Hummi.nz — Month one report
This whole journey of me launching an app started with a one week challenge to develop and release an app in a week. The app is called Hummi.nz, where people can hum songs for others to guess. A very simple concept, but it proved to be an entertaining idea for many people.
Highlights
🚀 Launched on Hacker News and reached #9 in the main section and #1 in the show section
🚀 Launched on Product Hunt, received 80 upvotes and was featured on the main page for most of the day
👥 502 user accounts
🔻 705 app downloads
⭐ 17 reviews with a total of 3.9 ⭐
🍏 30 people interested in the iOS version (will try to have a June release for iOS)
📈 Over 100 users using the app every day
🎤 499 songs hummed
👨💻 10 updates
Getting the app noticed with the website
To create the initial traction, I created a website to showcase the app and add buttons for downloading for subscribing to news. The website address is exactly like the app name, Hummi.nz. I wanted to keep this consistent across web and native OS. I’m not sure if this will help me SEO-wise, but it was worth a shot and I liked the name. I posted this on a couple of subreddits and on Hacker News, generating a spike in app downloads and website traffic as seen below:
The first spike was caused by getting to the top of the show section and 9th on the main page in Hacker News. The second spike, there in the middle, was the launch on Product Hunt. Not as successful as HN, but quite good nonetheless. The total number of unique user sessions on the website this month was 1501.
Play Store metrics
In the beginning, the same story as with the website. I’ve seen spikes in downloads at the same times as above, coinciding with the HN and PH launches. The successful launch on HN resulted in about 140 new installs in the space of two days.
Interesting to note that in-between the Hacker News post and the next spike at the end of the graph, I actually did post the app on multiple subreddits, xda forums and facebook groups, but nothing seemed to help me get more downloads. It was sitting on a stable 2–3 downloads/day, but then I read more about App Store Optimisation (ASO) and how it’s a very good practice to identify keywords that can get your app in front of potential users organically on the store.
Play Store ASO
The best decision was to document myself more on the ASO best practices. I identified keywords that work best with Hummi.nz like humming, song, sing, social, community, guessing and so on. One nice way to identify these keywords is to also research what keywords other apps that you want to associate yours with are using. So, for example, I inspired myself while re-writing the description from apps like Smule, Shazam, SoundHound, etc. The results? You can see those on the chart above or you can have a look at the spike in daily, weekly and monthly users below.
Challenges
The main two challenges:
- Developing Hummi.nz and launching it in the space of a week
- Maintaining focus while for the most of the month I was getting only ~3 downloads/day
The first challenge was described more in-depth in my previous post and it gave me a boost in confidence to finally release something and not abandoning it like most of my side hustles.
The second challenge was a bit more painful. The curious thing is that I wasn’t actually planning on continuing with the development of the app, but since it was received so well on Hacker News, it gave me hope that the app could turn into something bigger than I imagined. It was a slow disappointment afterwards as the downloads were going down dramatically even though I was releasing nice new features that some people requested.
Next month’s plans and goals
- Introduce filtering on song genres
- Introduce a support program where users could support me to develop the app and can feedback on features they would like to see in the app
- Optimise my database queries and API
- Introduce user profiles
- Add an achievement system
- Reach 5000+ downloads
- Maintain a review score of 4+ ⭐
Feel like humming some songs? Get hummi.nz from the Play Store ✌
I post updates regularly on my Twitter so make sure you give @razvanilin a follow if you’re interested in keeping up-to-date with news about Hummi.nz and other techy stuff.
Originally published at Răzvan Ilin’ Blog.
