Star Trek goes with paid mobile game over freemium model (from mobilemarketer.com)

By Rebecca Borison

As the freemium model continues to gain steam, popular brands are increasingly weighing whether to launch paid or free mobile games, as evidenced by the  new $2.99 Star Trek game and Angry Birds' first free offering.

Star Trek fans can now experience what it is like to build a ship and explore a new galaxy with the eight-bit Trexels iOS game. While Rovio is embracing the freemium model, this Star Trek game is still holding to the hope that charging for the download will be the best revenue model.

“In terms of price, the decision to make the game paid, but at a low price point was something we considered a great deal,” said Craig Bolin, senior game designer at YesGnome, Hyderabad, India. “Much of your success as an app is related to attracting and retaining users, not just for monetization, but also for spreading word about the game, and keeping it high in the charts, in the potential view of more new users. 

“The Trek license is hugely popular, and we believed that the style of game fit well with the potential fan base, so that the total package was attractive enough that users would be willing to pay a small price to play,” he said.

TrexelsTrexels is powered by [x]cube GAMES and YesGnome, LLC, and it is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch for $2.99.

Star Trek Trexels is an eight-bit mobile game that resembles more old-fashioned games from the 70s and 80s in that the images are blocky and blurry. 

Trexels lets users build a ship, choose a crew and explore a galaxy. Users can choose room types and modifications, assign officers to key posts, train them and send them on missions.

The game is set in the original Star Trek universe, and players will meet familiar Star Trek characters during the game. It also includes the library computer access/retrieval system interface from Star Trek.

The premise of the game is that the USS Valiant has been destroyed by an unknown attacker, and the user has to continue Starfleet’s its mission in a mysterious area of space known as the Trexelian Expanse.

The game features narration by Star Trek actor George Takei as well as the original music from the series.

Like Rovio, Zynga also works off of a freemium model (see story).

YesGnome thought that freemium would not work for a Stark Trek fan.

“Finally, the gameplay itself, combined with the target fan base felt like it needed to be a paid product," Mr. Bolin said. "Trek fans tend to be fairly savvy game consumers, and I was concerned that there could be a backlash if the game felt like it was trying to monetize from them too hard. 

"Thus it was better to keep the gameplay fast, dense and rich and ask users for a small price to play, rather than trying to block off progression and monetize solely from the core loop,” he said.

Timeless gaming
Digital games have always been a favorite American pastime, starting with game consoles and now with mobile apps.

Many games are incorporating newer technology to take gaming to the next level.

For instance, Hasbro has created Telepods figures, letting kids blend the physical and virtual by teleporting real-life figures into mobile applications (see story).

New Balance’s lacrosse brand Brine also leveraged features unique to mobile devices in a mobile game that asks users to flick a finger across the screen to recreate the action of a shot (see story).

It is interesting that as games incorporate newer, more advanced technology, since there are still games such as Trexels that look to the past and offer a more nostalgic experience.

“[Trexels] was a strategic partnership with CBS, they were looking for a partner to develop an app in the pixel art style and [x]cube GAMES was ideally suited, because of our background in social sims and experience I have had on products with big IPs," Mr. Bolin said.

"Our thought was, that the Trek license and the compelling art style would draw in users," he said. "We needed design gameplay that would engage and re-engage Trek fans, thus a heavy emphasis upon fan service, story and exploration.

What Are The Top Grossing iOS Apps of 2013? (from http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/)

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December 19, 2013 -- By Michael E.

When it comes to purchasing apps for Apple’s iPhone or iPad, Distimo’s 2013 Year in Review report reveals that games continue to dominate app purchases, claiming more than 60% of all App Store revenue this year.

In fact, when analyzing the top ten highest grossing apps of 2013, one thing stands out above all others: they’re all games.

So if you haven’t poked around the App Store in a while, here ‘s the fast run-down of the most successful iOS apps of 2013.

