Innovative Ways to Generate and Steal Mobile App Ideas

Creating an app is both an expression of our self and a reflection of what we see is missing in the world. We find ourselves digging deep into who we are, what we would enjoy working on, and what needs still need to be fulfilled. Generating an app idea for the first time can be extremely daunting. Especially with an endless amount of possibilities such as building a church app.

The uncertainty has always spawned a certain fear inside creators. The fear of creating something no one will enjoy. Spending hundreds of dollars and hours building something which might not bring back any real tangible results. The fear of losing our investment to a poor concept is daunting but not random. But simple app ideas are actually pretty easy to come by.

Great app idea generation is not a gift given to a selected few, instead, it is a process by which any of us are able to carefully explore step by step methods to find our own solution to any problem. Whether you are a seasoned creator or a novice, we have provided a few recommendations to challenge and aid you as you create your next masterpiece.

We will begin by recommending you first explore your own resources, then expand to studying your competition, after which you will conduct a broad analysis of your industry, and lastly we challenge you to expand your vision by exploring industries completely unrelated to your own. All of this will help you come up with creative mobile app ideas.

We hope that by the end of this article you may have a clearer grasp on the idea generation process. So that you may continue to challenge both yourself and those around you to a higher standard of innovation.

If you can get good coming up with new mobile app ideas, you can white label them and generate a profit with the right development company.

Take a Closer Look at Yourself Before Starting App Development

No one knows your company better than you do, well, at least that’s the way it should be. When a company first starts out it is significantly different than the same company 1, 3, or five years later. Employees come and go, strategies have radically shifted to stay relevant, past failures have spawned new opportunities, and success has inspired action. The company you have now may be nowhere close to who it was when it first started.

The first step to generating new mobile app ideas is to first explore who the company has grown to be. Even a simple app idea can be huge. For many companies, this is usually the time they begin to look at their strength and weaknesses. We invite you to look a little further to find out the details of what makes your company unique. Examine your company’s physical appearance, the “brain” otherwise known as the people working for the company, your company’s characteristics, and lastly your pain points.

Is your company’s physical appearance a traditional brick and mortar, a virtual company something in between? More importantly, how important is your company’s physical appearance in relation to how you do business?

Company Type	Characteristics	Strategies
Brick and Mortar	Face-to-face customer interaction	Focus on local market and long-term relationships
Virtual	Globally accessible online presence	Build large email lists and global customer relationships
In-Between	Mobile and adaptable business location	Adapt strategies to changing demographics

Brick and mortar companies have the privilege of interacting face to face with their customers. They get to walk up to one and strike up a friendly conversation and answer any of their questions. Building up a personal relationship feels a bit more natural because the individual is present and you are able to pick up on cues you would have never known online. Such as their preferences, fashion, and lifestyle.

Brick and mortar companies build themselves systems which cater primarily to needs and desires of their local market. Since the majority of their customers are locals, their strategies are tailored towards long term customer acceptance and retention.Much of what they will do is establish relationships with the customers through deep involvement in their personal growth and the growth of the community.

Virtual companies have the privilege of being part of a globally accessed network. They are globally accessible to any customer from around the world through having their own online presence usually in the form of a website, app, blog, or video. Virtual companies are able to build up relationships from around the world and must prepare systems to gather individual customer information.

Virtual companies will usually try to build up a massive email list to stay in an active relationship with all their customers. Having someone’s email means you can share with them relevant content, special deals and ask for a moment of their time to fill out questionnaires or to interview them.

Virtual companies build themselves systems that share value to anyone in the world at any time. Their strategies are focused on growing large followings of targeted customers, encouraging customer-to-customer promotion, partnerships with influencers, and

In-between companies are companies that are on the go. These are companies that are able to mobilize themselves to continuously change their place of business. They enjoy the privilege of switching up where they do business in accordance with their own personal preference and greatest customer potential.

