In order to design an effective transportation app, it was important that I conduct vast amounts of competitive research. This will help me understand the market and the existing competition. Through this, I can learn about the different features and services offered by competing apps, and use this information to improve my own product. Conducting analysis allows me to identify opportunities for differentiation. By understanding what other apps are lacking, I can focus on building features and services that set my app apart from the competition.
I decided to Analyse direct competitors and compare their products. This helped me to understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify opportunities for differentiation and improvement.
By analysing direct competitors I can learn about their target audience, pricing, marketing strategies, and the features and benefits of their products. I can then use this information used to inform the development of my own product.
As I am developing a transport app for Northern Ireland, I will research and compare other transport apps that are available in the same region. However, many great transportation apps are not available in Northern Ireland and so I will need to investigate a few products from Europe as well. Conducting this research allowed me to understand what features and services are already being offered, and identify any gaps or opportunities in the market.
I began my competitive research by analysing my competitor's customer reviews. This enabled me to gather valuable information from their users and understand what their frustrations were. I could then use this information to make informed decisions about my app and what I should consider in its development.
Translink is Northern Ireland's leading public transport provider and so analysing the company as a whole seemed appropriate to understand what people thought about them overall. From reading reviews and articles, the overall consensus for Translink was negative. A lot of people consider Translink services unreliable and expensive. Translink provides two apps for customers in order to use their services, The mlink app, and the Translink journey planner app. The mlink app is primarily used for purchasing tickets whilst the journey planner is for planning journeys. From research, people are confused why these two apps are not combined into one.
As my transport app is for other public transport services, not just buses and trains, I conducted research into taxis and ride-sourcing services also. There were similar reviews for these services with the main concern being that it is difficult to pre-book taxis and unreliability.
Reading and understanding these customer reviews has provided me with valuable insights into how users are interacting with different products, and any pain points or frustrations they are experiencing.
After identifying the issues and opportunities of these apps, I decided to categorise the customer review findings into categories such as usability, functionality, service, transparency, and outdated to identify trends and insights that can inform the design and development of my app.
By looking at the customer feedback in each category, I can identify common issues or pain points that users are experiencing with competitor apps. This can help me prioritize and design for these issues in my own app.