1. Clash of Clans
2. Candy Crush Saga
3. Hay Day
4. Puzzles & Dragons
5. The Hobbit: Kingdom of Middle-Earth
6. Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North
7. Minecraft – Pocket Edition
8. Modern War
9. The Simpsons: Tapped Out
10. Big Fish Casino

Snapchat, a successfull App (from http://www.mobiledevhq.com/)

If you’ve been keeping up with any of the major news publications or tech blogs these past weeks, you have probably seen ‘Snapchat’ in a number of headlines. The media has been infatuated with Snapchat, a self-destructing photo and video messaging app, because they apparently turned down a $3 billion dollar offer from Facebook.

This piece isn’t going to get into why they were (or weren’t) crazy to turn down the offer, or why Facebook thinks they are so valuable. It is going to tell you why, even with their huge user base, Snapchat is still missing out on some enormous opportunities.

Snapchat Has Impressive Numbers

Snapchat does have some impressive numbers. According to The Atlantic, they have attained 100 million users since 2011, who send 350 million photos per day!

So where does Snapchat go from here? How can they continue to grow and prove they weren’t crazy to turn down $3 billion dollars? Well, here atMobileDevHQ, we obviously think app store optimization (ASO) can play a big role.

Snapchat’s Current ASO Efforts

We took a look at Snapchat’s ASO efforts to see how their user base has influenced their keyword rankings. What we found is that their keyword rankings are... drumroll please... abysmal. They are completely non-existent. Snapchat only ranks well (top 10) for words that include ‘Snapchat’, or some form of the word. They are unranked for any relevant keywords such as picture, photo, video, share, and others.

They have 100 million users, why do they need ASO? Well, if Snapchat really wants to prove that turning down $3 billion dollars wasn’t crazy, they will need to keep expanding their user base, and by ignoring ASO they are missing out on a huge portion of the market.

Searching for Snapchat in the App Store

The Snapchat app can fill a few different roles for users. It could be thought of as a photo/video messaging service, a photo/video sharing service, a regular messaging service, a disposable or self-destructing messaging app, or even a social network.

What would you do if you were a user who did not know about Snapchat and who was looking for an app to fill one of those roles. You would probably search in the app store with queries like: photo app, share videos, photo message, video sharing, messaging app, or photo sharing.

If you were to search for any of these terms, you most likely would never see Snapchat. Unless, however, you entered ‘messaging app’ and scrolled through 84 apps until you found Snapchat taking the 85th spot.

In fact, the highest search query that Snapchat ranks for which does not have some form of the word ‘snapchat’ or ‘snap’ is ‘dissapear’, for which they rank 13. Although this is much better than 85, it is still relatively high. When was the last time you scrolled to the 13th app when searching for something in the app store?

What’s the Big Deal?

So what exactly are they missing out on? More than it may seem. Essentially what the data above shows is that Snapchat is getting almost zero downloads for any non-branded search terms (search queries that don’t have some form of ‘snap’ or ‘chat’). They are losing market share to potential competitors like Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

Check out the market share analysis below. The table shows volume, difficulty, and an estimate of what percentage of downloads each app receives out of all the downloads that specific search term generates. The volumes are not exact search numbers because Apple does not release that data. Instead, they are relative metrics. All terms are based off of the term ‘pic sharing’, which is searched for the least. For example, ‘photo message’ has a volume of 2x, meaning it is searched twice as much as pic sharing.

Editor’s Note: To learn how we estimate these, check out our guest post onAppStoreOptimization.com.

So what does this table show us? On a positive note for Snapchat, it’s branded search terms actually do pretty well. ‘Snapchat’ has a search volume of 100x, meaning it is searched 100 times more than ‘pic sharing’. However, we can also see that they leave a lot on the table by not ranking for other terms such as ‘photo’, with a search volume of 700x.

What Snapchat Should Do

Because an app’s ranking for a search term is determined in part by total downloads, download velocity, and ratings, Snapchat would most likely be able to rank highly for numerous search terms. By simply adding terms to their keyword field, they could increase their exposure in the app store along with downloads.

Every company has aspects they need to work on and improve. Snapchat has done very well for itself in the short time it has been available. They dominate their market, and have garnered the attention of some of the top companies in the world. However, they are leaving a huge number of downloads on the table by ignoring ASO.

