App Sales, What’s Hot – What’s Not – #2: New & Noteworthy in an iTunes Category

This post continues my analysis of some App Store conditions.

The first post can be found here: App Sales, What’s Hot – What’s Not – #1: Category Featured


#2 – New & Noteworthy in iTunes

When you release a new App you get a chance of getting listed in the New & Noteworthy section on the iTunes within your category.

These aren’t hand picked and so it is very easy to get in there if your first day downloads are high enough. I had two App releases where I could watch what happens if you get into that list.


Looking New & Noteworthy

Here are two screenshots, showing both Apps on top of their categories in iTunes in two different countries:

The Apps are Analytics for iPad (iPad only) and Webshot (Universal).

The duration of the listing is very short and depends very much on how many new releases are published into that category. From what I have seen, you get listed for about 1-2 days.


How to analyse this position

I will compare them with two other releases which were iPad only and Universal – both never listed in this prominent spot.

Because these are new releases, there are no previous sale statistics that could increase. Therefor I will compare the first four weeks of sales after release.
The sales will be compared with sales made in the same country they were listed New & Noteworthy.


Sales numbers – iPad App only

First the one that was New & Noteworthy:

The graph is not exactly four weeks because the App is not that old yet, but the trend is visible.

You can see a spike on the first day and sales going down very fast to a constant level.


And one that wasn’t New & Noteworthy:

No spike in the beginning but a slowly growing number of sales over time.


Sales numbers – Universal App


Again, first the New & Noteworthy one:

Again: You can see a spike on the first day and sales going down very fast. Later they start growing again, very slowly.


And the one which was not:

No spike in the beginning. No growth visible in that country.

On a side note: Most sales for Universal Apps seem to be iPhone based, iPad users still seem to have problems finding Apps.
Originally these Universal Apps were meant for the iPad and made iPhone compatible to reach a bigger audience.


Conclusion

These numbers are very tough to read because the event is so short and the numbers are not that high.

But a trend can be found and looks promising. If you get listed in the New & Noteworthy listing on iTunes you seem to get a good and very visible spot to kick off your new App.

In contrast to not being listed, you will find the sales trends going down instead of up in the following weeks because there is a huge spike in the beginning that you can not repeat without other marketing or promotions.

Thats why this seems to be a worthy spot to claim.

But how can you improve your chances?
I will try to use promo codes. Getting all available promo codes into user hands and get them to purchase my App within the first hours after its release may be worth a try.

Published on 2010/07/03 13:10.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , , , , , , , ,

App Sales, What’s Hot – What’s Not – #1: Category Featured

If you are selling on the App Store you might start wondering on how you will sell your Apps.

Well, some people won’t think but just put their App in the store and wait what happens (I am such a guy ;-)

But afterwards I made some observations I would like to share, especially because there are so few developers that share their experience with the Store.

I will split my observations into different posts to make it 1) easier to read and 2) to allow myself to pause between posts :-)

I will write about the following conditions and events:

  1. Category Featured
  2. New and Noteworthy listing in iTunes Category
  3. “Free for one Day” Promotions
  4. in the Spotlight / in the “What’s hot section” on the iPads App Store
  5. What’s new listing on the iPad and iTunes
  6. Keyword optimization
  7. TV Popularity of an unrelated show
  8. Visual Quality (yes, you heard me!)
  9. Ranking Positions (Top 10 – Top 100)

Not necessary in that exact order. I might sort the list after everything is written and published.

These conditions and events have been made with three different Apps totally unrelated to each other.

So. Let’s begin.


#1 – Category Featured

jQuery Reference is a nice small App to lookup all import jQuery related stuff without opening a browser or searching google. Basically it is a searchable list of the jQuery function listing and its documentation.

The App has been released on Apr 14th shortly after the iPad has been launched and Apple was still playing with the App Store functionality.

