makes your app unique?
   • Does your app respond well to your business’s assets and resources?
   • What makes your app better than similar existing apps?

   Additionally, you can conduct competitor research to find out your competitors’ strengths. If your business’s strengths are similar to your competitors’ strengths, you should further enhance these strengths through top app development companies in Kuwait and adopt them as indispensable elements to your business.

2. Weaknesses

   Identifying your app’s weaknesses head-on can help avoid future mobile app failures. This is definitely a bold and difficult step, as it requires an unbiased and honest look at your business. When you look closely, you will surely find certain weak points as there is always room for improvement. Your app’s drawbacks usually put you at a disadvantage to your competition. So here too, it might be useful to compare your app features/ideas to your competitors to better identify your weaker points and work on them. Questions you can bring up include:

   • What are some new improvements/enhancements that can be added?
   • Is there any app feature or element you should discard?
   • Are there any complaints or criticisms that your customers bring up?
   • Are there any features/absence of features that are hindering your app’s success?
3. Opportunities

   Opportunites should be focused on once you’ve finished assessing your strengths and weaknesses. This is because only once you are well-acquainted with what you’re doing well and the areas that need improvement, will you be able to transform them into novel opportunities. Maybe you already have a great mobile app feature in place a.k.a your strength, but it can be made even better using a cutting-edge technology. Similarly, perhaps as part of your weaknesses, you’re underutilizing certain trends and technologies, which you can now implement and use to your advantage.

4. Threats

   Threats originate externally or from the environment and include anything that have a negative effect on your business/app. They can be identified by analzing your business environment and taking into account market fluctuations. It may also be useful to keep an eye on how your competitors overcome their own threats. A rule of thumb that will help you get at most threats is to use the PEST analysis, which points out the Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, and Technological changes in your business environment. To get a deeper understanding of surrounding threats, consider:

   • Will your app have any future financing constraints?
   • Are market conditions having a negative effect on your app?
   • Does your app meet current quality standards?
   • Are you approaching the best mobile application developers in Kuwait to keep your app up-to-date with current technologies? Is your app ready for evolving technologies?

Example of a SWOT Analysis

Let’s consider a brief SWOT analysis of a fictitious e-commerce mobile app:

1. Strengths -
   • Same-day delivery
   • High-quality products
   • Large number of drivers
   • Good sales exposure
2. Weaknesses -
   • Costly
   • Lack of alternative payment options
   • Inaccessible to a large demographic
   • Poor SEO
3. Opportunities -
   • Introduce a monthly subscription option or scaled payment arrangement
   • Attract a wider and larger target audience
   • Optimize app for responsiveness
   • Use SEO tactics that drive online traffic and improve online ranking
4. Threats -
   • Costly state laws
   • Increasing data misuse and credit/debit card fraud can create public distrust