Imagine while driving down a country road you see a cow. It is “gamboling”—playfully skipping about—quite amusing, really. You may point out the window and show your kids.
You drive on.
A few more cows gambole by. You may look on with some interest.
As you drive on you begin to pass herds of hundreds of cows. You stop pointing; you stop looking; your gaze remains steady on the road ahead. Nothing new here.
All of a sudden, however, in the midst of the pleasant mediocrity, you see something odd in the corner of your eye. You can’t believe it. Pulling your car to the side of the road, you get out just to be sure… and yes… it is indeed…
A purple cow.
According to Seth Godin (from whom I borrow the illustration), this field of mediocrity is the state of the modern market in general. It also is the state of the app store.
Hundreds of apps flow into the beautiful country side that is the app store. Some of them are brown and muddy—throw away apps built to make a quick buck. Most of them are black and white. They are good, they are usable, they may even meet a real need (try searching “unit converter” in the app store). They all, however, have one thing in common: they are not remarkable.
If you want to succeed on the app store, your app must be a purple cow, it must be remarkable if it is to stand out among the sea of apps.
Of course, there are plenty of techniques to make your app stand out. Obviously, the name matters, the icon matters, the screenshots matter but those are largely superficial.
When someone starts using your app, do they say “wow”? Would they want to show their friends?
7 Examples
Lets cut the theory. Consider the following apps:
Redlaser uses the iPhones unique features—namely, a decent quality camera and constant connectivity—to revolutionize offline shopping. Its barcode scanning actually works. Remarkable.
OmniFocus gave heavy duty GTD enthusiasts every feature they wanted to fulfill their philosophy. Its not a light weight app and it isn’t particularly fun to use but to GTD enthusiasts, its remarkable. Over 50,000 people have payed $20 for the app.
Things took a different approach. They built an easier and infinitely prettier solution to task management. It was remarkable and both products do extremely well.
Appbox Pro took all the useful 99 cent widgets that were showing up on the app store and bundled them into a single 99 cent app. Remarkable for price and convenience.
The label eReader doesn't do Classics justice
Convert, Classics, and Tapbot’s apps are not only useful but fun to use. Their interactions are remarkable.
Loren Brichter, the developer of Tweetie, realized that a Twitter client for the iPhone has to be crazy fast. He took the time to optimize—not only for speed but for the functions most tweeters use most. He also cleverly integrated with a plethora of useful Twitter services like TwitPic, TwitLonger, etc. to make for an all around remarkable package and a top grossing app on the app store.
Last, and in a completely different realm of remarkable, iSteam was novel. You blow into the microphone to steam up a window, then draw pictures with your fingers and watch the droplets fall (which, droplets you can manipulate by tilting your iPhone). This app, which I would categorize with apps like iFart, is remarkable because it is fun and novel. Trying to make it big on novelty is risky: it doesn’t happen often.
Other than being remarkable, one common denominator for all these apps is incredible success. These apps made it big. I use them to illustrate that there is a world of opportunity on the app store but don’t kid yourself into thinking you can win if your not a purple cow.
Homework:
- Read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow
- Go through some of the top grossing apps and try to identify why each is remarkable (feel free to comment)
- Evaluate how your app-in-the-making could be remarkable.
Extra credit: watch Seth Godin’s talk on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.
I think the 2Do app is a "purple cow"….for one its beautiful, the colors and that stuff look incredible. Two, it works. It's not overly simplified but you can easily get to what you need. I'm glad you tweeted about it the other day. So far its an amazing app to me.
The design certainly stands out. Haven't had time to test it out but I'll take your word for it.
By the way, I emailed Seth Godin to make sure it was okay to post about his idea. He liked the post—awesome!
i totally agree about the purple cow, but it also takes an awful lot of money to get your purple cow into the limelight so hunters can shoot it.
It depends. If you count marketing time as "money", certainly. Almost without exception, you are going to need to spend a lot of time and sometimes money to market your app.
For example, I haven't spent much money in pre-marketing for Grades but I have spent a lot of time building a quality blog, Twitter following, and Facebook page (which are finally beginning to pay off in terms of buzz for my app). Since I am following a hit-based strategy for this app, I plan to spend quite a bit of money (quite a bit for me is less than a thousand dollars) in building a lot of buzz at the beginning, probably with a contest and some other things.
