Position: VP, marketing
Background: At Flurry, a leading mobile application analytics provider for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms, Peter is in charge of corporate and product marketing. In the past, Peter led product marketing at Electronic Arts, where he managed The Sims franchise, the #1 PC game of all time.
Link: http://www.flurry.com/
Ken: What are the biggest misperceptions developers have about analytics? In general, do they understand the value of them or just see installing them into their apps as a chore?
Peter: Analytics is something our developers choose to add to their applications, so we believe they see value in them. We think they understand the value of learning how consumers interact with their applications. Beyond this, we believe developers can also learn things like where to best place ads, how effective cross-selling is working, or understand click-through conversion rates on offers placed within the application.
Ken: The apps in the App Store range quite a bit, from games to utilities. At a more fundamental level, though, what types of metrics (analytics or otherwise) are important for all developers to pay attention to and track when an app goes into the App Store?
Peter: Engagement and loyalty metrics are important to understand beyond simply the number of times an application is downloaded. These include metrics like frequency of use, length of use session, and retention of users over time. Working to increase these metrics, depending on the application, typically means that developers are focused on increasing customers’ satisfaction. Also of interest is the geographic distribution of users, what operating system and device version they are using, and whether they are connecting through WiFi or carrier networks.
Ken: Are there any baselines for assessing the health of an app? For example, if an app is opened three times per week, is that good or bad? How can developers best compare their apps’ analytics to similar or popular apps?
Peter: This primarily depends on the category of application (e.g., games versus utilities). Flurry has considered but not yet released the ability for a developer to benchmark his application performance within relevant categories. Flurry released some data on this at http://blog.flurry.com/bid/26376/Mobile-Apps-Models-Money-and-Loyalty.
Ken: Those who are not familiar with analytics probably have never heard the word “event” before. What are events and why do developers create them? How does tracking events influence the evolution of an app?
Peter: Events (called “goals” in Google Analytics) are created to count the number of times a consumer completes a specific action or task within an application. For example, a developer who makes a game may want to see which game mode users play most often, which power-ups are selected most frequently, or what percent of users completes the entire game. For books, perhaps the developer would like to know how many sessions it takes to read a book, or which chapter the user is currently reading.
Ken: How can developers use analytics to decide if an app is no longer worth investing in? What sort of changes in metrics might indicate that the app has stabilized or previously reached its peak? Are there early warning signals that can help prevent that from happening?
Peter: It depends on the app, but for apps that seek to hold the attention of a large audience (e.g., news) the developer can look at “active users,” which shows the total number of users that have downloaded an application versus how many have used it recently. If this number continues to decline, indicating churn even after making a few updates, that can indicate a problem. Or perhaps the application operates on a free-to-paid micro-transaction model (e.g., In App Purchases). In this case, the developer would want to track both the active users as well as the percent of those who purchase goods. If this number is declining, then it might be time to either refresh the current app or build another one.
Position: Director of Mobile Products
Background: Romain David is a mobile professional with more than 10 years of experience. He currently serves as Director of Mobile Products at Lumos Labs, Inc., the creator of Lumosity.com, a leader in online cognitive training.
Link: http://www.lumosity.com/
Ken: The Lumosity product has been around for several years now. What were the initial plans to port that experience to a mobile platform, and specifically to the iPhone?
Romain: Less than three months after the iPhone platform was launched, the number of devices, monetization capabilities, and incredible user experience made it obvious that the iPhone would become our initial targeted mobile platform. We first collected input from our users visiting our site on their iPhone and iPod touch. This gave us a sense of what our users expected to see on the device, and what cognitive area they were most excited to train on the go.
We decided to start by porting one existing game available on Lumosity.com based on different criteria including user experience, session length, and popularity. We introduced Speed Brain in November 2008 as a paid application. iPhone users were able to play this game and improve their speed processing. Due to encouraging early results, we decided to invest more resources on the platform and developed more standalone brain games, before launching Brain Trainer, a complete portable brain training program.
Ken: Because you had an existing product, what were the biggest challenges you faced in this process? Where did you make compromises? What aspects of the iPhone, if any, helped improve your product?
Romain: It is very challenging for companies to be successful on more than one platform. You usually see winners on the Web not doing so well on mobile, and vice versa. Being successful on one platform requires a different skill set and a different culture. We understood that mobile was going to be a key component of our business moving forward, and the challenge was to overcome these limitations while offering a consistent experience to our users, whether they want to train their brain on their computer or on their mobile device.
It is very tempting to port all your assets from one platform to another. Our approach, however, is to develop products that take the most advantage of the platform’s unique capabilities, interface, and monetization opportunities. One of the compromises we had to make was to not port very successful games on Lumosity.com, since they were not going to provide a good enough experience on the iPhone.
Ken: Once you launched into the App Store, describe your approach for improving existing apps and launching new ones. What part does analytics play in influencing your decisions? What other factors inform the development process and updates that get pushed to Apple? How do you determine what does or does not go into an update?
