Cryptocurrency App Market Research Walkthrough

How do you look for new, upcoming trends? Here’s a walkthrough on how I identify hot trends and do market research.

1. Google Trends

The first step in market research or trend identification is going to Google Trends. See or extrapolate. Is this a flash in the pan? Why is this trend happening?
A hot trend now is cryptocurrency- bitcoin, ethereum. These are digital currencies.
Go to Google Trends and type “bitcoin.” There’s a 5-year window. See the big spike in demand that mirrors the price of Bitcoin. Then recently the price of Bitcoin and all these currencies just exploded and also the search traffic because people are making millions of dollars by just investing.
Then type “ethereum” and also “cryptocurrency.”
Here’s a clear trend driven by people wanting to make money.
As the price goes down fewer people are interested. As it goes up more people are interested. But overall, the whole premise of cryptocurrencies is slowly increasing, which means people are interested in what’s going on with the business and the different coins.
The first step in market research is about the users. Who am I building this app for? Here I see two kinds of people. First is the opportunity seeker and the second is the investor type.

2. Related queries

Go to Related Queries where you get some ideas for search terms. This gives you insights into people. Who are the people? What are they looking for with these things?
You learn about where they’re coming from, what countries, what continents, and all other stuff.
You can add in new search terms, a different time period and do one country if you want.

3. Read the news

When you read the news every day, you see the best possible trend indicators imaginable.

4. Go to the App Store

In the App Store, I research mostly paid apps because it cuts out a lot of the people who are just trying to get the low-hanging fruit.
Type and click on Bitcoin and see the different apps being produced right now. There’s Blockchain where you store your digital currency, like having your own bank.

5. Check the app website

Go check out who Blockchain is by going to their website. While it’s probably pretty hard to compete with them, this looks like a very clear market demand.

6. Check customer reviews

Back in the App Store, go to Customer Reviews. Click on All Versions, then go to Most Critical. Look at the 2 and 3-star reviews. 1-star reviews are those people who are really emotionally pissed off. 2 or 3 stars is where you get not only bug problems but some actual feedback. You could potentially make a better product if you went through all these.

7. Who is this catering to?

Then go back to the original research. Who is this catering to?

8. Look at the categories and similar industries

I type “ethereum.” The first few apps are all in the finance category. So click on Finance. Make sure that some of these apps are actually mildly popular.
Now go back to the free side. The first 30-50 are always big companies, so I start the search around 50.
Going to Top Grossing, I would look at what else is doing really well that is in a similar industry like forex or stock trading.
Through these charts, I see there’s a massive demand for people who want to make money because they are making money. A majority of their transactions are either on mobile web or on desktop. Not on iOS apps because a lot of the traffic is not translated into the App Store.
There’s a lot of people who are interested, but not a lot of apps.

9. Go through the app reviews to see what people liked

Looking at Crypto Pro, this tells me that people care about Bitcoin tickers and prices. They probably check the price often. So when I’m creating the avatar of these people, I realize they’re interested in making a lot of money, and probably interested in seeing the price of different coins in a very fast and well laid-out way.
Going back to Finance, type “ethereum.” There’s Blockfolio, a popular portfolio tracker app.
We see that people are interested in making money and in getting the price often. That they’re going to be tracking prices across multiple coins. So they’re not just buying Bitcoin, but also Ethereum, Manero, Dash, ZCash, Factom and all the other coins and they want to keep track of them.
These people are interested in opportunities, in finance, in anything that has a lot of volatility and a lot of change.
When you research, look at the data and the apps but think about the people. Think about the psychology.

10. Join groups and start building relationships

In Facebook groups, ask people what apps they’re using, what they wish was out there, what you can provide. Give value. And then you turn around and maybe you can get a really great deal and turn it into something meaningful for others.
I just want to make sure that when you do market research, you’re really thinking about the people. That’s how you’ll make big money in the app business. You build apps that people want and you continue to serve them. And you do it in a way where the monetization is rock-solid. You only get that if you know who they are and keep that relationship alive.