Tapity — How to build successful iPhone apps

Launching an App

April 2nd, 2011 by Jeremy

It’s Saturday and I’ve been so busy prepping for the Grades 2 launch next week that I forgot that it was my turn to blog on iDevBlogADay. Okay so I do have big announcement to make: assuming Apple approves it on time, Grades 2 will launch this Tuesday! I’ve been preparing for this moment for many months so it is pretty exciting to be so close to the big day.

Maybe it would be helpful to summarize what we’ve done up to this point to pump up our chances for Tuesday being a success. I think our pre-launch marketing efforts can be summed up into three targets: iOS community, PR, and students (the actual target market).

iOS Community

Breaking into the iOS developer community was a big help in the success of Grades 1. Not only did I learn a ton from talking to developers but a lot of developers helped build a lot of buzz for the app when it came out.

So what? Developers aren’t my target market! Yeah, well if the developer community knows what you’re doing, chances are folks at Apple know about you too. New & Noteworthy, anyone?

I’m not suggesting everyone needs to go out and do exactly what I did but I think it may be helpful to see some tangible examples.

Prior to Grades 1…

Started this blog and shared what I was learning about iOS design and marketing. Got a big break when TapTapTap talked it up.
Built a Twitter following the same way.
Engaged in iOS related discussion on Twitter and other developer’s blogs. Also started engaging with Apple employees on Twitter.

Leading up to Grades 2 launch…

Started contributing to UX Magazine.
Contributed to Ken Yarmosh’s awesome O’Reilly book, App Savvy.
Chronicled Grades 2 development in semi-weekly videos.
Posted Grades 2 preview shots on Dribbble and Forrst, garnering lots of feedback and thousands of views overall.
Blogged for iDevBlogADay.
Went to SXSW and got to meet so many awesome iOS designers and developers. In-person is the best by far! Also met some folks from Apple over there.

PR

For PR, the less cold-calling, the better (though cold calling is definitely better than nothing). Best case scenario is that the press already respect you before you pitch anything to them.

Grades 1

Got to know some folks in the press via Twitter and by the time Grades 1 was about to launch, some of them were actually contacting me to write about it.
Did the traditional cold calling – sending emails to all the major press outlets and review sites. Each pitch was custom tailored to the blog it was targeting, at least for all the major blogs. Definitely read their guidelines and don’t make dumb mistakes. I think my pitches tended to be longer than they needed to be. Here’s some tips for pitching review sites. I did win a few reviews via cold calling. The ideal scenario is if you are able to provide them a promo code. If it’s pre-launch you can get promo-codes after Apple approves the app but before you officially release it on the store. Definitely a good idea to allow for a week or so between approval and launch so that you can give out promo codes in time for folks to publish reviews right around your launch.
Allowed MacStories to do a preview/giveaway before the app came out.
Entered a demo video into the AppStar Awards (didn’t win but was a finalist).
Created a pretty website with a signup form.

Grades 2

Reached out to my old press contacts, offering beta access to some of them. That worked pretty well.
Pitched several folks from the press at SXSW – all were positive and will be writing about Grades 2. This was pretty phenomenal. To give you the idea of the scale of their sites, I plan to upgrade from my Hostgator Baby Plan to the highest end dedicated server they have to be sure the site doesn’t go down. I’ll keep the dedicated server until traffic dies down.
I plan to do another round of cold-calling. We made sure to have a nice video ready and I prepared a fairly comprehensive press package with a detailed press document, screenshots, icon images, and various promo images in wide and narrow formats. I wanted to make sure writing a great looking story about Grades 2 is as easy as possible.

Students

Our actual target market. We actually didn’t do much to target students directly with Grades 1, other than starting a Facebook group. Here’s what we’ve been doing for Grades 2:

Making the app free – college students tend to be quite stingy (not to mention high school students) so we think that switching the app to a free+ model (ads, $1 to remove) will help this thing spread virally on college campuses.
Josh started blogging tips for getting better grades with less sweat over on the Grades Blog. He has been able to grow that blog to hundreds of visits per day (which is actually pretty good).
Josh also regularly guest blogs on a number of college related blogs and networks with other blogs on Twitter. A lot of these blogs will be posting about Grades 2 when it launches.
Built a Grades 2 preview video into a Grades 1 update and integrated a MailChimp mailing list subscription feature into the app. Over 200 Grades 1 users have signed up to the mailing list from inside the app!
Josh will be contacting lots of student newspapers to see if they would be interested in reviewing the app.
We built Facebook sharing into the app. Not optimal – it is best to have something to share rather than just a plea to share the app itself. But it’s better than nothing.

