ByteClub

We are happy to announce the first 3rd party iPhone app that uses ByteClub's Multiplayer Gaming Platform. Despite the word "gaming" used in previous sentence, this new application is not a game but more of a communication utility with a clever and innovative twist. It's called "Tap Secret", created by Appacity Inc. Lets hear its author briefly tell us what it does:

Can't type? Tap it! Just tap your pocket X times, and your friend receives X vibrations. You can assign each X to a message so that it's more understandable to you. Just join the same tap room as your friends, pick your tap codes (1-10), put your phone in your pocket and start to tap your pants to exchange messages!

I invite you to check out Tap Secret and let us and our friends at Appacity know what you think about it.

-- Peter Bakhyryev

A few weeks ago I was invited to give a talk about using networking in iPhone applications to a group of NYU students as part of their iPhone Programming course. Since a good example was needed to demonstrate the core concepts, we decided to create a simple chat app that uses sockets, streams and Bonjour to allow users to host and join chat rooms and talk to each other over the network.

The lecture didn't go as smoothly as I have hoped. Despite my best efforts to keep it brief, there was a lot of code to cover and I simply ran out of time. Lesson learned: Stick to talking about concepts ("what you need to do" and "why you do it this way") and let the source code speak for itself ("how to do it") - especially if it has plenty of comments, which it did.

The contents of that lecture (after being reworked into something a bit smoother than the original) have now been released as a tutorial and published on the excellent iPhone development blog MobileOrchard in hopes that it will reach it's intended audience - those that want to learn how to create networked iPhone applications or are looking for code examples to take apart and reuse.

Here is the link to the article. Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks to Dan Grigsby from MobileOrchard for publishing the tutorial.

-- Peter Bakhyryev

What influences your buying decision when you go out shopping for a new car? Do you order a particular model online just because it caught your eye on TV? Is dealer's sales pitch enough to convince you? Do you test-drive it before you write the check?

Next question: If you own an iPhone, do you remember how you made up your mind about getting it? I distinctly remember stopping by an Apple store and getting my hands on one of them pretty things back in the summer of 2007, after reading all about it online for weeks. After 5 minutes of playing with one, I practically ran home to figure out whether or not my T-Mobile contract expired and how much it was going to cost me to get out early and sign up with AT&T instead (luckily, the contract did expire one month before that and it didn't cost me anything to transfer my phone number). I was a proud owner of a brand new iPhone about an hour later. Another "ka-ching!" for Apple.

Lets throw another example into the ring: Back in the olden days, did you sample CDs at the music store before buying them? (by listening to tracks through headphones that dozens of other people put on before you - there is a chance that public health professionals aren't going to be pleased with your answer, BTW). Today, do you listen to samples on iTunes before purchasing music? Apple made it so easy, that I suspect majority of people do it, probably even without thinking.

If you make it, they will buy... Maybe

Look closely at the examples above. Selling something involves at least 3 things:

• Make: making the product,
• Tell: making consumer aware of the product, and
• Convince: making the consumer believe that they want your product

If you get lucky, you make something that consumers already know about and want - and you'll need to do a minimal amount of convincing. (Example: Yes, I'd love an Apple tablet that runs iPhone OS). On the other end of the spectrum, some companies come out with products that people just don't get (in both senses of the word), despite enormous investments into marketing.

You could merge the "Tell" and "Convince" parts into something called "Marketing", but it helps to keep them separate, and here is why: "telling" is about finding channels for your message and "convincing" is about crafting a compelling message. Sometimes, just "telling" is enough to sell. But I suspect that most of the time, "convincing" is the hardest part - the "last mile", so to speak. I can talk your ear off about product ZZZ, but how much more is it going to take me to actually convince you to pay $XXX for it?

An app, anyone?

How can we use the same framework to look at iPhone app business? Let's try:

• Make: Apple made is extremely easy to make apps. It's all in your hands (minus some stuff that Apple doesn't want you to touch on the device).
• Tell: The most efficient way to tell people about your app is to get it into one of the Top XX lists in the App Store - that's tough. Other methods include viral distribution, traditional marketing approaches etc. It's only partially in your hands, but it can only get better with time.
• Convince: Apple can't really help you here (besides TV ads - only select few get there). Consumers must "want" your app before they will be willing to pay for it. And it's entirely up to you to make them want it.

Getting the message out to the masses is hard enough as it is. But what if you DO spend money and time promoting your application, only to find out that people go to your App Store page and DON'T click the "buy" button, for whatever reason?

Some products suffer from such "perception" problem - people don't realize how much they will like an iPhone app before they buy it, which prevents them from paying for it. It's easy to say "no" and move on before you know anything about that app, because there are so many others. But if the developer had a chance to spend some time with each potential buyer, number of sales would go up dramatically.

Make it speak for itself

You probably already know where this is going, so lets cut to the chase. If you believe that your app is great and people will love it, make absolutely damn sure that there is NOTHING that prevents users from discovering how good it is. 2 major steps here:

• Make a "Lite" version - best way to show it off is to let them try it for free. Then, make it super easy to buy the full version.
• Don't stop them - make it as easy as possible to get to the best parts of your app, especially when we are talking about games. Accessibility is key. Happy users purchase full versions and tell their friends about your app. Unhappy users leave bad reviews. Usability barriers create unhappy users.

