What app developers must do to stay ahead of competition (thenextweb.com)

David Noy is CMO of Ginger Software, a language learning and productivity boosting software for ESL and native English speakers.

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Running a successful software startup is a challenging prospect, requiring constant attention to shifts in technology, industry trends, and user commentary.

Common mistakes such as rushing into early deployment before your product is ready are tempting and often costly. Proper timing when it comes to releases is crucial, and for software startups, remaining ahead of the competition — and fully satisfying your customer base — requires the constant release of new versions of your product or software.

So how do you produce updated and innovative releases of your product to maintain your place in the market — and do so effectively?

Keep pace with current technology

One of the biggest challenges for software companies is the constantly advancing state of both hardware and operating system software. But there are several things you can do to alleviate the pressures of keeping up with technology:

Do not hardcode your services into each and every app.

Instead, develop a robust server side API which all of your current and future apps can use. This can also help you collaborate with potential app development partners at later stages.

If you are building for the cloud, make sure your solution is scalable and built with architecture to maintain user growth.

It should also be built to handle potential usage peaks, which can happen during major events, such as new releases and new coverage.

Don’t take cross-platform solutions too far.

Developing a single code base for Web applications to run on multiple browsers can save great effort. However, Web-based development is not the solution for everything.

Choose your platforms carefully and optimize for user experience. When developing for mobile or desktop, consider using a native solution to better meet users’ expectations for an outstanding user experience.

Plan your updates carefully

It is always best to create a forecast for version releases. The most common time for bugs and compatibility issues to crop up is just after new operating systems or browser versions are released.

You should anticipate these new releases and plan your own to coincide with them, ensuring a smooth user experience devoid of compatibility issues. A smooth user experience translates into reliability, which is one of the best ways to stay ahead of your competition.

Cognitively speaking, your user develops a relationship with your app, and you need to take this into consideration when you plan an update. As in any relationship, the user may tire of your interface and start looking at other apps, so you have to make sure you keep the excitement high and the passion alive.

Resist the urge to race

While it may be tempting to keep constant tabs on your competition, avoid doing so with the intention of staying ahead of them, as this creates the danger of imitation. Never imitate; innovate.

If you are trying to catch up with the competition, there will always be someone faster than you. Focus on finding new and improved ways to help your users and you will maintain your lead naturally.

You should be as aware of your industry as you are of your users’ needs. Feel the pulse of the market – trends do not happen within a day or two; they grow gradually until their impact cannot be ignored.

Make sure you are positioned well enough to pick up on those trends and prepare beforehand. Trade shows, conferences, and industry reports are all useful resources to help you stay plugged in.

Listen to your users

It is crucial to gain a deep understanding of your userbase. Know what makes them tick, how and why they use technology, and even the aesthetics they prefer.

You are building a virtual experience for them, and if it is an experience they enjoy, they will stay loyal to your platform rather than look elsewhere.

User feedback is a critical factor in driving software changes and updates. Your software is a product, and all products exist to improve the life of the consumer.

When your users feel you fail to improve their life or suggest better ways for you to do so, you must respond quickly or risk losing them to a competitor.

Not every piece of feedback is helpful, but when a group of users make the same comment, this can be translated into useful information for your next update. Surveys, beta testers, focus groups, embedded polls, and feedback options on download sites are all useful mechanisms for gathering feedback data.

At Ginger, we have found the best ways to stay ahead of the competition are through keeping up with technology, planning our updates carefully, and staying in touch with our userbase.

This is much more productive than constantly trying to race to be the best. Companies who pull away from the pack to forge their own path can plan their releases with innovation and creativity driving them forward.

How in-app review mechanics pushed Flappy Bird to the top of the charts (venturebeat.com)

Flappy Bird

The original Flappy Bird. 

Michael Silverwood is an Operating Associate at Tandem Capital.

If you’ve ever released a mobile app or game yourself, you’ve probably been asking yourself this same question through the whole Flappy Bird saga: how the hell did this game get to #1 in the App Store in the first place?

Sure, lots of articles have talked about how it “went viral” and why its gameplay is “addictive” — but as most app developers know, these are rarely the true drivers of initial growth. Yes, you’ll need a kickass product and if you can design it to be inherently viral you’ll have a huge advantage, but before those attributes can have any impact you need your first critical mass of downloads.

So how does a game with zero marketing spend shoot to the top of the App Store rankings, a spot that many have estimated can cost over $80,000 through paid customer acquisition? I’m convinced that in Flappy Bird’s case, it all came down to user reviews.