In-between companies build themselves systems to complement their mobility. Since their customers are constantly changing in accordance to their shift in location, they design strategies that will adapt to the changing demographics while still retaining long-term relationships with their clients. A strong online presence with an ever expanding knowledge of local cultures and willingness to adapt to their surroundings will aid this type of business.

After you have examined your company’s “appearance” it is time to look at the brains behind everything you do at your company, your people. The actions your employees take will inherently have their effect on the company’s goals, perception, and process.

Take the time to get to know your employees by getting to know who they are and what characteristics they carry. This will help you understand the company’s culture deeply which plays a major role in what your company will be producing for app development. You will find that each of your employees will see the app creation process from a different perspective and would include major differences in each aspect.

Your employees all play a special role in the company. By including them into the iOS and Android app creation process you open yourself up to a mountain of resources which you could have missed entirely. You will find what your app is missing by interacting with the people that make up every aspect of your business.

Every single one of your employees encounters their own unique challenges and are in one way or another part of the customer experience. Keep them involved and be willing to change according to their feedback. Having a piece of each of your employees will make the app feel like a company-wide ongoing project which not only brings the company together but it affirms that every perspective is being addressed through your app.

Looking into the character of who your company really is will help you determine which ideas match your overall company theme. The character of your company can mostly be defined by the values the company proclaims to stand behind and the actions it actually takes.

Start by taking a look at your mission statement. Truthfully analyze your content, business model, goals, and priorities to see if you really have been staying true to your values. Your customers analyze every single output you produce. Consistency and authenticity through every blog post, email, call, discount, and sale are mandatory. Breaking away from your word breaks the confidence your customers have and may lead to them taking their business elsewhere.

Lastly, examining your own pain points will clear up exactly what areas your app should be hitting. For example, Having a digital presence is critical for businesses of any size, but sometimes a website is too costly and cumbersome for a small business to maintain. Yet, at the same time, if a company decides to leave the website altogether and only focus on social media, such as a Facebook page, then they realize that their options are far too little. might offer too little. LushEnds Salon found a way to reach a middle ground through the use of a simp

le, but very effective, mobile app. The app communicates their location and services, and allows customers to even ask for professional advice.

Some areas you may consider investigating are logistics, deliveries, and customer support. Certain aspects of customer support can easily be covered through instructional videos, and step-by-step knowledge-base documents for common queries, both accessible via your own app. The social media aspect is important here as well.

Questions to ask yourself to generate app ideas:

• Does my company offer solutions specific to being a brick-and-mortar company, virtual company, or on-the-go company?
• What system in my business are customers interacting the most to?
• What type of characteristics do my own employees have?
• Does the culture of the company promote collaboration or is everyone on their own?
• Am I involving my employees in the app creation process?
• Have I asked my employees for their feedback on what they feel should be included in the app?
• What values does the company strive to uphold?
• Is the company living up to its values?
• Will my app align with my mission statement?
• What are the company’s biggest pain poin
  

  Take a Closer Look at Your Customers

  An important step to generating app ideas is to keep an intimate relationship with those you want to serve. As their giver, you want to be aligned to their every need, want, and complaint. You can learn a lot about your customers by watching them (focusing on behavior) and by listening to them. Do your customers want an iPhone app? Do they want an Android app?

  Watch how your customers interact with your product and company. Pay careful to attention to where they spend their time. Map out the path they follow in using your product and through the exploration of your website. Your customers value their time and if they choose to give it to you, you are obviously providing some type of value.

  After you find out where your customers spend their time and how they navigate through your content, begin to talk to them. Do all you can to have conversations with them so you can know exactly how they feel about your product and business. Send them questioners, try to schedule calls, and create systems within your website and your app to always allow your customers to send you suggestions so you know exactly what to pursue next.

  Another way to go about it is to start a database with each of your customers having their own file. If you’re not in the habit of keeping a written record of customer queries and complaints, start doing so now – this will help you easily identify what the most common pain points are, and find ways of solving them.

