Posts Tagged ‘iPhone application’
« Older Entries |Stencils for iPhone developers
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
You can find Dean’s stencil at MobileSketchBook.com.
Tags: iPhone application, Stencils, Tools, Video
Posted in Apple, Design | View Comments
Christmasfy Me: case history of the freemium model on the iPhone
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
As many of you may have noticed, in the last forty days or so I promoted all over the place a simple Christmas application we published called Christmasfy Me. Not only was it a fun application that we wanted to build, but it was also our first experiment with in-app purchasing. Not too long ago, Apple opened the in-app purchase feature to free applications. I personally think this is a great tool for a lot of people to monetize their apps, and at the same time, somehow solve the problem of not being able to release demo and trial versions of their apps.
As promised, I’m going to fully disclose the results I gathered with Christmasfy Me in hopes of helping others to better understand this business model.
The application
Christmasfy Me is an iPhone application that lets you take a picture, or select an existing one from your library, and apply Christmas elements to it. You can then save or share these pictures via email, Twitter, or Facebook. You can view a video of how this application works at www.ChristmasfyMe.com. The application originally came with three unlocked items, we then unlocked an additional three items for a total of six. To unlock the remaining 20 items, the user had to pay $0.99.
Some factors we need to keep in mind
This iPhone application was built and released as a seasonal application; this means that the same kind of application (not necessarily with the same theme) may have totally different results and numbers during other periods of the year. The application was released in a period that is usually notorious for having more downloads that any other period throughout the year: between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Considering that after Christmas the sales dropped considerably, I will only take into account the sales from 11/26/2009 to 12/31/2009.
The numbers
Over a period of 37 days, Christmasfy Me was downloaded a total of 66,623 times. Of those downloads, 32,189 happened in the US while the other 34,434 account for world-wide downloads, mainly in the UK and Italy. In Italy, the application even ranked as the second most downloaded free application in the photography category and about 120th in the overall Top Free chart for a few days. I can’t hide that I was expecting to do better than this. Of course, I’m not unhappy with the results, but everything was timed in order to be included by Apple in their holidays selection and that never happened. Even on its better days, as far as downloads go, the app never ranked better than 500th in the Top Free Apps chart. This says a lot about how many downloads you need to be in the top 100, especially considering the fact that rank and number of downloads don’t usually grow proportionally.
As far as in-app purchases go, we sold a total of 2,193 “upgrades” over the same period. This is actually better than I expected, considering that this was an average conversion rate of 3.29% and, based on the results published by Riptide of their in-app purchase experience, I was expecting something closer to 2.5%. The regional results demonstrate how US customers are more likely to buy in-app content, with an average conversion rate of 4.11%, and accounting for 60.37% of the total of in-app purchases. So, if you decide to build your business on in-app purchases, forget markets like Italy, where the conversion rate was well below 1%, and focus on the US and the UK. Also, If you look at the chart, you’ll notice that conversion rate dropped after December 16th, the day we released a new version where, among other updates, the number of free elements went from three to six.
Conclusions
It might not be the most profitable business model since you need a high number of downloads to make a decent profit, but definitely less than what you would need with ads. More and more powerhouses like ngimoco, Gameloft, and Tapulous are switching to this model with many of their apps. Also, this may allow you to create complex and expensive apps while allowing your customers to pay only for the features they really need (Boxcar docet). The biggest con I found is that a lot of people expect everything to be free to download. I’ve even been accused of “stealing” money because there were only three free elements in the first version. That cost me a bunch of one star ratings in the App store.
I will definitely explore and use this model more in the future. I think there is more that can be done to improve performance and revenue. I’ll be sure to keep you all updated with our results.
Tags: Analytics, Apple, Business, Christmasfy Me, iPhone application, Monetization
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New iTunes App Store design
Friday, December 11th, 2009
I was checking as usual how my apps were doing in the store when I notice that Apple just released a redesign of the application pages in the App Store. I definitely think this is a great improvement and I think it will improve sales for everybody. Here is what’s new:
- They got rid of the huge link to your company name. Nobody was clicking on it to see your apps so it was just a waste of space and it was confusing people.