To understand why, you first need to know how the App Store’s ranking algorithm works. Apple obviously doesn’t make this public knowledge, but anecdotally app developers have come to believe the current iteration works something like this:

Ranking = (# of installs weighted for the past few hours) + (# of installs weighted for the past few days) + REVIEWS (star rating + number of reviews) + Engagement (# of times app opened etc.) + Sales ($)

Flappy Bird jumped from nearly zero downloads to thousands back in December, something that is usually achieved through paid marketing (buying installs). However, there is no evidence that any money was spent on traditional user acquisition, so how else could an app rise up the rankings this quickly?

Most developers focus on number of installs, but the important thing to note here is that Apple also pays close attention to user reviews and engagement. Some have suggested that Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen might have used a bot service initially to download and review his game, and while this could definitely have sparked the first small wave of downloads, it seems that something even simpler could have been responsible for the wave of user reviews to come: a dark pattern.

In earlier versions of the game, there was a “rate” button at the end of each play session, and this button was placed in the same location that the player would tap to play. As a result, when the user wanted to continue playing, it was easy to hit the rate button instead. This is known as a dark pattern: when a user interface is designed to get users to do something that they would not otherwise intentionally do. The user reflexively remembers where the play button used to reside as they die, and quickly taps there, opening an App Store review page instead.

From all descriptions of how Dong Nguyen designed Flappy Bird and apparently lucked into its success, this button placement could have been chosen by chance as well, but what’s important is that it made user reviews relative to installs skyrocket.

By scraping the game’s iTunes data, Zach Williams was able to find that by the time it reached #1, Flappy Bird was receiving 400 reviews per day. One day later, it hit 600 reviews a day, and by the end of January it was receiving more than that per hour. To put these numbers into perspective, App Annie reports about 400,000 total US reviews for Candy Crush after almost a year and a half on the App Store, while Flappy Bird managed 700,000 US reviews in about a month. Once it hit this scale, writing hilariously detailed iTunes reviews of the game became a viral phenomenon, and the dark pattern was unnecessary and patched out in an update.

Although user reviews were definitely not the only contributor to Flappy Bird’s success, I believe the role they played was extremely fundamental in the game’s abnormal growth curve, and are one of the game’s most interesting data points. For a deeper dive into the review numbers, check out Zach’s full analysis of the App Store review numbers and let us know in the comments what you believe made Flappy Bird such a huge success.

Benchmarking the Half-Life and Decay of Mobile Apps (flurry.com)

Developers devote a lot of attention to the time immediately after an app is launched. How quickly is it growing? Will it go viral? How is it ranking in app stores? While that launch period is critical, managing apps well throughout their entire lifecycle means also paying special attention to what happens after an app peaks. Does it decline precipitously or manage to hold much of its audience for a long time?

We explore the post peak phase of the lifecycle of mobile apps using the concept of a half-life, which for purposes of this analysis we define as the point at which an app’s monthly users (MAU) have declined to 50% of their lifetime peak.

Usage of Many Apps Decays Rapidly The First Few Months Post Peak And Then Levels Off

We start by looking at the overall rate of decay for 26,176 apps that peaked in the first half of 2011, 2012, and 2013. (That allows enough time for decay even for apps peaking in 2013 and also controls for the time of year in which the app peaked.) The chart below shows what proportion of apps were at what percentage of their peak MAU in each of the first ten months after they peaked. Apps in the gray band fell below 25% of their peak MAU by the month indicated, apps in the orange band had fallen below 50% but were still above 25%, apps in the green band were below 75% but above 50%, and apps in the blue band were above 75% of their peak MAU in the month shown in the horizontal axis.

As shown in the chart, decay is fairly rapid in the first few months post peak. A quarter of apps fall below half of their peak MAU the month after peaking (see the top of the orange band in the chart). That percentage grows to 43% in the second month post peak. In the third month post peak, just over half (52%) of apps fall below half of their peak MAU. The fourth month post peak is a critical benchmark: From this point on, MAU decay continues, but at a much slower rate (note the flattening of the color bands after the 4th month).

The overall pattern of app user decay has been remarkably stable over the past three years, but there is variation based on app category, size, and operating system. The table below shows median app half-life for apps within each grouping. This corresponds to the month in which the top of the orange band and the bottom of the green band intersect at the 50% line in the previous chart.

The biggest influence on the rate of app decay is category. Apps in utilitarian categories such as news and health decay at a much slower rate than apps in the more trend-driven games and social categories.