  Platform	Features and Services	Convenience
  Online Banking	Identical to Banking App	Access via computer
  Banking App	Identical to Online Banking	Faster and simpler on mobile

  Convenience itself doesn’t necessarily address a serious pain point, but having the information accessible via an app does put you closer to your customers. Spice Bistro & Bar, like most restaurants, have certain menu items that change on a daily basis. This information is now available through their app, but more importantly, customers can select to have this sent through daily via a push notification; meaning they are able to reach their customers even if they don’t open the app daily.

  Questions to ask yourself:

  • What systems do I have in place to foster a relationship with my customer?
  • How are customers interacting with my products?
  • Where are customers spending most of their time in my business? Doing what?
  • What do I know about my customer?
  • What do your customers love/hate about your business?
  • What information am I pushing out to my customers?
  • How often do customers have to contact me, and what for?
  • Have I created a customer database?
  • Does each of my paid customers have their own profile?

  Take a Closer Look at Your Business Plan

  Your business plan is the roadmap of your business. It stands as the foundation on which you build every intricate piece that ultimately makes up your business. Within your plan, focus on revisiting your initial short term and long term goals, strategies for future growth, and mission/vision statements. Work through these in conjunction with some of the points raised above to identify any goals that could be achieved, or aided, through the use of apps.

  As you look over your past goals you will have noticed that you have modern solutions to many of your past problems. Use your current knowledge of the world to find new solutions to achieving your short term and long term plans for app ideas. Look for ways to incorporate many of these solutions with the creation of a mobile app. What types of features, design, and support would your new app need to help you achieve your organizational goals?

  Questions to ask:

  • What are my short term and long term goals?
  • Have I accomplished any goals since the start of my business?
  • Are there goals I can accomplish now with modern technology/ best practices?
  • Which function of my business will my app amplify?
  • Will the app allow customers to submit any of their questions/ concerns?

  Take a Closer Look at Your Marketing

  Marketing is the only function within a business that will continue to foster growth and create new sources of revenue. Everything from your sales team, promotions, advertisements, profit models, and partnerships are affected by the decisions you make in your marketing division. Generating a mobile app idea requires a careful look at your current marketing processes and examining whether there are sections which can be transformed into an app or if the app needs to have certain sections to fill in any holes or complement the customer experience.

  Marketing is always one of the most challenging processes of a business; there are a myriad of variables to consider, and very few constants. Which is why it is also the ideal process to develop an app around.

  Look at where you spend the largest amount of your marketing budget, and investigate how this could be reduced by shifting some of the activity to an app. These may include:

  • Seasonal catalogues. Promote a digital catalogue in the printed catalogue, but also reduce the number of copies you print.
  • Loyalty programs/cards. Gradually moving your loyalty program to an app can almost eliminate the need for any printed marketing material relating to the program.

  An added benefit to shifting some of your marketing to an app is that you could end up reaching a far wider audience than you currently do. Remember you are not simply looking to reduce your marketing spend, you are looking to spend it more effectively. Even if you spend less, your return on investment (ROI) should be the same, or better.

  Questions to ask:

  • Is there a clear line for any division to give ideas to the marketing team?
  • What aspect of my business can I shift over to the mobile app?
  • Will the mobile app be helping me generate new sources of revenue?
  • Will the mobile app help fulfill the company’s goals?

  Take a Closer Look at Your Industry for Creative App Ideas

  The industry you are in is constantly evolving to fit the needs and wants of its target market. The strategies you are using now will not be as effective in a few months or even in a year. Generating ideas are as continuous as the pursuit of staying up to date with the trends. Trending app ideas should reflect the current belief and expectations of your target market.

  Nowadays, finding out the latest trends is as simple as opening up your browser and reading from a dozen analytics tools, blog post, and expert predictions. Information is abundant, the only limit is our willingness to implement the strategies we find.

  There is such an overload of information that choosing which trend or strategy to follow can be overwhelming and even paralyzing. After all, not every trend or strategy is going to apply directly to your target market. While some choose to take a blind guess and just change with high hopes of success. We have found a few tools that will aid you in making a close and calculated decision.