In the beginning it climbed into the Top 25 of its category, which wasn’t too hard because there were not many iPad Apps. After a few days it slowly lost its ranking and finally went into something below 100. It came back between 9am – 8pm PST into the rankings when people were buying it.

All numbers for sales and rankings are for the US Store only!
Excluding the rest of the world keeps the stats clean from unknown factors or random customers in some distant countries.


Ranking

On May 5th I noticed a spike in the ranking in its category “Reference”. The App was in the “Featured” Apps on top of its category.

Within hours it jumped back into the top 50 at, this time because of it was “Featured”:


The ranking got a bit more solid for the following two weeks until it was removed from the featured listing.

Screenshots: Category Featured

This is how the featured looked like on the iPad. When someone opened the category “Reference” he got a list of featured Apps on top.
The App was three screens next to the center on the category “Reference” on the iPads version of the App Store:

 

Sales Numbers

If rankings are affected, sales must be too, because only sales can push you up in the rankings.

Well, here are the true sales numbers:

 

Keep in mind that the sales statistics are compiled only once a day on the end of the day. The sales numbers are in units.

The average of 4 sales per day increased to 6 per day which is a 50% increase. The percentage should not be applied to other Apps, the sales numbers are too low to read too much into them.

 

Interesting is also what happens after the featured status was gone. Here are the sales numbers for four weeks after that:

The sales average dropped back to an average of 4 per day and the ranking went down to below the top 100.

While this looks and sounds like nothing was really going on, looking at the big picture of the revenues of that timeframe everything becomes clearer:

The sales were constant in the featured time compared to very random sales before and after. The week following the feature the sales were still a bit higher, which might be caused by the higher rankings. After that sales dropped very fast to zero.

I plan to submit an update with some minor enhancements to see how much influence it has.

 

Conclusion

Conclusion? It’s nice to have such a small category feature and it makes a difference but it won’t make you rich.

There were only 3 million sold iPads after the analyzed time (wasn’t it 3 million after 80 days? correct me if I’m wrong!), making possible customers still very rare.
But when I first seen the feature I was thinking about hundreds of possible customers buying my App – well, the next day told me otherwise: two more customers ;-)

It seems that Apple has dropped the Category-Features in many categories, maybe because it was too much work and too less revenue ;-)
The game section appears to be the only one left which such a Featured-Listing.

 

Oh, and if you are curious about the App, you can find it here: jQuery Reference :-)

Published on 2010/06/29 14:24.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

Analytics for iPad, Release 1.2

A new release for Analytics for iPad has been submitted to Apple today.

Depending on the current speed of Apple’s review process it may take about 10 days to hit the store.

Here is a list of all the things to come with the 1.2 release:

New Features:

  • eCommerce Reporting added
  • Forward Reports as Excel-CSV
  • Forward Reports as XML
  • Possibility to switch to another account added
  • Language Support for Reports added for:
    Deutsch, Français, 日本語, Nederlands, Italiano, Español, 中文 (简体), Русский


Improved:

  • Animation for Fullscreen Reporting improved
  • Report Titles shortened for better readability
  • Several Reports display more than 10 entries by default (configuration for an exact count is on the way)


Bugfix:

  • Fixed a crash that happened if the Premium-Upgrade was done too fast after application launch
  • Fixed a problem in the Login form which blocked a second login after a time out


In the meantime we will work on other features to improve Analytics for iPad to meet your needs!

Keep sending us emails with your ideas and wishes, so we know which direction to go!

2010/07/03 – Today the update hit the store, watch out for update notices in iTunes or the App Store to get it on your iPad!

Published on 2010/06/27 21:37.
Filed under: Updates Tags:

product sections added

I have just started to move the product descriptions of all iPad Apps to this site.

That is:

(click on the link to learn more ;)

All posts are dated back to their original release date.

Published on 2010/06/27 21:14.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

UIScrollView and lazy loading

If you have encountered memory problems loading too many images into your UIScrollView, lazy loading them is your answer.
Lazy loading describes an easy technique to load only what should be shown, no more.