On average, apps that peak at 10,000 MAU or more enjoy a half-life that is two months longer than apps that don’t reach that level.

iOS apps typically reach their half-life a month later than Android apps. 

Managing Decline Is As Important As Managing Growth

Many developers give a lot of thought to how to grow their apps, but we suspect fewer devote the same attention to managing their app’s decline. In some ways, this is analogous to people looking after their health as they age. The right habits can prolong longevity. In the case of apps, that means paying close attention to user retention and re-engagement – particularly as MAU growth begins to plateau and decline.

Those first few months post peak are key since the rate of decay levels off after about four months. More than half (56%) of apps that manage to hold more than half of their peak users for the first four months after they peak are still holding on to more than half of them ten months post peak. That could have a sizeable revenue impact. For example, consider an app that peaks at 100,000 monthly average users and has average revenue per user per month of $2.50. Holding at least half of those users through month four means the app has a 56% chance of holding them for another six months and that translates into revenue of $750,000 (100,000 users* half of them remaining *$2.50 per user per month * 6 months).

Just as actuarial tables help insurance companies anticipate costs, understanding typical app decay patterns can help developers and those who fund them anticipate app revenue streams. For example, assuming similar development costs and average revenue per user per month, a game app would need to peak with many more active users than a news app to have the same profit potential since its life can be expected to be a lot shorter. And it pays to invest in growing MAU for any app to the highest peak possible since that is also likely to mean the app will enjoy a longer half-life. 

6 Best Practices for increasing conversion for retail E-commerce websites on mobile devices (smartinsights.com)

Recent research by IMRG and Capgemini on Ecommerce sales trends in the UK stated that 23% of all online retail sales in Q2 2013 came from mobile devices. And of these, tablets accounted for 85%. The dramatic headline was:

“Sales via Desktop flat-line as sales via mobile devices now account for all online growth”

However, an interesting turning point here is that, 2013 saw smartphones go through a greater rate of growth in terms of mobile transactions. This being the case, you will know that it has become  critical for online retailers to optimize their e-commerce websites for mobile.

Improve your e-commerce website for mobile usage

Here’s a list of issues to consider, or best practices, based on our experiences, that will help you provide a better shopping experience that meets the expectations of online mobile shoppers.

• 1. Using Geo-location to find the nearest offline store

According to a recent survey by Accenture, 65% of multi-channel shoppers are reported to prefer using web for researching before making a purchase in person at a store.

• Online retailers can use this to their advantage by using GPS information to direct a shopper to the nearest offline store as done on the Gap website.

Failing to anticipate and adapt to such changes in the way online shoppers consume media could mark the beginning of the downfall in e-commerce. As consumers view multiple streams of content simultaneously on different devices, engaging them with a seamless multi-screen shopping experience has become highly crucial these days.

• 2. Activating social logins and guest sessions

According to a recent Harris Poll, two-thirds of shoppers abandoned their online purchases on mobile devices due to poor checkout experiences. And while 47% of these shoppers said that the checkout process was too long, 41% of them blamed it on not being mobile optimized.

• You can streamline the mobile checkout process by providing shoppers with the option to checkout using an existing account or as a guest.
• For example, Walmart’s website lets consumers place an order by continuing as a guest without having to register for an account.

• You could even provide your consumers with a social log-in. A recent report by Gigya states that 74% of online shoppers prefer a Facebook login as it conveniently lets them have a common password for a number of services.
• For example Fab.com, another popular e-commerce website allows it’s shoppers to easily log in with Facebook if they don’t want to create an account.

• 3. Providing alternative mobile payment options

A recent study by SeeWhy, a major player in real-time e-commerce shopping cart recovery, states that alternative payment options such as Paypal, Google Wallet and MasterCard MasterPass have resulted in 101% increase in conversion rate from smartphone users. Moreover as on July 2013, 34 percent of U.S. online shoppers are reported to have Paypal accounts as per a recent survey conducted by SeeWhy.

• Home Depot, a popular e-commerce website uses this to their advantage by letting shoppers speed up their checkout process by opting for Paypal and automatically populating their existing payment information.

• Meanwhile Google Wallet is another option that is growing in popularity partly due to the quick adoption of Android smartphones among consumers.
• Google Wallet also lets users sign in using their Google+ accounts. Therefore, if you are considering implementing social logins as well, this might be a good option to go ahead with.

• 4. Incorporating mobile product videos

One of the biggest drawbacks of selling online or on mobile is that customers cannot feel the product or try it before they make a purchase. Consumers are generally drawn towards e-commerce stores that give them a good sense of the product that they are buying.

