Interesting stat ahead: The mobile application market was valued at USD 252.89 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3% from 2024 to 2030. These are a bunch of numbers, nothing special or interesting at a glance.
But imagine them as a bustling city.
This city in 2023 was thriving with new businesses, opportunities, and innovation. With steady growth of 14.3% each year, the city is rapidly building new skyscrapers and parks, attracting more residents. By 2030, the city will be nearly twice its size, offering more possibilities to thrive.
Just like that city, the mobile app market is expanding, driven by various industries like gaming, healthcare, entertainment, social networking, and e-commerce.
What’s the common thread connecting all these fields I hear you asking?
It’s Mobile App Scraping – critical for pulling insights from the depths of Big Data that each of these sectors generates.
The Mobile Application Market
From the above section, we have learned that the mobile application market is soaring and that different industries are driving it. You probably also know that the App Store for iOS and Play Store for Android are the popular platforms for downloading mobile apps.
But with the rising opportunities to step up and grow in the mobile apps market, many challenges tag along. The main one is massive competition.
Did you know that there are more than 2 million apps in the app store? All of them are struggling to maintain their visibility, desperately trying to increase downloads and retain users. They are always improving their UI/UX, content, speed, etc in hopes of keeping their users hooked and spend more time on the app.
Although many have no idea about this, a few know that there’s a solution to help navigate this uncertainty. That solution is utilizing publicly available data from the app store and from the mobile app itself.
Then, gleaning insights from that data to refine their strategies like app store optimization (ASO) for more visibility, user engagement, retention, overall increase in downloads, and brand recognition.
But, manual data collection is nearly impossible and back-breaking as millions of data points cannot be Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V’d. Even if you use a tool or Python library yourself, there are multiple anti-scraping hurdles you need to bypass like Captcha, honeypots, IP blocks, and more.
So, for your data request, there exists one of the best solutions out there that delivers quality data at scale. An external data provider like Grepsr with over a decade of experience in data extraction and top expertise in app scraping.
The Blind Spots
There are many blind spots that you can often miss which prevents you from accessing comprehensive data.
Say you’re a solo entrepreneur/app developer who has recently launched a health and fitness app. If you only track metrics like no. of downloads and average user ratings then you will never know the real audience perception towards the app.
You will never know how the users truly interact with the app for comprehensive insight. To avoid that situation, you must monitor the user reviews and feedback in real-time to utilize the insights, then only it can lead to change.
However, this is quite time-consuming and difficult to do at scale.
Another blind spot emerges in staying up-to-date with the market and competitor trends. The app store and your competitors frequently announce updates, add new features, and adjust their marketing strategies to attract more audiences.
Now, if you lack critical information on what your competitors are doing and what new trends are up and coming in your app market niche, missing out on competitive opportunities to extend your user base is inevitable.
Missing Out on a Competitive Advantage
While your competitors leverage user feedback, ratings, and ranking trends to refine their strategies, are you stuck guessing?
There are more opportunities that you can miss out on when you don’t have access to high-quality app data such as making improvements in your product.
Now, because you missed staying relevant with the market trends, user experience feedback, and updates on your competitors’ moves, you could end up fixating on the wrong things instead of the crucial matters.
For instance, as per the user feedback, your health and fitness app may need improvement in the exercise reps for each individual based on their BMI. However, you might fixate on increasing your user base and optimizing your app aiming for more downloads. This can lead to higher churn rates and pose a huge risk for user retention. You could also fall behind on prompt responses to your disgruntled customer’s feedback.
Similarly, marketing an app without a clear understanding of the user needs and market trends is like shooting in the dark. Can you imagine how you could position the app without any knowledge of what’s lacking in the existing market, where you can jump in, and what problem you can solve for the target audience?
The ranking also plays a big role in missed opportunities as the higher your app is listed in the app store, the more chances of downloads. Without quality data into competitor keywords, effective app store optimization (ASO) is also going to be a challenge. It’s because competitor keyword analysis and reviews analysis for ASO insights help boost app rankings.
App Scraping for Real-Time Insights
Do you know what could help you tackle these blind spots? That’s right, it’s app scraping.
Mobile app data scraping is the process of collecting valuable information from mobile applications in the form of raw data which can later be turned into meaningful insights. Various data points such as user reviews, ratings, pricing models, user demographics, app content, media, metadata, keywords, ranking, etc are critical for deriving multiple insights.
The extraction of ratings and review data in real-time provides insight into user sentiments like common complaints and areas for improvement. App metadata extraction is crucial for ASO and competitive analysis as it helps in understanding how the competitors position their apps.
Plus, by scraping the app store results, you can identify which keywords the competitors rank for and among them, which one can you use to refine your App Store Optimization strategy.
Then, tracking the estimated downloads over time reveals when the app has gained popularity, seasonal trends, or as the result of a specific marketing campaign.
Key Benefits of Mobile App Scraping
Improvement of ASO strategy: By analyzing high-ranking competitors’ keywords and descriptions, you can refine your own ASO strategies.
Product Enhancement: User reviews provide actionable insights that the development team can improve. Such as features in the app that are the most preferred, issues that arise the most, and the addition or omission of a feature. All to enhance user satisfaction and retention.
Competitive Analysis: App scraping enables continuous tracking of competitor updates, giving you an early heads-up on strategic moves. To that, you can respond in your own app and stay two steps ahead.
Market Research: App scraping helps you figure out which types of apps, features, and user experiences are trending. With that information, you can tailor marketing strategies, improve app features, and predict user needs.
Grepsr’s expertise in app scraping can be the partner that helps you harness these insights and establish your place in the mobile app market. Start your app scraping journey today!
