Coronavirus App: How Did We Launch and Promote a Free App with Agile Methodology
Based on the true story.
Carrying out a project in an agile marketing strategy is a trendy thing of our time. Noticing hype stuff, generating ideas in a crazy mode, reacting fast and getting a successful product in the end. Easy as pie. No doubt, a successful result is attractive, but today we will show behind the scene of creating a product in agile marketing as we at Bitsens had an experience in it.
The story is long and super instructive. It’s touching upon the case that hadn’t had a precedent before (at least in our work) and show how prepared and fast is the digital world to react on upcoming changes. Put a coffee next to you, open a notebook on your computer to make notes and let’s dive straight into the story.
Short story review
At the end of January Bitsens released its 24-hour-made app called Coronavirus. It was an informative app that showed a regularly updating statistics on illness world’s state by World Health Organization (WHO), provided health recommendations for daily practices and allowed to check symptoms presence of coronavirus.
The app was submitted to Google Play, App Store, then published on a Product Hunt and received online media support. The Coronavirus app project last for 4 weeks, so in this article, we will cover each week to highlight the challenges we faced, solutions we applied and results we achieved.
Week 1
Almost at the beginning of a New Year, the world got hit by a devastating piece of news: the Coronavirus outbreaks and lethal cases were first recorded in China. No one expected it to grow up fast, but later on, the virus cases were found outside the Chinese border and started steadily spreading across the world.
The premise for creating a digital product was perfect: everyone talked about the issue, people needed more information about the dangerous illness and we could contribute to the world’s situation by providing a qualified mobile application that everyone has been looking for. Without thinking too much, we decided to launch a mobile app about coronavirus. At that moment there were several coronavirus quickly-made-and-simple applications, but we’re aimed to create a one that offers a wide range of useful information and functions to its users and has a better UI and mobile performance. We’ve set some work requirements and limitations not to go beyond during the 1st phase of the project: the app should have shown a constant download growth, so we would have continued investing human resources and finances into it.
“For the last couple of years, Bitsens has learnt to identify the upcoming world’s trends in media buzz. Based on the online media articles, we clearly saw that the coronavirus topic is going to be at the top soon and decided to create an application which will be interested and useful for a big audience. — Vadim Khadakou, Founder of Bitsens”.
On Jan, 30 in the morning after a meeting we’ve started creating our mobile application. The idea came the following: create a mobile product that would show its users a world’s statistics on coronavirus, infographics on how to secure yourself and a checklist with symptoms. Where did we take the info? From the World Health Organization’s website which information was public and open to use with mentioning their source. After defining key sections, our UX&UI designer has started working on a UX prototype and finally UI design was ready in a few hours. It was sent to Bitsens’s developer for cross-platform programming. We started ASO activities simultaneously by asking our copywriter to write texts for both Apple Store and Google Play and our design intern to prepare marketing assets.
NB! Each platform has different requirements for text symbols. For instance, the subtitle on Google Play is 80 symbols maximum, on App Store — 30 symbols max. The same applies to the visual part. Check the requirements in advance before assigning a task. It has a loooot of nuances.
At the end of the day (literally), we’ve got:
- a fully functional version of Coronavirus app;
- prepared copywriting texts (title, subtitle, app description, keywords, texts for screenshots) for Google Play and App Store;
- ready marketing visuals (screenshots, icons, etc.);
- filled app’s Instagram and Facebook pages.
On January 31, 2020 we released the Coronavirus App. It was published on Google Play, but the first obstacle just came across: the App Store hasn’t approved our application. Here what was wrong:
“Design — Minimal Functionality:
We found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes”.
Week 1’s results:
- Created Coronavirus App within 24 hours;
- Published app on Google Play;
- App’s rejection by App Store.
Week 2
The letter we got from App Store was a beginning of a long communication journey with their support team for publishing our application. We made an appeal trying to explain why we disagree with their position, but taking into account their comments, like a humble A+ student we created several updates next days and submitted them all accordingly not only to App Store but to Google Play as well. Here are the following changes we’ve made:
- a visualization map with coronavirus outbreaks;
- detailed statistics by countries;
- improved UI design;
- distance counter to the nearest virus outbreak.
We absolutely picked up the vibe with this app and enjoyed every moment working with it. Our excitement grew as well as our plans and we even were thinking about implementing a map showing the interconnection between the oil price in countries and their affection to coronavirus. But guess what happened next? While Google Play was silent, we’ve got a new message from App Store offering us another reason for rejection:
“Legal — Intellectual Property
Your app must be published under a seller name and company name that reflects the source of the information in your app or by a recognized institution, such as a hospital, insurance company, pharmacy, non-governmental organization, or university.”
Meanwhile, our marketing activities gained momentum and showed more positive results.
The big boom came from online media and showed the first results of our work. On February 3 for about 10 online media wrote articles in Russian, English and Lithuanian languages about our app, including Lithuanian Tribune, TUT.by, Sputnik News, etc. without any preliminary media and advertising budgets. The funniest thing is that as information started spreading on the Internet, the faster everything turned into a Chinese Whisper: some facts about the agency and our app were mixed up a bit.