If you still can't attract people after you've done those 2 things, it probably means that you need to improve your app to make it more appealing or that you aren't addressing the market correctly. That's a whole other discussion, better left for some other time...

Example and a bit of stats

The other day, I was showing Scramboni to somebody who have just downloaded it for the first time. Their first question was "How do I start playing?", to which I helpfully replied with "You need to register first, click on that button over there". The followup question was "Why?" - that's when I pulled out my own phone and showed them the game (which automatically logs you in every time you launch it, after you register initially). They ended up liking the game.

But that "Why?" stuck in my head. I dug up some download/registration numbers and it seems that only about 40% of people that download Scramboni end up opening an account and actually trying out the gameplay. (keep in mind that it's free and under 10mb, so the barrier to getting it on your iPhone/iPod is very low). You need an Internet connection to play, but we warn people about it beforehand. I can't think of anything that would explain such low number, besides the "register before you play" requirement. (Hey, the lobby screen can't be THAT ugly ). And it's not like the registration process is super hard - it only requires you to fill out 3 fields. But it seems that it might still be too much for some players.

Conclusion

Often, you don't get a chance to sell (as in "persuade people to buy") your product. That's when you need to help it sell itself by removing barriers to entry.

Links

• Gavin Bowman from Antair Games on "Lite" version of Sneezies
• Evan from Veiled Games, on "Lite" versions
• 11 Ways to Market Your iPhone App, from iGroupMac
• My thoughts on "Lite" versions

-- Peter Bakhyryev

Pinch Media's presentation about iPhone app usage stats raised some interesting questions and prompted us to look into how Scramboni is being used by our players. We don't have an analytics package plugged in, but there is enough data on our servers to compare some of the metrics with those provided by Pinch Media.

Lets start with their numbers. At first glance, "on average, after 20 days, only 5% of users keep using apps that they paid for" sounds surprising (Slide 13 in Pinch Media's presentation). On the other hand, we are talking "average" here, which could be easily misleading. Crappy apps that people don't end up coming back to drag this metric way down. I paid $9.99 for "Things" and use it on a daily basis - best 10 bucks ever spent. On the other hand, there are a few games that I paid for, but haven't really played much. At the same time, you'd think that users spend more time with apps that they paid for - and it does seem to be the case (compare slides 13 and 12), but the numbers are only slightly higher. Slides 14 and 15 talk about breakdown between categories. Games aren't as sticky as some other apps, apparently.

How does Scramboni fare? Here is the chart, to be compared with slides 12, 13 and 14: (Click to enlarge)

Looks like Scramboni is at least twice as "sticky" as an average app in Pinch Media's data set. Returning user rate dropped below 5% on day 55, compared to days 25 and 22 for an average free and paid app according to their data. Sports category apps come closest, crossing the 5% mark around day 43.

Another data point: rough calculations tell us that our most loyal user has spent more than 200 hours playing the game so far. 12 players spent more than 100 hours. 783 players spent more than 10 hours. 83 minutes is the total amount of time that an "average" Scramboni player spent in game.

Why is that so?

That's a $100,000 dollar question. I'd love to know precise answer myself, if it existed. Pinch Media is probably in a much better position to try and come up with some sort of a correlation between feature sets and usage metrics, due to them having a much larger sample of apps. But then again, this is the area where science begins to lose it's power to predict and calculate things, with human psychology playing a much larger role - you can't always compute "why" people like something, only that they "do" like it.

Listen to your users

As for Scramboni, lets listen to what users have to say. We have received over 400 feedback emails in the course of 8 months (if your app doesn't have an easily accessible "mailto:" link that allows people to send feedback, you are missing out, big time). Most players tell us that they like the ability to play with other people. Every game is like a little tournament. Without a doubt, multiplayer competition is a lot of fun.

Another thing that seems to make people come back is the escalating level of difficulty - it's the same trick that keeps World of Warcraft players glued to their monitors. Each level ups the ante, making you want to progress higher. Granted, there are only 3 levels in Scramboni right now, and some people told us that they stopped playing because levels ran out and it became boring. Lesson: give your players room to grow, make the gameplay more varied and challenging as they progress. Always have things for your players to discover, don't reveal everything at once - that would be like a book that describes it's own ending in chapter 1.

Stickier app = more value

Every app is a miniature brand. There is a reason why when Bejeweled 2 comes out, people take notice - if it was any other company releasing a similar puzzle game, it would be foolish to expect same level of response from the public. The stickier your app is, the more value you can extract from it by releasing sequels, porting it to other platforms (Facebook or Android) and more people will recommend it to their friends. Once your company name starts getting recognized, you are no longer limited to rehashing same app to make money - new stuff that comes out of your dev shop will naturally get a boost just because YOU made it. The app stampede at the App Store is making it painfully clear that in order to survive and create a sustainable business around iPhone development, you need to be recognized and remembered (nothing new here, markets worked like this since the first caveman learned how to make stone axes better than anybody else in the vicinity).

If you don't build a brand, you drown in the noise. Make it stick.

-- Peter Bakhyryev