Lazy loading of images in a UIScrollView is critical because of the iPhone/iPads/iPods low physical memory.

Doing it on the other hand is very easy if you follow these four steps:

1. Listen for scrollViewDidScroll on your delegate, like this:

-(void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)myScrollView {
}


2. Calculate the current page using the known size of your images:

	/**
	 *	calculate the current page that is shown
	 *	you can also use myScrollview.frame.size.height if your image is the exact size of your scrollview
	 */
	int currentPage = (myScrollView.contentOffset.y / currentImageSize.height);


3. Look if the image already exists, if not, add it:

	// display the image and maybe +/-1 for a smoother scrolling
	// but be sure to check if the image already exists, you can do this very easily using tags
	if ( [myScrollView viewWithTag:(currentPage +1)] ) {
		return;
	}
	else {
		// view is missing, create it and set its tag to currentPage+1
	}


4. And don’t forget to clean your memory:

	/**
	 *	using your paging numbers as tag, you can also clean the UIScrollView
	 *	from no longer needed views to get your memory back
	 *	remove all image views except -1 and +1 of the currently drawn page
	 */
	for ( int i = 0; i < currentPages; i++ ) {
		if ( (i < (currentPage-1) || i > (currentPage+1)) && [myScrollView viewWithTag:(i+1)] ) {
			[[myScrollView viewWithTag:(i+1)] removeFromSuperview];
		}
	}


= And the final combination of all steps:

-(void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)myScrollView {
	/**
	 *	calculate the current page that is shown
	 *	you can also use myScrollview.frame.size.height if your image is the exact size of your scrollview
	 */
	int currentPage = (myScrollView.contentOffset.y / currentImageSize.height);

	// display the image and maybe +/-1 for a smoother scrolling
	// but be sure to check if the image already exists, you can do this very easily using tags
	if ( [myScrollView viewWithTag:(currentPage +1)] ) {
		return;
	}
	else {
		// view is missing, create it and set its tag to currentPage+1
	}

	/**
	 *	using your paging numbers as tag, you can also clean the UIScrollView
	 *	from no longer needed views to get your memory back
	 *	remove all image views except -1 and +1 of the currently drawn page
	 */
	for ( int i = 0; i < currentPages; i++ ) {
		if ( (i < (currentPage-1) || i > (currentPage+1)) && [myScrollView viewWithTag:(i+1)] ) {
			[[myScrollView viewWithTag:(i+1)] removeFromSuperview];
		}
	}
}

Published on 2010/06/27 12:50.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , , ,

Telekom on twitter

Have you seen this?

http://twitter.com/deutschetelekom and http://twitter.com/Telekom_hilft ?

“Der Rosa Riese” mit nichtmal 160 Zeichen – Wer hätte vermutet das die Telekom einmal Support im “Social-Network” macht?

Ich finds super! Vor allem weil das Feedback wirklich hilfreich zu sein scheint, dazu noch ehrlich und für jedermann nachlesbar.

Von mir ganz klar ein:


Macht einen super Eindruck!

Auch im Allgemeinen scheint der Support der Mobilfunkanbieter besser zu sein, zumindest macht es derzeit für mich den Eindruck. Liegt vielleicht auch daran das ich erst zwei Verträge gekündigt habe und von beiden Anbieter jetzt einige Male nett angerufen wurde.

Published on 2010/06/24 20:02.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

Support is so yesterday

Sometimes I wonder how much support one need.

I am working with Google Apps for emails, Apple for selling iPhone Apps and Amazon for some hosting.

All three companies are major players when it comes to internet services.

All three offer some very unique services at a very good price.

In the previous 6 months I had several support issues with all of them and was left wondering, how much support does one really need?


My answer is: None, well, a little bit, but it should be organized.