  Websites such as Springwise, Trendwatching, Inc. and even Entrepreneur are great for discovering ideas and trends, but because they often cover global trends, it can be difficult to judge what impact they will have on your own business or market. Instead of blindly following every trend that seems remotely applicable, set up a Google Alert for any that might affect you – this will allow you to see how frequently the trend is mentioned (especially by other industry leaders), and possibly highlight how other businesses are adapting to the trend.

  Websites to explore:

  • Springwise
  • Trendwatching
  • Inc
  • Entrepreneur
  • Google Trends
  • Alltop
  • A garden can be a safe haven for some, a wise teacher for others, and a source of beauty for many. Gardens express the creative soul of its creator. They each tell their own story and carry in them fragile life. This app gives anyone the tools they need to tell their own11) Battery Optimizer App Idea

    It’s 6pm, you’re leaving work and you look at your phone only to see it’s out of battery already. The day is only part done and you have to worry about getting your phone charged for the rest of the evening. A very real problem for millions of people around the world. With the shift to more feature rich smart phones, the one thing that has unfortunately stayed the same is the size of the smartphone battery. The Battery Optimizer app would aim to track battery usage across a variety of measures: by application, by services running on the phone and by actions taken. Then the app would be able to make recommendations like shutting off Bluetooth from 9:30am till 4:30pm as it is often left on, but unused. A way to give “smart” suggestions to optimize battery usage, or just allow the app to handle the optimization automatically for the best battery life possible. You can use this as an Android app or iOS app.

    Feature	Android App	iOS App
    Battery Usage Tracking	Yes	Yes
    Smart Suggestions	Yes	Yes
    Automatic Optimization	Yes	Yes

    12) Gifts For Friends (Based on Data) App Idea

    Finding the perfect gift for anyone is hard. You’ll often spend hours looking for the perfect gift, buy something and still have disappointment. We put out so much data on the internet about our lives, likes, dislikes and more. This app would make use of the data your friends put on Facebook and the internet to build a profile of who they are, what they like, and what their perfect gift would be. If there is mass adoption, tying in Google’s profiling data would make it even more accurate. The end result is a 3-tap experience from opening the app, to picking a friend and getting recommendations on what to buy for them based on the occasion.

    13) Tinder For Recipes Mobile Application

    People are often spoilt for choice and without a finite amount of choices, it’s hard for them to make decisions. This app would aim to give each user 5 to 10 recipe recommendations to choose from each day or for each meal, based on their preferences. The premise is that the user would continue to see recommendations until they swipe “yes” on a recommendation. That way it’s a simple choice. An extension of this can be to focus on specific objectives or dietary goals (ie. eating healthier or eating a paleo diet). A more advanced version of this app could leverage machine learning to gain a deeper insight of the user’s food preferences.

    14) Smart Video & Content Recommendations App Idea

    There’s a lot of companies out there aggregating data about each and every one of us. Some have that data openly accessible to understand how they categorize us. The aim of this app would be to capitalize on those profiles, along with further profiling through a series of like/dislike questions, to determine the best content to deliver to that person. Think of it as a simple best of _____ delivery: top 3 videos from the web today, top 3 news articles and so on.

    15) Chatroulette For Studying Students App Idea

    Exam time is rolling around and students are scrambling to form study groups and gain the benefit of shared knowledge. Often times there is a disconnect on this end that results in many students not being able to connect with others to study. The aim of this app is to bridge the gap and make study group creation easy and potentially virtual. A student can open the app, enter in their info of what class and subject they want help with. From there they’re matched with others on the same campus or in different schools who have the same need. They can choose set times to meet online and leverage a framework given by the app to help them study in the most efficient way.

    16) Home Cooked Meal Delivery App

    With the rise in easily accessible food, there’s a large chunk of the population that doesn’t know how to cook, let alone cook healthy food. The concept of a “home cooked meal” is extremely foreign to a large majority of the population. The premise of this idea is to make home made food available on demand with a delivery app. You’d be able to open the delivery app, find people who are ready to make you a home cooked meal in your area, and order through the app with a set time delivery. A simple marketplace styled app. In addition to a food delivery app, you can potentially add a feature for a food donation app. Restaurants and people can donate unused food to those in need.

