Davide Di Cillo

Analytic tools for your iPhone application sales

UPDATE: since I wrote this post AppFigures managed to add review downloading from all 77 app stores around the world, automatic rank trending from the four major app stores, and show your app’s rank inside both daily and weekly email reports. Good job guys!

I always say that the iPhone applications business is all about downloads, so being able to track your sales is key.
So far I’ve been using three tools to track my sales: AppSales, AppViz and AppFigures. AppSales isn’t developed anymore and they suggest to use AppViz so I won’t even bother reviewing it. Too bad cause it still has few features I wish AppViz and AppFigures had.

Let’s start with AppViz.
AppViz is a desktop application for Mac, it costs $29.95, but after the month of trial i decided it was worth the money. Apple only provides those ugly and unreadable spreadsheet files and I really don’t have time every morning to go thru the to see how much I made in sales. AppViz can download all the reports with just a click, and it organizes the informations in easy-to-read graphs. It also let you download all the reviews, a great way to keep track of your users’ feedbacks.

PRO:

• One click reports download
• Easy-to-ready graphs
• It let you download and track reviews
• Great customer service

CONS:

• $29.95 (it is worth the money but free is always better)
• You can’t directly compare different applications

AppFigures on the other hand is a pretty recent web application, and it’s completely free. AppFigures imports reads the text-file reports that Apple provides developers through iTunes Connet and transforms them into structured data. Reports can be uploaded manually, by syncing with iTunes Connect, or automatically on a daily schedule using Auto Import. While is missing some of the functions that AppViz offers, it has what is my most favorite feature: email reports. Every morning when I wake up I just need to reach my phone and check my emails to see how many sales I made the day before. You can choose between daily and weekly reports, and if you want the stats about all your iPhone applications or only some of them. You can also choose multiple recipients. Pretty damn sweet I’d say.

PRO:

• It’s completely free
• Automatic reports download twice per day (in case the first attempt fail)
• Easy-to-ready graphs
• Email reports (daily or weekly)
• It shows profit by region
• You can compare different applications in the same graph
• Quick response to the community feedback

CONS:

• Sometimes it is buggy and doesn’t handle very well too many applications at the same time

Related posts:
Go big or go free: how to price your iPhone application
Possible revenue streams for iPhone applications
Christmasfy Me: case history of the freemium model on the iPhone
How to build an iPhone application in 20 minutes
iPhone Application Sketch Book Review

Tags: Analytics, Apple, iPhone application

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.