Phew. That took longer than I expected. Hope it was useful. Be sure to look out for Grades 2 next week. I’m pumped to see how it all pans out!

Posted in Grades, iPhone App Marketing | 2 Comments »

6:45AM – it is finished

March 29th, 2011 by Jeremy

I am extremely delighted to report that Grades 2 has been submitted to Apple as of 6:45AM this morning. If you want to see me ramble a bit about it you can check out the video I recorded around 6:30 this morning. I didn’t post it inline since I’m not sure everybody wants to see the zombie version of me after coding and testing for I don’t know how many hours, all the way through the night.

Also, last night I gave the Grades icon a refresh which turned out surprisingly decent given the hour of night I designed it (right).

Thanks everyone for all your support. The fun starts next week.

Posted in App Story, Grades, iPhone App Marketing | Comments Off

Free Facebook marketing – did I just strike gold? [Update: Answer = maybe not directly]

March 19th, 2011 by Jeremy

Be sure to read the updates at the bottom…This idea may violate the Facebook TOS but it has sparked some good discussion on alternative ways to do viral marketing.

This post is about an idea I thought up just before heading to SXSW. I’ve told this to a number of people at SXSW and, judging from the response from some of my most respected friends, this may be very, very interesting (someone from the Gaurdian actually shared my idea before I got the chance to).

The idea is this:

1. Release Grades 2 as a free app (no paid version, no lite version – just one app).
2. Place some ads in the app.
3. Allow users to get rid of ads with an in app purchase (maybe $1 or $2).
4. This is the new part: users can also get rid of ads for, say, a month by simply sharing the app on Facebook (which they can easily do right within the app).

1-3 are fairly rare, especially for high quality apps, but I think #4 could really blow this thing up. Some folks don’t hate ads enough to pay to get rid of them but, come on, all I have to do is share this app (which, presumably, I really like any way) on Facebook and the ads will disappear for a generous amount of time? I think a lot of people will go for that.

Say Bob is an average Facebook user and has 130 friends. Bob shares Grades 2 with his friends and goes ad-free for a month. We just lost a month of ad-revenue from Bob but out of those 130 friends I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume at least two of them would download a free, recommended app. So now those 2 new users have the same three choices – use the app with ads, get rid of ads for a dollar, or temporarily get rid of ads by sharing. I either make money from those two users or, if they choose to share, the process continues. Obviously not everybody is going to share the app on Facebook so eventually at some point I’m going to make some money – and probably a lot more than I would have made from just Bob.

This kind of marketing could also be very lasting. I made tons of awesome connections at SXSW so I am pretty sure I’ll have a very big launch but being featured on the top blogs, or even by Apple for that matter, produces big spikes that don’t last too long unless you can manage to stay high on the charts. This Facebook marketing, however, not only has the potential to be viral at the beginning but this kind of marketing has the potential to be very consistent and ongoing and may very well be the key to keeping Grades 2 high on the charts.

Compare that to buying ads or trying to get posters on college campuses. Those things cost tons of money for minimal return. The only cost here is the missed potential revenue from the users who share the app. To me, that is a very small price to pay for the kind of virality this kind of feature might produce. It also has the side benefit of appeasing the folks who hate ads but may not be willing to pay to get rid of them. Win-win all around.

Here’s what I’m thinking it’s gonna look like:

These items all lie beneath the drawer. They are revealed when the user scrolls the drawer all the way up or when the user taps an "x" button located on top of the banner ad.

Speaking of Grades 2, I am aiming to finally submit it to Apple in the next few days so I’ll definitely keep you posted on how the Facebook marketing plays out.

What say you?

UPDATE: it is possible that implementing the following idea might violate the Facebook TOS. Will post another update when I get to the bottom of this (thanks Mogden)…

UDPATE 2: Hello cold water! If you look at Facebook’s page on application integration points, I think we can safely say that the following idea would violate their policy. Bummer. I’m sorry I didn’t look deeper into this before posting. I still think Facebook is a great way to spread your app virally – we just need to find ways to do it that wouldn’t be considered incentivizing.

UPDATE 3: Even though this may violate the Facebook TOS, I’m still glad I posted this because it has sparked some good discussion about ways to encourage viral sharing outside of Facebook.