A study by Invodo states that 52% of online shoppers said that product videos make them more confident about their decision to buy. Among them 45% of consumers are reported to have watched 5 or more product videos in the last three months.

• A good example of this would be the product videos on Bellroy website. The video highlights the features of the wallet in action, by showing online shoppers exactly what they can fit in there. Watch the video at bellroy’s website.

• 5. Optimizing Product Image Galleries

The small display on mobile devices makes it difficult for consumers to understand the product entirely. Especially in the case of e-commerce websites that takes shoppers to a separate product subpage to view a zoomed-in image.

Often, this results in shoppers discarding products due to the lack of vital content such as Product Description, Product Specs and User Review which are available on the main product page alone.

• A good solution to this is having a callout similar to the one on The Home Depot website saying ‘Tap Tap to zoom’ on the screen. This gives the shopper enough time to understand how to go about navigating the page.

• Another popular e-commerce website, Dune London is designed to make the most of the given space by letting shoppers glance over multiple views of the product by hovering over product images on the catalog pages. This further helps shoppers gain a better idea of the product with minimal effort.

• 6. Including social media share buttons

Consumers often look to their family or friends for product recommendations.

According to a recent study by Business Insider, shoppers who use mobile devices are twice as likely to share content on social networks as opposed to those on desktop.

• You could even use social media share buttons to highlight mentions on other social media networks, thus helping consumers take a quick purchase decision.
• ASOS is a great example of an e-commerce website that makes it easy for online shoppers to easily share their favorite finds with their family and friends.

As mobile becomes an important channel of revenue for retailers, optimizing your e-commerce websites for mobile has become of utmost importance. How many of the above mentioned features have you applied on your website? Are there any other best practices that your e-commerce website follows? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

5 Ways to Set Your App Up for Long Term Success (sensortower.com)

It can certainly be fun to get into the Top Charts with a game like Flappy Bird, but once the novelty wears off, then what? You will have to go back to the drawing board and create another hit, which may or may not have the same success.

Building a top app is not easy and building an app that stays on the top charts for years is definitely a challenge. Sometimes you just get lucky, but many times success is the result of focus, proper market research, providing real value and a few learning experiences along the way.

In this post, we will go over five ways that you can develop an app for the long haul. While this is not the only way to be successful in app development, it is what we recommend and you will find out why.

5. Go Long On Content

If you have an app that is based on a blog or content based service of some kind, then you already have this one covered. But if your app is not content based, consider ways that you can add related content to your app to make it more useful.

For example, if you have a travel app that helps people find the best rates on hotels, flights and car rentals, you could add content about recommended places that they can visit during their trip. A continuous source of quality content is a great way to keep users coming back for more. Hipmunk has added TripAdvisor data to provide related content for travel bookings.

4. Leave The Door Open

When designing your app, it may be a good idea for you to provide a core set of features, while giving users the ability to add additional features in the future. Think about additional tools that a user might need to do functions associated with the app.

This not only makes your app useful now, but it gives users confidence that there are other features available and gives you the ability to add additional revenue streams in the future. You can do this through a subscription or in-app purchases.

3. Make It Social

Even the simplest apps can find long term success by implementing social interaction. One example is a game like Words With Friends.

It is a simple game that could be pretty boring to play against the computer. But, by allowing players to match wits against their real life friends, it makes the game much more fun.

So even if your app isn’t a game, think of ways that users can add their friends to the app to make it more engaging. This will also increase the viral potential of your app, since you can instantly gain access to a person’s social network.

2. Focus On Quality, Not Quantity

Reskinning an app that you bought the source code for is one way of creating income, by allowing you to publish multiple games in a short period of time. But are these games something that you really care about? Do you want to improve and expand them in the future?

If your answer is “no”, then you may want to rethink your strategy. While reskinning can be a viable short-term business model, it is rarely a strategy that will give you long-term success and more importantly, personal satisfaction.

Quantity almost never results in quality and App Store Optimization for 200 apps is going to be much more difficult and time consuming than doing ASO for just 1 to 10 core apps. A better strategy is to take the time to build and launch a quality app that is designed for long term success and only create new apps as your development bandwidth allows. If we look at the top 10 apps most valuable apps on our App Leaderboard, we see that this is certainly the case with ultra successful publishers.