Bottom line: Snapchat turned down $3 billion dollars. Although they have done well so far, they still have a lot of improving to do to show the world they made the right decision. Part of that improvement will be to keep expanding their user base. We know ASO can help with this, and we would love to see them start leveraging their popularity to keep dominating the app world.

How To Create A Brilliant App Icon (from movidev.biz)

How does anyone get acquainted with an app, for example, surfing through an application store? There are two things that catch the eye at first: the name and the icon. These two constituents often may define whether the app will make users feel they want it - or at least make them feel that it's worth checking. Only then come the description, user interface, and everything else. The capabilities and the experience of your application will be assessed later - not that much in terms of time, but in terms of users' impressions. It might take just an icon for the user to picture the whole experience, intuitivity, security and functionality in the mind.

When an app represents a brand, a company, it's generally far easier to create a great icon, since there is a ready logo, and the whole icon design will basically revolve around it. If the app is a unique entity in itself, its icon must depict it in the most precise way possible.

Along with the very idea of making an attractive app icon, there are many mistakes and bad decisions that cause bad icons emerging in the store. Some may even cause rejections by Apple. As for app names, there is a cliche of making the 199th photo-and-video-related app that starts with ''Insta-'' or ends with ''-gram''. On the other hand there's a pic cliche of using a camera lens image as an element of the icon. Such little but obvious things reduce the app's chance of being noticed. The icon must look beautiful and recognizable. It can be made this way if you stick to the following rules.

Keep the icon simple

That's one of the main rules for a limited amount of space. The best is when there's just one object on the icon. This object becomes the essence of the app, with the gradients and reflections that surround it. If there has to be more than one object, it's obligatory that each one is clearly depicted to avoid making a mess of an icon, especially in smaller sizes.

Create an organic color palette

By and large it's easier to do when you don't put too many colors into the logo. It often happens that the fewer colors there are, the better for the icon. Not more than two is often enough, if we don't take hues of the same color into account. One more thing - you score additional points if the icon's palette is consistent with the colors of user interface.

Don't use a photo

Photos rank among the worst candidates for an app icon, especially when it comes to different sizes of the icon required by application stores. Details of a photo don't scale that well to smaller sizes. In case of need there is an option of creating a skeuomorphic icon that will look close to a photo and properly portray a real-world item. Therefore the icon will look great in every needed resolution: the biggest one on the application store, the main one on the homescreen of a mobile device, and the smallest ones in the notification center or in a folder.

Avoid typography when possible

The very idea of sending the message of an icon in text isn't that good - there's a name for that. It's better to think visual. Say, there's a branded application, and the brand's logo includes its name in some distinct typeface. It is mostly possible to avoid putting the name on the icon, focusing on the symbol instead. Surely there are exceptions, but generally this tip is quite advisable.

Don't be a copycat

If you design an icon for an iOS app, you mustn't use the UI elements of the operating system. It's no good if the default icons are confused by people, and two apps look the same on the homescreen. And if we take a general look, it's better to avoid copyrighted images and all the related problems, since there's always a way to create something unique.

Check how the icon looks on different wallpapers

Everyone has different wallpapers on their homescreens, you won't know what is used. Thus it's better to make sure that the icon looks good on wallpapers of different colors and textures, and essentially on the variety of default wallpapers.

Unleash your imagination

A perfect icon requires inspiration. Simple doesn't mean primitive. You often have to create something complex, then simplify to make it look perfect. Don't be standard. Don't hesitate to experiment and create drastically different variants of icons for the app. There are hundreds of thousands of apps in the store, and it's hard to be unique. But nobody said that it's hopeless to try. On the contrary, there are many applications with icons that are crafted far less skillfully. Maybe you won't necessarily need each and every rule of those mentioned above, but at least most of them. Build your own catchy image and good luck in your efforts!

- See more at: http://mobidev.biz/blog/how_to_create_a_brilliant_app_icon.html#sthash.cw1MCWGm.dpuf

What Apps Are Used More Than Others? (from http://mobidev.biz/)

 

November 08

If not for application stores, the value of modern smartphones would tumble down in leaps and bounds. We love our mobile devices for what they do - we love our apps. App Store and Google Play offer us about a million apps each, but an average person has about 30-50 apps on a mobile device - rarely would you have more than 60 apps. Let's go further - how many apps do you regularly use every day? Hardly more than 10.