1. swiftfoxsw mentioned in the comments that Twitter might be an alternative. It is not as ubiquitous as Facebook but definitely may be worth looking into.

2. Cody Fink of MacStories suggested possibly taking this idea into the real world: “Say a friend has Grades, and wants a month free of advertising. He can ask his buddy to download Grades, enter a four digit pin, and both users get Grades for free for one time between those two friends. To get more months for free, you have to ask more friends to download and try grades. I’m thinking like a classic referral code/name model.”

Very good ideas. You might even be able to use the Bump API to skip the whole referral code thing. You bump the phones together and both friends get it free for a month.

3. As a side note, some apps definitely do incentivize Facebook sharing and have gotten away with it. Most prominently, Doodle Jump (according to Ronan) “gives an achievement for posting your score to Facebook.” Also, in the comments Matt Rix says “Head Spin 3D basically does this. A user can get 8 hours of the paid game if they share their scores on Facebook or Twitter.”

Posted in iPhone App Design, iPhone App Marketing | 27 Comments »

Smule Interview

March 13th, 2011 by Jeremy

I was on my way to a highly anticipated session at SXSW when I noticed a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. I winced, looked again, yep it’s Ge Wang – the cofounder of Smule, the company that built my absolute favorite app on the iPhone, Ocarina (which also happens to be one of the most successful apps on the app store, selling millions).

Needless to say I forgot all about my session and spent the next 40 or so minutes with Ge. Talk about fun! He is brilliant and I wanted to share some of our conversation with you so here you go – a shaky, flaky, but nonetheless worthwhile interview with Ge Wang. A thousand thanks to Ge for all his creative insights (he gave me a lot of cool ideas for Grades as well).

Part 1: How Smule started.

Part 2: Ocarina! How Smule took off.

Posted in App Store, iPhone App Design, iPhone App Marketing | Comments Off

The 3 Ingredients of Successful iPhone Apps

March 5th, 2011 by Jeremy

Judging by the response to my recent article for UX Magazine entitled, “10 Surefire ways to Screw Up Your iPhone app“, I figured a lot of folks may also be interested in ways to actually not fail or, in a word, succeed in the App Store. The title of this article is risky, especially coming from a punk 20 year old kid. Presumptuous at best, dubious link-bait at worst. While the link-bait part is true, I don’t presume to know the infallible recipe for success in the App Store. I did, however, start this blog almost two years ago with the express purpose of finding and sharing “how to build successful iPhone apps” so I think it appropriate that my first iDevBlogADay post summarize what I have learned so far. Fair enough? Let’s go.

Success, eh?

What is success? Angry Birds was a success. Camera+, definitely. Yes, it is possible for an indie developer to make a million dollars on the app store — Redlaser is another good example (check out my interview with them) — but it just doesn’t happen that often so we shouldn’t realistically set our expectations that high.

To me, say I put in 300 hours to make an app; I’ll call it a success if I make over $23,000 in the first year.

Big point: that number is substantially less than what I could make doing client work for 300 hours so why is it still a success?

1. I personally don’t really need to make $100-$150/hr (the going contract rate) to live on.

2. Making your own app is a million times funner than making someone else’s. Greater risks. Greater rewards.

3. The non-monetary benefits of making your own app are much greater than making someone else’s because the success of the app is attributed directly to you and not some random company.

Example: Grades didn’t make a million dollars but I made enough to buy a decent used car. Hey, that’s cool but the non-monetary rewards were much greater: getting to write for UX Magazine, being interviewed in an O’Reilly book, getting featured in the Charlotte Observer and on the App Store, running into professors and students at my school who love the app, and multiplying what I can charge for client work.

In a word, street cred. It makes it easier to succeed next time around on a larger scale. What does success mean to you? Please comment.

3 ingredients for success

I’m not going to elaborate here but my formula goes something like this: great idea + exceptional design + make-your-own-splash marketing = success. Not necessarily smash success, but the kind of success we just talked about.

A few words on each.

1. Great Idea

Without a good idea, nothing matters. You fail. A good idea is one that meets a specific and targeted need. It doesn’t have to be for everybody but it has to have either a large target audience or an audience that is willing to pay more for the functionality you provide. Do your research. Don’t enter a competitive market unless you can differentiate significantly on the design and quality of the app. Simple ideas are best. The value has to be apparent in one sentence.

