Chronicles of a garage App
Here is a post where I am about to tell you the story of the launch of my “garage App”: BuStopZ.
BuStopZ is an App I did during my free time: I made everything myself from the code to the graphics. It is probably not perfect but I had a lot of fun doing it!
From the idea to App
It’s an App that let you browse bus, subway and tramways stops and lines on a map and in augmented reality. For more details read: Do You know BuStopZ??.
The idea came to me as I was looking for a bus stop (that I never found) in my own city and I realized that there was no App for that!!
In France if you live in Paris or some other big city you can buy Apps (one App per city) to get stops and lines but there was nothing outside those Apps, so I decided to go and build my own App: free with full country support.
BuStopZ was not my first iOS App, as I did some others for my work. But this time, I decided to do it for me, alone…
I started with the part I know the best: App design and development. It took me, almost 5 months to finish the App as I worked on it only during my evenings.
As soon as the first release was ready I decided to send it on the App Store : I took some screenshots, wrote a short description and waited… Waited for the validation process.
The first version was only targeted to France as the App was not able to support per country databases yet.
The website
While I was waiting for the App to reach the App Store, I decided to build a small website to present it: on the App Store, all Apps look the same and I wanted something more personal. I did it in one or 2 days and put it online (this is the site you can find at http://www.bustopz.com).
As soon as the website was online, I sent the link to my friends on Facebook, and also tweeted about it: I got some visits, but not that much (for your sake, I had around 80 friends on Facebook, and 20 followers on Twitter at this moment).
The first release
Then one day, BuStopZ finally came out on the App Store. The day it came out I did post the news on Facebook and Twitter again, but also wrote some posts on forums around the web where I thought people might be interested.
On the first day (27th of september 2010), I got 10 downloads: a really good start I thought, on the second day I got 44 downloads (my personal world record!), on the third day: 35 downloads. That was much more than I was thinking of! And I didn’t know where all those people could come from…
Then, on the following days everything went back to normal: 10 downloads, then 5… and finally 2 downloads.
Version 1.1: going slightly international and get money with iAd
In october, I released a new version of BuStopZ (1.1) in which I enabled iAd (Apple advertising program), and went international by adding 2 more countries: Belgium and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, downloads did not move that much and almost nobody downloaded the App in Belgium and Switzerland. However I noticed many faithful users upgraded to the new version and I started getting some (few) dollars from iAd: $1.62 in november and $5.91 in december.
Talking about iAd: I still don’t know how the thing work: sometimes I get money when nobody clicks, sometimes no…
Version 1.1.1: even more countries
Mid january, I released yet another version (1.1.1) with some improvements and 2 more countries: Germany and Great Britain. For the moment, it seems nothing really changed and I’m still stuck to 2 downloads per day but I need to do more advertising for new countries.
Lessons for the future
Launching my own App was a good test for me: I wanted to know how it works when you do your own App without any other support… And now, I know.
The story is not over, as I have already planned new features for the App and that I want to continue improve it anyway… But I have already learnt some lessons so far.
So here are some things I will try to do if I decide to launch a new App someday:
- Try to make the most ‘universal’ App possible: I think BuStopZ is a useful application, but it is only useful to people using urban public transports… And that is not the case for most of my friends. More over, it is not the kind of App that users launch 10 times a day. Maybe I should have found a more ‘universal’ idea. Involving social networks maybe?
- Have a good contact network: after the idea, the contact network is the most important key for success, I think. I have a poor contact network and most of my friends on Facebook don’t care about iPhone Apps. Anyway, from my point of view, Twitter seems more interesting for an App launch, but you need tons of followers (or have influential ones) to spread the word.
- Distribute a preview version before the launch: for a successful launch, it is much better to have users already knowning the App and talking about it: I learnt that on the App Store, it is on the first week that you get the most visibility (and downloads) so users need to know the App before it comes out. A good idea would be to launch a public beta with tools like TestFlight to let users know it exists but also to get feedback from them (found bugs, feature suggestions,…).
- Make a demo video and a dedicated website to promote the App: I had the idea of making a website for the App, because on the App Store all Apps look the same. I realized it was a good idea when I saw that almost half people coming on the website downloaded the App. But I still miss something: a demo video. A video is a good way to present the App as users will see it on a real device, in a real situation. Finally putting the video on YouTube (or Dailymotion) is also a good way to get a bit more visibility, as some people will probably discover your App through that network.
These were my first thoughts on iOS garage App launch. I will try to post more about it soon…
Originally published at https://blog.grousset.fr on February 4, 2011.