Let my explain why I came to this conclusion:

These three companies do their homework and have the ambitions to provide very solid premium services. Normally there should not be a need for support because services are running and everything is explained in a help section. That does apply to 99% of their customers for 99.99% of the time.

If you have a support request it will normally be something you can get help yourself by reading the help sections or it is simply a not (yet) supported feature. Use it as it is or leave it.

So why the need for support, if everything is working as expected and you can’t change the services themself? Right, no need for it!

This is exactly how we have run Google Apps the first year without the need for support, we run servers and services on Amazons WebServices the first year without the need for support (except some billing related request in the beginning) and sold iPhone Apps for the last two years without the need for support (except one support request on contract beginning).

But nothing is perfect and sometimes problems emerge that can’t be foreseen. In these cases a well organized support structure is needed. You will need to a clear statement when the problem occurs, a status about the progress and a final statement about it being solved/closed.

From the support requests I had in the last months, I can see only one company offering that kind of basic support structure: Amazon

Published on 2010/06/23 15:15.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , , ,

Apple’s bitten by a bug?

If you are an Apple Developer, you will learn to be patient. You will learn that support mails will need days or weeks before they get answered, sometimes pointing to another support address which previously pointed you to that very address you wrote an email to.

If you are developing for the iPhone/iPod/iPad you will wait an average of two weeks before your App gets posted to the App Store.

Patience is something you really need with Apple, especially with the iPhone Developer Program.

Normally you can live with this, because everything is running smooth and you just need to be patient… but what happens when patience won’t help because something really went wrong and noone is doing anything?

Here’s the story:


The Update

It begins with the patience thing again. After waiting for about two weeks to get an update for an App of mine reviewed and accepted by Apple I went to iTunes Connect and updated the description to match the new features.
I was happy that this update was ready for sale just hours before a scheduled promotion on a website.


Removed from Sale

After I was done with the description a very strange thing happened:
That very App vanished from my administration and shortly after that all my other Apps vanished too accompanied by an email from Apple telling me that they have been “Removed from sale” which is a status Apple documents like this: “Removed from Sale (Red) – appears when the binary has been removed from the App Store.”

The FAQ suggests filling out a contact form with the App’s Id to get information from Apple.



Published on 2010/06/21 01:23.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: , ,

get your own favicon

Everyone noticed these small icons in browsers next to the URL that appeared in the last years.

These so called favicon’s are small icon files that belong to your website complete the look and feel of a layout and will stay on the users computer right next to the bookmark.

So how can you get a good one?

1) The “unique” way:

You can make your own using Photoshop, GIMP or whatever graphic program of your choice.


2) The “easy” way

Go to iconfinder.com and search for a keyword of your choice (i.e. I did a search for “f”(avo) and picked a facebook icon).

Download the ICO file of your wanted icon. (dont forget to read the license first!)

Rename it to favicon.ico

And finally upload it to your website.

Voila! You’ve got a new favicon!


Here’s what I picked:

Links:

WordPress about “Creating a Favicon”
http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Favicon

IconFinder
http://www.IconFinder.com

Published on 2010/06/20 20:00.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags: ,

empty lines in wordpress

I know that the simpliest things are sometimes the hardest to realize and this simple thing was really annoying:

By default the WordPress-WYSIWYG Editor does not accept empty lines because of the code cleaning feature.
If you add an empty line, it will be removed on save. You will need to put something on the line to let it stay, either by writing for example a character with the background color or switching into the HTML mode adding some extra code.

A little wandering around the internet has shown me that many people have this problem and nearly noone really solved it in a “clean” way. In the end I was lead to the following solution:

1) Install the TineMCE Advance Plugin
http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/tinymce-advanced/

2) Check the “Stop removing the

and
tags when saving and show them in the HTML editor” in the options


Voila!




many empty lines wait to be made ;)

Published on 2010/06/20 17:52.
Filed under: Unsorted Tags:

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