How to build and sell apps
Hi, I am Mike Hernas and I have cofounded Stamp App. After 9 months we support 3 platforms, we have sold more than 15000 copies and we are integrating more and more services.
I want to share what mistakes we have made so maybe you won’t repeat them in future! :)
1. Gather emails as soon as possible and require them on payment
This gives you the ability to later contact your users/customers and inform them about your new products, new releases or pricing. After we have released iOS app, we send the email to 10k users and we got immediately 150 sales the same day.
2. Make sure you gather all data about payment.
Country, last 4 digits of credit card or PayPal id. You don’t know yet what you will need for accounting or refunds etc. We lost around 3k€ in taxes just because we didn’t save the country of payment at the beginning. Better to have it than not.
3. Customer support takes so much time… outsource it.
We have spent past 6 months replying to users. It made us frustrated, exhausted and we hated each part of it. I mean, users have normal questions, they want refunds and help if something does not work. On the other hand, you want to focus on development, website or marketing. Emails take around 2h a day however they also steal your focus. If you can, ask your sister, cousin or whoever you know to reply emails. It will be worth it.
4. At the beginning, focus on the app and later on the rest.
Use free templates, bootstrap and anything you can get fast and free. Focus on problems nobody else solves which should be your core business. You will have time later to improve other parts.
After we ordered new design and released it, we cannot really tell if it changed our sales. We got a little bit more of them but this could be marginal error.
5. SEO, SEO, SEO… start as soon as possible.
What I mean here is to just use <h1> tags, add correct keywords on your web page, use `alt` in images etc. so Google puts you higher in results since beginning. This changes a lot and after we replaced our web page with new design without looking at SEO, we went down at Google. There is no magic, just read some top 10 SEO tips or use some online tool. (I can recommend woorank.com)
6. Maybe change the price…?
We were playing with few different scenarios like 4,99€, 5,99€, 8,99€, 7,99€, 11,99€ (all -1 cent of course…) and we were checking what generates the most revenue (sometimes it is better to have fewer sales with the higher price because it means you have fewer support requests).
It happened that higher price with less customer was the most optimal one (8,99€) for our operational costs and revenue.
7. Offer something for free, let user test your app and they will pay later.
Since beginning the Stamp was a free app with some limits. Because of this, users were able to test if the app really works. After some successful action, we tried to engage him and ask for money. Users are more willing to pay for something that proved itself.
If you have any question or just want to talk, ping me on Twitter (@hernas)