The famous 80/20 rule can be safely applied here. On average we use not more 20% of all applications on our smartphones every day. Other 80% of apps are used as needed, from time to time. Or we could put it another way - we spend 80% of our time on 20% of applications. It's extremely hard to become popular with users, unless the app is truly outstanding in some way and unless it's properly promoted.

A Little Bit Of Statistics

The most recent research by Statista, that covers the most used mobile apps in the world over a month in Q2 2013, shows that 54% of global smartphone owners used Google Maps, which is obviously the most popular smartphone application. Facebook, the biggest social network, had 44%, YouTube had 35%, Google+ was used by 30% of smartphone owners, Twitter and Skype scored 22% each, the instant messaging service Whatsapp had 17%, and Instagram was used by 11%. Actually, the picture is by no means surprising.

Why have we mentioned smartphone statistics? It's no surprise either - smartphones rule on the mobile market. Tablets entered the market later, and aren't as casual, as commonplace as smartphones. Neither are such devices as the iPod Touch.

Smartphone Rules The Mobile Market

It's exactly the smartphone that defines the app's popularity. Yet the biggest and the most popular category on both Android and iOS application stores is games. Games hold major potential for revenue success; and there has been a correct statement that a game might appear out of nowhere and become a success. But with all the competition, it's hard to predict. One thing is certain - perhaps each of us has a favorite game that we devote a few minutes now and then throughout the day, in order to relax and proceed to daily tasks.

What other types of apps do we frequently spend time on? Most notable are social and messaging apps. We scroll through the feed, follow the links that we find interesting, flick through the recent photos and of course, chat with everyone. This takes time. Top social apps cannot be surpassed, but there's an obviously growing trend of smaller social networks that gather people by hobbies and things alike. We could call them 'specialized'. Even more time is spent on social network websites (on desktops, we mean). Nevertheless it's the app that we always have in the pocket to check out, it's the smartphone that makes us mobile and independent.

What Other Apps Are Used More Than Others?

Another type of apps that we use daily and often, is productivity. That is, our scheduled activities, to-dos, the whole variety of note-taking means. A meeting at half past one? Check. A document to be studied and signed? Check. A little bit of shopping on way home? Check. That's what our daily routine consists of.

Utilities and news apps are also very popular. Who doesn't spend much time browsing on a tablet, for example? The most popular news aggregators, such as Flipboard and Pulse, are usually in the top lists of must-have apps on your mobile device. You check news several times a day, don't you?

Although we spend most time on these types of apps, it doesn't mean that other categories aren't worthy of great apps and all the efforts to create them. Apps that are generally used passively, less frequently, with less time spent on (unit converters etc.) aren't less important in making our mobile devices substantially valuable. Some of the categories (such as health & fitness or medical apps) target a less generalized user audience, than, say, Evernote. However, it's the more frequently used apps that tend to generate user loyalty faster.

Mobile Marketing Landscape

Developers, brace for a bloodbath: The cost of getting a new mobile gamer exceeds revenue that user generates (from venturebeat.com)

Epic Games/Chair Entertainment

Infinity Blade III is one of the hot mobile games of the fall.

Dean Takahashi

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This may not come as a surprise to those watching trends in mobile, but the cost of acquiring a new smartphone or tablet gamer in October exceeded the average revenue companies got from that player.

The numbers from a new market research study suggest that mobile game makers should be cautious about how much they spend on acquiring new players, particularly if their free-to-play mobile games generate an average amount of revenue. SuperData, a New York-based market research firm, warns that we may see a “bloodbath” as companies try to spend too much money getting players who don’t spend enough.

SuperData estimates that the cost per install (CPI, which is the measure of what it costs in advertising to get a user) was $2.73 for mobile games, compared to an average revenue per user of $1.96. And in the coming holiday season, SuperData estimates that the CPI will be more than double the average revenue per user. SuperData says that for 99 percent of game makers, that’s a problem. It means the game developers will have to keep players engaged for two months or more before they can start making real profits.