One note, however, is that if you are going for a hit-based app, sustained traditional advertising is probably a waste. It would be almost impossible to get make your money back. So, unless you are making your initial push to get into the top 100, traditional advertising probably isn't worth it (please, prove me wrong). Advertising is more of an option if your selling your app for more than $2.
Another note: the more remarkable your app, the less you will have to prime the pump with a marketing budget because people will market your app for you.
[...] Is Your iPhone App a Purple Cow? What does it take to make your iPhone app or game stand out on the iTunes App Store? [...]
[...] simply wont do anything with it. Don't get disheartened, but ask yourself why. Is your app a purple cow? That is – is your app remarkable in any way, shape or form, or is it one of a dozen apps just [...]
Wow, what an amazing piece of obviousness!
So, Mr. I-want-purple-cows-infront-of-me, in technical terms, how does one create this mystical purple cow?
Here’s a hint: Apple gives you, an icon, a company name, a title, and a consumer review star rating.
Want to know why everything is a black & white cow? Because there is no way to be this mystical purple cow, and if there was, guess what? EVERYBODY would then jump on board to be that purple cow.
How much experience in marketing do you really have? Seriously? My honest bet is nothing, because posts like these are missing one important aspect: HOW.
Every marketing 101 book in the world starts off with “make yourself a new and unique product”. Congrats on coming up with what is already well known knowledge. All the fellow Indie Developers I know already know this, and already understand that you have to be a purple cow.
Guess what though? You don’t get to choose how Apple displays you. You don’t get to choose how consumers will see you either. Although you can do certain things to influence it, the reality is that it is not just dry cut as you make it out to be.
Besides, I don’t see the App Store as Black and White cows… I see the App Store _MUCH_ differently. I see it from the point of view of somebody trying to make money, while you see it from the point of view of a consumer who wants everything for nothing. Know why all those cows are black and white? Because you can’t see beyond 100 of them.
And guess what? Consumers, just like you, are the most common. You are guided to the top 100 cows and you buy into them like pigs to a slaughter. And yet, still, you failed to miss that subtle point that, even if you _ARE_ a purple cow, unless you’re in the top 100 cows, NOBODY, except a hearty few, will EVER, EVER, EVER care to go down the line, go outside of the App Store, and actively search elsewhere. Know why? Because consumers want something for nothing, they don’t care about helping other Indie developers (and shouldn’t be required to anyways), and unless it’s put right in their face by the almighty Apple top-100 list or by a Brand name, you’re basically S C R E W E D.
These posts are beyond all measure of stupid. I’m sorry, but no. You have no idea of what you speak of.
Thanks for your thoughts, Johannes.
I disagree with Johannes. A newbie experience is sometimes much more valuable than marketing guru’s who end up stuck in their own prose.
With regards to going beyond the top 100, I believe content and links in the hyperlink world float up and down and that can mean a lot on the long run. If you are in the App business just to earn a quick buck then the $99 c apps and believing in placement only is the way to go.
See the apple storefront as a real window shopping experience, many users will buy into the new item displayed on the shop windows but there are many others who will find you based on earlier sales or references from other shoppers. I found “fieldrunners” tweeted by someone when searching for top iphone games in Google with the twitter search firefox extension.
Keep up the good work Jeremy, we love your thoughts.
Rama: thanks. I’m certainly no “expert” but I don’t think I claim to be.
As to the top 100, the folks in there are making some serious dough (over a thousand sales a day) but the post I just referenced indicates that you can be making a thousand sales a day outside the top 100 also, which ain’t too bad.
Also, according to a recent report, the app store front is not actually the main way people find out about apps, word of mouth is. This makes it that much more important to be a Purple Cow, something people will talk about. Something can be new and unique but if it is not worth talking about, its not a Purple Cow. All the apps I mentioned are worth talking about. So, the point of this whole post is that you should run your app by this litmus test: is it really something people are going to say wow, and tell their friends. If its not, its going to be a tough sell in this app economy.
I didn’t get into too many specifics about what constitutes a Purple Cow in this post. That is what this whole blog is endeavoring to find out.