We didn’t plan app advertising in the beginning and first see how well it would perform with free marketing tools before making a financial investment into it. Thus, a Product Hunt became the main platform for our focused promoting activities started on the same day. We’re aiming to raise awareness of our app by finding popular hunters in the field of fitness&health, so they can “hunt our app” and their followers would get notifications about a new product. Copywriting texts were ready, list of hunters-influencers contacts was created, the invitation letter sample was written and we started sending them. The reaction followed: one hunter replied and agreed to participate for free. We scheduled a Coronavirus app publication on February 5, 2020.
NB! After a few days after our app was published on Product Hunt, a few more hunters positively replied to our invitation. Thus, note, if planning such activities, send invitations to hunters in advance. It might take some time to get their answers.
The Product Hunt published our app earlier than the day we’ve set due to technical reasons. Their support service reacted fast after our letter and the release was moved to the next day as planned. Many PH’s users supported our mobile application after release and upvoted it. We were looking forward to getting a “Product of the Day” as the badge appeared on our page (Pic. 4). With more than 200 upvotes and positive comments, our Coronavirus app was ranked 7th place among 15 other apps participating which brought us an additional marketing support.
Week 2’s results:
- Updates submitted to Google Play and App Store;
- App Store provided 2 different reasons for rejecting the app publication;
- More than 10 articles were published in online media about our app;
- Published on Product Hunt and ranked 7th place.
Week 3
Our fight communication rounds with App Store continued. After their letter reasoning app’s rejection by the violation of Intellectual property, we wrote a new letter on February 8, 2020 providing arguments that WHO doesn’t prohibit using their information in public until the source is mentioned. Apparently, App Store representatives saw that communication through letters is pointless and suggested to schedule a call to discuss our appeal. We agreed. The call date was set on February 10, 2020.
Bitsens’s founder talked to App Store representatives which changed their reasoning for the 3rd time in the last 2 weeks. Now the problem was not in violation of intellectual property, but in the fact that health information in our app considered to be sensitive data, especially in the case of coronavirus. They’ve made a decision that apps providing such data are only allowed to be published by established medical institutions like the Ministry of Health, World Health Organization, etc. We disagreed saying that App Store had many apps about coronavirus, but then we checked it again and all apps were deleted. So, the Coronavirus app case might also be a trigger for the wave of deleting coronavirus mobile applications. Thus, there was no possibility for our app to be published by Bitsens.
In addition to these sad events, we’ve been writing letters to Google Play all weeks asking why the service reviewing our updates for such a long time. They’ve been sending us absurdly equal answers stating the same — we’re reviewing your app — and didn’t provide any specific reasoning.
Week 3’s results:
- Written about 4–5 letters and 5 chats to Google Play regarding long period review of app updates;
- Final app rejection reason by App Store was provided;
- No chance for the Coronavirus app to be published by Bitsens on App Store.
Week 4
On February 24, 2020 our Coronavirus app was deleted from Google Play. On February 25 we’ve got the first and the last letter from Google Play stating almost the same reason as App Store:
“During review, we found that your app violates the Sensitive Events policy. Specifically, we don’t allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event”.
The Coronavirus App was deleted from Google Play and the project was closed at this point.
Reflection and further events
Finally, we breathed with relief. Obviously, not because of the unhappy ending, but due to the fact that our story has found its certain and logical end coming to which we’ve learned a lot and took into account may tips. Let’s reflect a bit on our experience.
What is our attitude toward agile marketing?
We believe agile marketing is for those who are fast-reacting, anticipating and ready for big changes to apply. It comes from the fact that the approach itself is very unstable and fast-moving. There is no time for preparation, measuring risk in details, defining project’s outcomes except those global ones you set at the beginning which serve just as simple orientation marks. However, agile marketing works better when you have practice. And at Bitsens, it’s our 3rd project made in agile marketing. We’ve already created The Floors is Lava app with augmented reality technology for iOS users and moved into the AR mask creation direction on Instagram, creating specifically our Brexit mask for Brexit events .
What have we learned from the Coronavirus App project?
We’ve explored deeper the way App Store and Google Play react to agile marketing products and how flexible they are towards publishing apps, reviewing updates, etc. Not to mention, collaboration with hunters, scheduled posts on Product Hunt, online media reaction and publishing on social media. The most important thing we wanted to deliver with this article is that there are numerous possibilities to create and promote a free app that will show stable users’ growth.
How do we evaluate the Coronavirus App project?
We consider the Coronavirus App to be a successful projects despite its ending. A few days after release, the app showed a positive statistics result and a global interest. Our app got top 5 in 2 countries, a bigger number of new users in comparison to the previous ones were coming everyday without any ads and we received media support without any paid promotions. That’s impressive, isn’t it?
It’s a pity the world hasn’t seen numerous updates and screens we’ve added since they would make the app look a way better for using it. Even after the app was removed from Google Play, more than 2000 users were still in touch with it. After the project was closed we still were receiving requests about the absence of statistics or the broken link to download the Coronavirus App on Google Play. If our updates would have been approved and iOS users would have a chance to use the app, the application could be even more successful.
Nevertheless, we are proud of the final result. Thanks to devoted Bitsens’s team, we were able to carry a nice project and obtain new information from development to post-production activities. So, if you’re aimed to create any application in agile marketing, you always have Bitsens agency at your hand to consult and carry out the project with you. Just write to hello@bitsens.com. See you!
The end.
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