    17) All In One Dashboard

    The average business owner has to check at least half a dozen dashboards on a daily basis to see the status of his or her business. This results in dozens of wasted hours every month checking information that could be more readily available. Most business owners are on the go a lot, even within their own office. The aim of this app is to provide them with an easy solution that connects to where their data is currently, to aggregate that data into one easy to access place on their smartphone or tablet. The end result saves them more than half of the time spent every month by just making their data easier to access. An expansion could include inferences, suggestions or recommendations based on that data to save them even more time in their business. App developers can easily create this functionality.

    18) Proximity Based File Sharing Mobile Application

    You’re out with friends, taking pictures from your evening together and now each of you has a dozen pictures to share with the other. Your only option is to waste hundreds of megabytes of data (this could be $10+ in data depending on where you live) to transfer the pictures while you’re all still together, or hope everyone remembers and sends around the pictures when they get home later (this rarely happens). This app aims to eliminate the need for data wastage or the possibility of people forgetting by leveraging the multiple data transfer channels available within smartphones. It would allows groups of people to send data through multiple channels (Bluetooth, WiFi, etc) in the same way AirDrop allows proximity based sharing over WiFi. That way data can be sent locally, without the need for costly data transfer. The main element here would be an easier way to have this data transfer occur.

    19) Real Time Voice Translation Application Idea

    You go on vacation, things are going smoothly and you decide to hop into a local restaurant to get some food, try things “off the beaten path”. You’re faced with a a giant wall, the language barrier. You are able to get by with Google Translate and the limited text translation it provides, but even then it’s not a smooth interaction. With the shift to a more connected global community, there is also a big uptick in travel. Travel to countries where many expect to “get by” with their common language. While it has become easier with a large chunk of the population speaking some level of English, there is still a big gap in translation tools. Google Translate is one of the most advanced out there, but even Google Translate struggled with languages in the Eastern world and it has yet to move into real time or semi-real time translation. The aim of this artificial intelligence mobile app would be to provide semi-real time or even real time language translation in the major business countries of the world. A thorough need for the enterprise sector. Such an app that gives you the ability to translate English into Mandarin and Mandarin back into English is often done through translators in the enterprise world, and that

    Conclusion

    Simple app ideas are highly effective. This is the first step to consider prior to hiring a development company or starting a mobile app development project. Whether you’re a mobile app development company looking for inspiration or you’re an entrepreneur seeking app ideas for startups, this guide should give you plenty of inspiration.

    Approach	Action
    Customer Relationships	We built relationships with our customers to know the exact needs of the people we are aiming to serve.
    Business Plan Review	We looked back at our business plan to see if we could solve our past goals and if we stayed true to our values.
    Marketing Channels	We opened up channels between our marketing team to allow a smooth transition of app ideas refined our marketing process.
    Industry Trends	We examined tools to help us stay up to date with the latest trends in our industry.
    Competitor Analysis	We analyzed competitors and used their creations as a platform for our own ingenuity.
    Cross-Industry Learning	We jumped head first into other industries to learn their best practices and then morphed those concepts back into our own business.

    We hope this article has given you a clearer grasp of the idea generating process. There is no singular way to create mobile app ideas, instead, there is a process that wonderfully comes together and which can be carefully explored in every aspect of your business.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the best way to generate mobile app ideas?

    There is no single best way; it involves a process of exploration and understanding your business needs.

    How can I ensure my app idea is unique?

    Research the market thoroughly and identify gaps or areas for improvement in existing apps.

    What tools can help in brainstorming app ideas?

    Tools like mind mapping software, brainstorming apps, and collaboration platforms can be very helpful.

    How important is user feedback in the idea generation process?

    User feedback is crucial as it provides insights into what users need and want from an app.

    Can I generate app ideas without technical knowledge?

    Yes, focusing on solving problems and understanding user needs can lead to great app ideas, even without technical expertise.