“To anyone active in mobile gaming, it is no surprise that the cost of acquiring new users has been going up,” the company said. “Over the course of 2012, the cost per install on iOS increased 22 percent from the beginning to the end of the year. In some categories, we even recorded a tripling of the cost for an average mobile gamer.”

Marketing costs generally increase when a market matures. But during the summer, the average CPI broke the $2 barrier, and it has been growing ever since. In the first half of 2013, the cost of a new user was on par with revenue. But in the late summer, expenditures began to outrun revenues.

The average conversion rate from a nonspending to a spending user is 4.68 percent. And the average revenue from a paying user is $21.45 per month. That adds up to $100.39 in monthly earnings for 100 new players. With costs at about $225 per 100 users, you need to keep the users engaged and spending for at least a couple of months. That’s very hard to do.

Mobile gaming revenue is growing fast. The U.S. mobile game market is expected to hit revenue of $3 billion in 2013, up from $2.4 billion a year earlier.

The holiday season is still an important time for game releases, as Apple sells the bulk of its annual iPhone and iPad volume in the fourth quarter.

SuperData

SuperData research suggests that game advertising costs are exceeding revenues in mobile.

App Screenshots Optimization = Increased Downloads of your App? (from http://www.optimizemyapps.com/)

Here’s the thinking of a average developer (atleast that’s what I thought) – make a great app with a great design & put it on the app store. If its so damm good a App people will talk about it & download it, right? Wrong!

You need to promote you app, like anything else which you want to sell. If you have ever sold anything on ebay or craigslist or for that matter sold anything online you know exactly what I am talking about.

When I sold a Playstation game on ebay,  I made sure I took great looking pictures of the game box from all possible angles – highlighting that the box was unopened by taking a picture of the edge of the box with the seal intact, the front of the game box which highlighted the game graphics, Title & Version of the game. These pictures gave the potential buyer a degree of confidence that what I was selling was brand new, more that that it was a psychological satisfaction of seeing something before clicking on the bid button (on ebay).

If you have followed my drift in the above example, you know by now that a picture is equal to a thousand words. Don’t get me wrong, you still need a great app.  Just doing App Screenshots Optimization will not cut it!

You need to get the basics of your App right- Awesome Design, Great programming & Thoroughly Tested. If you have a buggy or ill designed app then you are just asking for bad reviews. All your effort in getting App Screenshots Optimization done will go down the drain. So get the basics right!

5 Screenshots – This is how many you get on the App Store for your app. Now step back & think about the way a user or for that matter how you make that decision to hit the download button. You type a keyword or a phrase in the search field, what is the very first thing which you notice once you see the search results ? If you are searching on your phone its the Icon followed by the first screenshot. If your screenshot catches the users attention & tells him what the app does by just looking at it then you have made half the sale already. The rest of the screenshots can be used to showoff your apps coolest features & educate the user even more as to why he should hit the download button now.

If on the other hand you have a dull looking screenshot then you are asking the user to flick to the next app. So what is a great screenshot anyway? Let’s look at screenshots from the game Flick Kick Football Legends

App Screenshots Optimization Example Analysis:

The very first screenshot tells you:

• That this is a football game
• Builds confidence of the user based on reference to their previous successful title “Flick Kick Football”
• Has a great screen depicting the game play in action – so you know exactly what you are going to get when you download it
• As a added advantage the game has 4.5 star rating from 625 users, which is something!