- Simple horizontal scroll to see the screenshots. This means that if you have a decent size screen you can actually see more than one screenshot at the time.
- Excerpt of the description. Developers will have to make sure that the most important stuff are written in the first part of the description.
- Links to the company site and support page more prominent.
- More importance to the “What’s New in Version…” section.
- An area with the links to few other apps from the same developer. This is great to help cross promotions of your apps. Even after they get old, this is a good way for people to find the.
- This is also helped by a new big “Customers Also Bought” area at the bottom. Of course this won’t help you on your app page, but it will help you when your app will appear on your competitors’ page
Overall I would say this is a great update by Apple, that seems doing a lot of things lately to please users and developers as far as iPhone OS apps.
Tags: App Store, Apple, Applications, iPhone application
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iPhone Application Sketch Book Review
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Links to the mentioned products:
iPhone Application Sketch Book
iPhone Stencil Kit
Tags: Apple, Book, iPhone application, Review
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Get Apps Done gets its app done
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
If you are an iPhone developer and you are looking for new jobs or new clients, now you don’t have to be in front of your computer to do that. We just released the Get Apps Done iPhone application (iTunes link), which will let you browse through all the job listings on GetAppsDone.com. Also, registered users will be able to favorite jobs in order to quickly find them later on their phone or computer.
Tags: Apple, Get Apps Done, iPhone application
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Free Codes for the US State Nicknames app
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Would you like to try one of our latest applications? It’s pretty simple but I think the interface is pretty sleek. Here’s some free codes for you to try it out. If you use one of the codes, please copy and paste the code list in the comments without the one you used, so that people won’t keep trying used codes.
TE6939MXL6L7, 7L3PF6R3Y4Y3, 694NKHAKPL44, 4MFR76P4KXAF, YE3N7997KYA7, RPX7JLXMNMPA, H93NX979X6WP, WMKX66XEEK6T, A3YTANWW9ETF, E66YW647HAKT, P7LHH7WEFHFX, NE9LPPYLPTPW, K69KJXN6KNMF, TKFJWAF49NLY, 66MXM4FKLP7A, 3YN97YEYFK3M, 4WNNRP4MMW3F, XKAJF64YHWL6, 7LTXNH3JPFAP, E6373FX6MPFY, XP74KTFTM97P, PF6PMKK99TXT, E7K7TJF9HLMJ, X7WJAXEEN993, L33HXWAFFF47, M4FHAYTJFLWP, KMJFLR3P7M3A, 9NFM6P64TR4F, NLHM6LP799WR, LF3ENJAHW7A6, R3JNKE73WRMY, RHK3NA4TX3XK, MN7YXLYE64F3, HTPM9HXAWAHT, 776ATYLLRYRT, EPJ9RN9AP4KY, AHHXJ7YWWPLL, W9RA3LHELHFH, PM7TEKRJX3E6, EK9N6KNW9KXM
Link to the app in the iTunes Store
To redeem the code you need to click on the redeem link in the iTunes homepage.
We already submitted an update to correct few little bugs.
Tags: Apple, Flash cards, Game, iPhone application
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What can we learn from Tweetie 2?
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Last Friday, Atebits launched the new version of their popular iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie 2, which in just one day dominated the Top Paid and Top Grossing charts in the App Store. What can we learn from this?
Keep your interface clean and simple.
Tweetie 2′s interface is really clean and simple, almost as if Apple themself may have had a hand in designing it. Everything is easy to access and erroneous clicks are pretty rare.
Offer what users need, not everything.
For sure, Tweetie 2 doesn’t offer as many options as other clients. Twittelator, just to name one, offers a full array of integrations and functions, but this may only serve to confuse a new user.
Keep it open.
On the other hand, Tweetie 2 gives you the option of using whatever service you want for posting pictures and shortening URLs, which is great! Now I can use my own URL shortener, and I’m not forced to use Twittelator in order to use, in my opinion, the best picture service around: Pikchur. Actually, if you want to use Pikchur as well, here’s the API ending point you need to insert in Tweetie: http://api.pikchur.com/tweetie
Create good products and people will throw money at you.