Of the iOS publishers with apps in the overall top 10, each publisher has an average of 4.4 apps, with Machine Zone, Inc having the highest app count, at 16 apps. If we exclude Machine Zone from the app count the average number of published apps drops to 3.

So if you want to model successful publishers, then this is definitely one thing that you should pay attention to. Fewer apps means better focus and usually higher quality.

1. Solve A Real Problem

This is by far the best way to ensure that your app will be around for a long time to come. Although there is no guarantee that you will succeed, having an app that people cannot live without is an excellent place to start.

If you have a game, the problem that you are solving is boredom. So instead of creating a game that only has a few levels or has levels that all look the same, find a way to change it up and add social elements to keep players interested and engaged. This may mean adding additional levels on a regular basis or adding fun updates from time-to-time.

Other types of apps help solve everyday problems, from getting a taxi, to controlling your home automation system. But there are still so many problems out there that need a good solution, so your next big app idea may be closer than you think. Be aware of problems that you have personally and how an app could solve it.

There is also another benefit to solving real word problems. The more complex the problem you are solving, the harder it is for others to copy you. Compare this to all of the clones that pop up any time a gimmicky new app goes viral.

Conclusion

While the needs of the public and technology will change over time, you should do everything in your power to set yourself up for success over a period of years, not months. Steady growth through continuous improvement and providing real value can not only result in an extremely valuable app, but it can also provide a lot of personal satisfaction, knowing that you have created something that people truly love.

Apple AppStore & Google Play Trends: Promising Categories & Most Sold In-app Purchases at a Glance (blog.azoft.com)

As mobile application markets continue to explode, it is difficult to keep track of all the changing tendencies of the global app landscape. Perusing through recent AppMarket Reports from Priori, we've come up with some data on US, UK and Central European AppStore & Google Play activity that mobile developers and designers alike can use to gain an overview of recent trends. The areas in focus are:

• The most promising AppStore & Google Play app categories;
• Recent monetization trends; the adoption rate of apps with in-app purchases among publishers & consumers;
• App categories that have the most activity on in-app purchases;
• The most sold in-app purchase items with prices;
• The most successful developers.

 Most popular app categories

Whether you want to go up against current stars in the most promising categories, or choose to make your app shine in a less competitive one, this information can be helpful for your planning strategy. The following categories held the largest portion of popular apps in December, 2013 according to Priori's data:

Chart 1.1 Categories with the largest number of top free & paid apps, AppStore, the USA. The % of Downloads value tells how many downloads are generated by top apps in given category in proportion to total downloads generated by those apps across all categories. E.g. if all apps in Priori's Top Apps generated 1.000.000 downloads, and 500.000 of these were generated by games, then the Games value will be 50%.

Chart 1.2 Categories with the largest number of top free & paid apps, Google Play, the USA.

Chart 1.3 Categories with the largest number of top free & paid apps, AppStore, Europe.

Chart 1.4 Categories with the largest number of top free & paid apps, Google Play, Europe.

Monetization trends

Monetization types & prices

The revenue model shows no drastic changes. There are still four main monetization types:

• Free Apps
• Paid Apps: the pay-before-download model
• Free + In-App Purchase: free app with the option of purchasing virtual goods from within the app
• Paid + In-App Purchase: app monetized by a combination of pay-before-download and the option of purchasing virtual goods from within the app

Chart 2.1 Monetization type ratio, AppStore, the USA. Apps with In-App Purchase as % of the Total Number of Apps: 10.03%.

Chart 2.2 Range of top app prices, AppStore, Europe. Apps with In-App Purchase as % of the Total Number of Apps: 5.75%.

In-app purchase

The following charts show which app categories have the most activity on in-app purchases:

Chart 3.1 Categories with the largest number of apps with in-app purchase (IAP), AppStore, the USA, the UK, Europe.

The following in-app purchase items are sold the most in the USA AppStore:

Table 1.1 Top downloaded free apps (all games) & the most sold IAP items, AppStore, the USA.

The tables below reveal the in-app purchase item prices.

Table 2.1 In-app purchase item prices, AppStore, free apps.

Table 2.2 In-app purchase item prices, AppStore, paid apps.

Who are the most successful new publishers?

‘Learning from the best’ is a universal practice and it works just fine when it comes to mobile app development, too. It’s not about stealing, but observing and re-creating a UI, functional approach and software solution that your audience needs and likes better than anyone else’s.

Here’s a list of top developers whose work may inspire you to come up with a fresh look or new idea:

• Fingersoft
• EA
• Gameloft
• Supercell
• Glu
• Storm8 (TeamLava)