2. Exceptional Design

p.s. The reason I'm using my own app as an example is that I'm too lazy to go out and find better images at the moment

p.s. I use my own app as an example due to laziness.

There are thousands of apps coming out every week. That’s okay. Most of them don’t go the extra mile (or thousand miles) on the design. If you do so, you can stand out. Don’t compromise on this. Be sure you’ve got the design talent. Sweat every detail. Do usability testing. Go beyond usable into the realm of fun, if appropriate. Give your app a personality — the colors, the metaphors, the error messages — it’s these things that make folks fans. And it’s gotta be pretty. Apple won’t feature an ugly app.

3. Make-your-own-splash marketing

You don’t necessarily have to do all the work yourself. If you make your own splash (and you’ve got a great idea and exceptional design), Apple will notice and may very well make you a bigger splash. That’s the goal. But Apple won’t notice you unless you make some waves yourself. The launch is crazy crucial. Apple’s ranking algorithm is based on the past three or four days of downloads. That means that you want all your big boosts concentrated into that first four day period so that you can push your app up the charts before losing momentum. That means that you’ve gotta have a big launch, which means you’ve gotta have a big build-up. As an indie developer you can use Twitter, blog, and attend conferences like SXSW or 360iDev to build connections with other developers and press. These will be crucial for a big launch. Build a fan base with a pre-launch sneak peek website and a massive beta test. Marketing is not something you can push to the end — by then it’s too late. Check out the marketing chapter in App Savvy for some great tips (disclosure: I was a technical reviewer and was interviewed in the same chapter). Given the first two variables, marketing will be easy. If the idea is a dud or the design is lame, no amount of marketing is going to help much.

Doing these three things is REALLY hard. Most apps don’t make it. It’s not impossible though and it’s worth the effort. Also, I wouldn’t say this necessarily applies to games, depending on what you include in the word, “design”. I’ll talk more in detail about these ingredients later. In the mean time, please feel free to disagree and discuss in the comments — maybe we’ll learn something more.

SXSW

So pretty much all the people I’ve ever wanted to meet are going to be in Austin Texas starting Thursday so I’ma go over there with my video camera and pick their brains. I’ve already arranged an interview with one pretty cool Guy after his keynote and I’m lining up some more. All in the spirit of sharing what I learn about building successful iPhone apps and getting you to subscribe to my blog. Right now.

Coming to Austin? @ me on Twitter and maybe we can meet up (and if you’ve got some cool iOS story or advice to share, you might just end up on this blog)!

Posted in App Store, iPhone App Design, iPhone App Marketing | 9 Comments »

Q&A Event with Ken Yarmosh

February 7th, 2011 by Jeremy

Recently, Skookum, the place where Jer works, held a special event. Ken Yarmosh, author of App Savvy, came and answered questions on iPhone app development. Jer served as moderator. The story made it into the Charlotte Observer (you can find the article here).

The great people over at CLT Blog filmed the event. I have embedded the video below.

Posted in Interviews, iPhone App Design, iPhone App Development, iPhone App Marketing, iPhone App News | Comments Off

Thermo

February 3rd, 2011 by Jeremy

Once in a while I am so inspired by a new app that I post it to the blog. Now is such a time, with Robocat’s latest app Thermo – an app that is so beautiful it will make you want to check the temperature outside. It’s an app they’ve been blogging about for a while and now it’s finally on the app store!

Three notes:

Does one thing and does it well

It is very targeted: it’s just for those of us who want to know the temperature outside. A novel thought: compete by providing less features, not more.

Attention to detail

Take a look at the icon (above). As Mike Rundle noted, “A close-up shot of the Thermo app icon really looks like a spherical glass bulb with a scenery reflection. Amazing.” Michael Flarup, you are insanely talented. A message to developers: it’s difficult to find really awesome designers like Michael but you have really got to do your best to find one because design is everything in iPhone apps.

Also, check out the page to select a new location (right). It would have been perfectly usable without the faded Google map but they decided to go beyond usable and delight their users.

That is not to mention the main interface. Just awesome (pic from Giz):

We are mainly talking about visual attention to detail but you can also impress users by including little touches in the user experience that save them work, make things simpler than expected, prove you have thought about them, etc.

I have no doubt that next week we’ll see Thermo in Apple’s coveted “New and Noteworthy” section. This is what you do if you really want to be featured by Apple.