Tweetie was a great product, but Tweetie 2 is even better. And when you create such great products, people won’t mind spending $3 for your application. Of course, that doesn’t come without work. You still need great PR, and you have to ensure that your product gets in front of the right eyes (like that of a Mashable or Techcrunch writer). I must say that this doesn’t happen too often; there are several great applications buried in the App Store, but the best ones hardly stay buried forever.
Tags: iPhone application, Tweetie, Twitter
Posted in Apple, Developing, Marketing | View Comments
Thirtynine’s first flash cards app
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Here’s a quick demo of Thirtynine’s latest application, a flash cards application.
We really wanted to keep it as simple as possible. This is going to be just the first one of a series of educational applications.
Tags: Apple, Applications, Education, iPhone application
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What will change with the new App Store?
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
With the introduction of iTunes 9, Apple also presented a new version of the App Store.
A lot of people complained, for a long time, about the App Store structure, and how it was driving the developers to price their applications as low as possible in order to appear in the top 100 lists, which is the only way to be easily discovered in the store.
I’m uncertain whether or not this change will help solve that specific problem, but Apple added a new chart in the home page, “Top Grossing.” This chart shows pricey apps that did well and cheap apps that did extremely well. Aside from that, the number of apps featured in the App Store’s home page is still the same, and the application categories are relegated in a drop menu – a menu that I didn’t even realize was there until after 10 minutes. My guess is that with this change, the number of visits in the category pages will slightly decrease in favor of the Top 100s from the home page.
Another disparity is that only the apps in the home page top charts can take advantage of the sharing feature to post a link on Facebook and Twitter, while the others are still stuck with only the e-mail sharing feature.
On a positive note, Apple increased the top 100 for each category to top 200, giving visibility to a few more apps (and I’m glad to see that some of my apps may take advantage of that).
The “genius” feature on the iPhone version of the App Store is an interesting concept, but except for gaming, I don’t see a great use for it. It probably will take a while before it will collect enough data to be reliable (for me, it’s suggesting to use Grocery iQ based on Qik and Xbox Achievements based on DukeMobile). Also, it often offers you replacements for apps you already have; what’s the point of suggesting another to-do list? To help me find a better substitute for what I already have? And how are they going to pretend to do that, by offering me apps with a lower average rating than the app I already have?
Do you want the secret to be successful in the store now? Market outside the store, and if you happen to end up in the home page charts, you’ll bank even more than before.
What’s your opinion on the new App Store?
Tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone application, iTunes, Marketing
Posted in Apple | View Comments
Go big or go free: how to price your iPhone application
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
One of the most common questions from new iPhone developers releasing their first application is what price they should sell their application for. Well, my answer is simple: go big or go free.
And here’s why.
If you decide to sell your application, I don’t believe $0.99 is the best price in most cases. Usually, the $0.99 applications are perceived as being simple, not very well done and cheap-looking. Users will question how much time and effort was really put into such a cheap app. Once the user has passed the invisible barrier between free and paid, the difference between $0.99 and $1.99 isn’t a major one for them, but it could be a significant difference for you, the developer.
While going from $0.99 to free may mean going from 100 sales/day to 5,000 downloads/day, going from $1.99 to $0.99 may increase your sales as little as 10%. So, if your app is currently priced at $1.99 and you average 100 sales/day, if you were to go from $1.99 to $0.99 you would earn $77/day instead of $140/day (after Apple has deducted their commission). And, if your application isn’t crappy of poor quality, don’t be afraid to charge even more, you would be surprised by how much money you could be missing out on by not doing it. Don’t get me wrong, I have a few $0.99 applications myself, but it’s because I don’t think they are worth more than that or because that’s the price tag people are generally expecting for those kind of applications.
On the other hand, free applications, if well marketed, can pull huge numbers. My application iShotty was downloaded about 80,000 times because it was free and didn’t cost a dime to try it out; there was no risk involved. Keep in mind that free applications with a good retainer rate can generate significant income from ads.
So, if you want to distribute a very cheap application, give it away for free, and find different revenue streams for it. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to charge what your iPhone app is really worth.
Tags: Apple, Applications, iPhone application, Making money
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