If I was searching for a football game I saw the above screenshot I would either download the game or goto the next screen for more information

2^nd Screenshot:

• This screenshot has the sole purpose of showing you the Gameplay
• Shows you in action Tackle & Pass manoeuvres as you would do in a real football game
• Has a amazing image of a Goalee diving to save the football & you scoring

By now I am excited just by seeing the first two screenshots, if it was me I would have downloaded the game by looking at these two screens

3^rd Screenshot:

• Football is Team sport – This app allows you to manage your team
• You can also collect great players
• It even has pictures of the players with their roles – defender or helper

This is a great way of showing off the level of the intricacies & details shown for each player which a lot of football enthusiasts would be interested in

4^th Screenshot:

• Shows you that you have a option of selecting your team owner as you would do in the real world
• Has great graphics depicting shady characters willing to help you out

Again, this is more like in the real world where football clubs get sold to different owners. This sort of thing really excites football enthusiasts

5^th Screenshot:

• Shows you winning, who doesn’t like to win

The 5 Screenshots (without reading any description):

• Graphically depicted what the game is about & how it’s played (by flicking)
• What the user can do – Tackle, Pass & Score as in a real football game
• Manage – That you can manage your team & select players based on their abilities
• Mentor, Owner – Change owners or mentors as a real football club would do in the real world
• Win – Everybody loves to win

The takeaways from the above are:

• Your very first screenshot should be eye catching & engaging
• The first screenshot should drive the curiosity of the user to goto the next screenshot
• You should add labels & text to the screenshots educating the user of what your app does without the user having to read the description

Highlight the unique features & functionality of your App

Urban Outfitters drives mobile engagement with news feed strategy (from http://www.mobilemarketer.com/)

By Rebecca Borison

December 4, 2013

Urban Outfitter's app menu

Urban Outfitters has added a news feed to its mobile application to encourage repeat visits and help consumers stay up to date with the retailer’s happenings.

Appboy is powering the news feed, which pulls together the app’s push notifications and then directs users to specific pages within the app. The news feed feature has been driving 30 percent engagement rates for Urban Outfitters and other brands such as Bloomberg, Text+ and Shape magazine.

“The interesting piece is when we talk about engagement being a really important element of any mobile strategy because there’s so much fall-off between install and using an app,” said Cezary Pietrzak, director of marketing at Appboy, New York. “The news feed is really the glue that brings together all these messaging features. You can customize it. A push notification is just a bunch of text. But in the news feed you can customize it with images and different styles, like a banner.

“[One of the news feed’s goals] is enforcing messaging," he said "Another one is also driving social interactions. Urban Outfitters for example has a call-to-action for people to connect to their Instagram account. The cool thing about the news feed is you can enact protocol URLs, it’s almost like a hyperlink within an app."

Sticky app
It is no surprise that marketers are struggling to make their apps stickier and to keep users coming back. With the app store getting more crowded every day, marketers not only have to attract initial downloads, but they need to maintain engagement in the long-run.

Urban Outfitters has decided to try to stand out with a news feed. The news feed can be found under the main menu button at the top left-hand corner of the app.

Appboy’s in-app news feed can be customized by each brand, and Urban Outfitters has been using it to promote its social media channels and other promotions.

For instance, one item in their news feed urges consumers to connect to their Instagram account and complete one of the Urban Outfitters challenges, such as taking a photo of a do-it-yourself project. Clicking on the item in the news feed will take a user directly to the page to link their account.

Urban Outfitters still sends push notifications if consumers enable the function, but the notifications will then show up in the news feed if a consumer enters the app. This way if a consumer forgets about a push notification or did not see because he was distracted, he can view the message later in the news feed.

Yesterday, Urban Outfitters sent a push notification letting consumers know that Cyber Monday was extended. A similar, but more detailed, message was also in the app’s news feed.

Urban Outfitter's news feed

News feed
Appboy’s news feed works off of the popular social media news feed on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but caters it to specific brands with customized content.

Brands can include social media content, deals or contests to engage consumers.

Another way that some of the brands are leveraging the in-app news feed is to introduce newcomers to the app.

Oftentimes consumers miss out on exciting features within an app because they did not know it existed or how to get to it. The news feed can help direct new users through the app, giving them a tour of all the app has to offer.

“One of the big things we’ve seen from some of our clients is the onboarding process itself,” Mr. Pietrzak said. 

“We know there’s a huge falloff, people aren’t discovering the right features, they don’t know what to do and there isn’t a good place to showcase that," he said. "During the first few days, clients are going to build out these onboarding strategy where they introduce them to the app and ease them into the process.”