Free + ads -> Paid model

I was really intrigued that Thermo is a free app. I haven’t seen too many really beautiful apps try doing the free+ model (who wants to ruin an awesome interface with ads) but I think Thermo did it in a very clever way. When the ad pops up, just above it there is an “x” that users can tap to get rid of ads buy paying a buck. The app functions great even with ads but the ad covers up the bottom of that beautiful thermometer, giving frequent users just enough motivation to pay that measly buck. They may end up making more money from folks removing the ads then the ads themselves.

In case you haven’t been watching “An App Story”, this is the same model we will be using for Grades 2 so I’m quite interested to see how it pans out for them. By the way, you can check out an interview I did with the Robocats guys a while back over here.

Posted in App Store, iPhone App Design | 1 Comment »

An App Story — Episode 6

February 3rd, 2011 by Jeremy

The Grades 2 beta is finally out. Woohooo! In this episode we talk about an event with Ken Yarmosh, a cool site called Forrst, and our beta testing set up, including how to use TestFlight to take a ton of pain out of the beta testing process.

Posted in App Story, Grades, iPhone App Development, iPhone App Marketing | Comments Off

LAUNCHED: BfA Bible Study

January 31st, 2011 by Jeremy

Today I am happy to announce the launch of a secret project I have been working on for the past few months. It’s a free app called BfA Bible Study and if you are a christian or are interested in the Bible, you should definitely check it out.

Bible Study?

Most of you know me as someone who is passionate about apps but most folks who know me personally know that I care even more about the Bible. Frankly, though, the Bible is a very deep book and is hard to understand so I have been using an excellent study Bible called the Recovery Version with 9000 footnotes and a very readable but accurate translation to help me understand and enjoy the Bible more. I like that the extensive footnotes use other portions of the Bible to explain what the given portion is saying and they have not only helped me study the Bible but they have helped me in my daily life. Take, for example, footnote 1 on Acts 2:21 which thoroughly reveals the very much lost practice of calling on the name of the Lord – something I have found tremendously helpful in my christian life.

I am delighted that a non-profit organization called Bibles for America is giving away the New Testament edition of this study Bible for free. Given how much I have enjoyed the Recovery Version, I felt privileged to volunteer my time to help build Bibles for America’s first app – BfA Bible Study.

Main features

- 120 study units. These range from the doctrinal topics such as “the Triune God” to experiential topics like “Prayer” with some of the best verses and footnotes to help study that topic.
- Bible reading scheduler. Select the books you want to read (i.e. Matthew to Revelation), when you want to finish (i.e. March 2010), and it will set up a portion for you to read each day. Share enlightenment on Facebook.
- Search verses in the Recovery Version by reference or keyword. Since we didn’t have access to the RcV (Recovery Version) text, we are using online.recoveryversion.org and optimizing the text for the iPhone’s screen (thank you webkit).
- Learn how to use the features of the RcV (footnotes, cross-references, etc.) with a Sample Study.
- Order a free Bible straight from the device.

———

Download BfA Bible Study for free

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Cross Platform Development

Some of the new challenges I faced with this app were localization (we launched in English and Spanish) and working within some difficult constraints (i.e. not having access to the actual RcV text). Probably the most interesting issue, though, was the fact that we were simultaneously building the same app for Android as well.

We had to design it in a way where the app would look and behave similarly on both platforms. We also tried to avoid duplicating coding effort… Obviously Java doesn’t jive too well with Objective-C so we ended up coding a lot of the views in local HTML/CSS.

For example, We used HTML/CSS to display the study topics and when the user checks off a study topic, we use HTML5 LocalStorage to save the data so we could not only share the view itself but the storage mechanism as well. I made sure that we were using native code for all the transitions so the app still feels very native (except for the Bible Reading Scheduler since that is a mobile-optimized web app and not tightly integrated). The downside to using webviews and HTML rather than pure Objective-C is that when you load the webview in, even if you use Objective-C for the transition, the webview doesn’t always load in instantly so you are sometimes transitioning into a blank view.

We didn’t use PhoneGap. I’ll be writing more detailed thoughts on this later.

Posted in Announcements, iPhone App Design | 7 Comments »

An App Story — Episode 5

January 19th, 2011 by Jeremy

In this episode we talk about bugs, betas, and the power of Twitter.

Please note: in the video Jer says that hopefully the beta for Grades 2.0 will be ready by the time this video comes out. Now, the video is out but the beta isn’t. We’re working on it. It’s almost there.

Posted in App Story, Grades, iPhone App Design | Comments Off

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