A tale of 2 apps
Swift is less than two years old, and I’ve loved it from the beginning. It’s easy to read/write, has a ton of smart features and a great community of people constantly pushing it forward. But this isn’t about Swift as much as what Swift has enabled me to do — and that’s to release 2 apps on iOS. Building these apps have taught me a ton about Swift, the App Store, and the multitude of decisions that go into launching an app.
My first app was a modern take on digital chess clocks. Since there isn’t a huge market for this type of app, it allowed me to take some risks in design as well as giving me exposure to working in Swift in the real world and publishing through the App Store. In addition to that, this app gave me the chance to try the freemium business model. Anyone can download a full-functioning, but for a larger feature set, users can pay $0.99 to unlock the Pro Version.
No matter how many downloads the app gets, in-app purchases have hovered just above 5%
The chess clock app has been live in the App Store for nearly a year now closing in on 400 downloads (I was hoping it would reach 100, so I’m stoked.) While it’s been in the App Store I’ve been able to track large amounts of data from Apple’s analytics tools and no matter how many downloads the app gets, in-app purchases have hovered just above 5%. Another thing I’ve noticed is that although it has a decent amount of downloads for such a niche app, it doesn’t rank super high in the App Store for search terms relating to chess clocks, because apparently what it makes up for in clean design it clearly lacks in reviews, currently at zero.
Fast forward to late 2015 when I released my second app, Keepers, along with my design partner. This app is designed for the sole purpose of making it easier and faster to curate images from iPhone.
In building this app, I dove deeper into Swift (specifically the Photos Framework), got more experience iterating on different UI designs, and I really figured out the process of working on a project where the team members weren’t sitting in the same place (hint: git and IM are key.) In addition to those learnings, we tried a different business model than I used on the chess clock app. Keepers cost $1.99 from the App Store. No free version and no in-app purchases.
So, it’s made more money than the chess clock app, but has been download nearly 75% less times
We did some outreach when we launched Keepers and got some decent Twitter love. It was featured on Product Hunt, which gave it a good boost for a few days. The app was also mentioned by a lifestyle blogger, which got a boost equal- if not better — than the Product Hunt feature. But the total downloads as of this writing is just over 100. So, Keepers has made more money than the chess clock app, but it has been download nearly 75% less times, which is good to know if you prefer dollars over downloads.
(I still want to try an ad-supported business model, but neither of these apps seemed appropriate for that.)
So, given what I learned from these two experiences, consider the following:
- Decide whether downloads or money is the measurement of success for your app. The business model will fall out of that.
- If you choose a market that has existing solutions, make yours stand out at a glance in the App Store; do not rely on just a description of features.
- If you create an app that solves a new problem, you need to market the problem as much as the app.
- Test with users constantly. Both apps would have looked and worked significantly different if I hadn’t put the app in peoples hands early on.
- If you want reviews, you HAVE to ask for them either in app or on social media. And if you do ask for them, don’t bug people and only ask them after they’ve engaged you about the app first.
I hope this helps others out. If there are things that you’ve learned from building apps, please drop them in the comments. The indie dev market may be flooded, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help each other out whenever we can.