Romain: Many of our decisions come from what we learn from our users. The iPhone is no exception, and analytics has played a key role in our decision-making process. In our iPhone apps, we survey our users, so we can prioritize our features accordingly. For example, many of our iPhone users have told us they wanted more scientific information and an explanation about the Brain Performance Index (BPI) we use to measure their cognitive performance and progress. We took this feedback into account and provided a lot more information in our latest app update.
Ken: Without sharing anything proprietary, what are some of the ways that you measure the success of your iPhone apps? Are there other ways to monitor them besides looking at the number of downloads or revenue generated?
Romain: When Brain Trainer became a Top 25 app, we demonstrated that our brain training program could be appealing to a wide range of iPhone and iPod touch users. Beyond the number of downloads and premium users, the number of daily active users combined with the session length gives us a good idea of how engaging our application is. Engagement is a very important measure, since brain training is most valuable if practiced on a daily basis.
Ken: As a customer of your products, I know that you launched many individual paid apps over a period of time and that recently you launched a new free app that supports In App Purchases. Was this approach part of your original plan or something that evolved based on customer feedback and changes in App Store policies?
Romain: Even before we launched Speed Brain—our first application—we knew that at some point we were going to launch an app that will provide a complete brain training experience, similar to what we offer on Lumosity.com. When Apple introduced In App Purchase and made it available for free applications, it became obvious that we should adopt this model. We were finally able to provide a similar approach to our website. In addition, our iPhone and iPod touch users have always mentioned they wanted more games, so adopting this approach was the best way to meet their demand.
Position: Co-founder
Background: Ariel Michael is the co-founder of appFigures, a product of Fileitup Media. appFigures is a reporting platform for iPhone and iPad developers that brings together App Store sales data, worldwide reviews, and hourly rank updates into a single, intuitive, and informative reporting solution.
Links: http://www.appfigures.com; http://www.fileitup.com/
Ken: Most developers launch their apps to a global audience because that’s the default setting. Is that a good approach? How does that complicate the reporting process in iTunes Connect?
Ariel: While iTunes Connect reports are not pretty to the naked eye, they do in fact contain data that’s easy to interpret programmatically. Although the U.S. is by far the largest market for apps, it’s extremely beneficial for developers to release worldwide.
Ken: What are the biggest misperceptions and frustrations developers have about reporting? How does appFigures address some of those issues?
Ariel: Most developers expect Apple to provide reports directly. The reality of the situation is that they don’t provide reports at all; just tab-separated text files that get purged after seven days.
That’s exactly why appFigures was developed! appFigures was born out of the need to have meaningful reports that can easily be viewed and used to enable us as developers to maker better decisions instead of spending time doing spreadsheet analysis.
Today, appFigures helps developers by automating the entire process of downloading and interpreting sales reports, turning them into meaningful charts and tables. We also extend these reports by tracking ranks and reviews from all App Stores.
Ken: The apps in the App Store range quite a bit, from games to utilities. At a more fundamental level, though, what are the types of metrics (downloads, sales, or otherwise) that are important for all developers to pay attention to and track when an app goes into the App Store?
Ariel: There are several key places developers can look at to better understand their place in the App Store:
- Reviews
This is an extremely helpful area developers most often neglect. Reading reviews gives developers direct insight into the minds of their users. This information can then be used to expand the app and even fix flaws, and at the end show your users you care about them by listening.
- Sales/downloads
This is the most obvious one, as it is the bottom line. Developers should, however, keep a close watch, not only on the actual number but also on how external events such as marketing campaigns, PR work, getting reviewed, etc. affect downloads.
- Returns
Most developers are unaware of the fact that apps can be returned. It’s especially important to track the number of returns and try to keep those as low as possible. All developers see some returns here and there; it is important, however, to ensure they are not consistent.
- Ranks
Although developers have no direct control over the rank of their app, watching rank trends can give developers a real-time indication of their app’s performance, which is not available when just using sales reports. By keeping a close watch on rank trends, developers can react fast. A good example would be reacting to an increase in rank by lowering price.
Ken: Can you provide a simple description of the way Apple pays out revenue? Assume, for example, that an app launched globally today and made $5,000 across all App Stores in its first month. When would the developer see the first check? How long could it take to see some of those checks?
Ariel: Getting paid by Apple is not as simple as that. There are actually a few things about getting paid that many new developers are unaware of:
Apple operates on a fiscal calendar that’s different from the normal calendar.
Payments are distributed separately by region. The seven payment regions include United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Canada, Europe, and “Rest of World.”
You’ll only get paid if your profit in a region exceeds $150. If it doesn’t, it will roll over to the next month, or until you reach $150 in that region.
Payments are usually sent out three to four weeks after the end of the fiscal month. This was not the case before, but Apple has gotten much better at making payments on time over the past few months.
Ken: Are there any baselines for assessing the health of an app? For example, if an app is making $10 per day, is that good or bad? How can developers best compare their apps’ download and sales numbers to similar or popular apps?
Ariel: Because apps vary ever so much on the App Store, it’s hard to compare one app to the other. At a very basic level, developers should set goals for their apps and use trend analysis to see if those goals can be achieved with current capabilities. If not, the developer should make a decision whether to stop development or invest more resources.
Making $10 a day is certainly not enough to keep a developer, indie or studio, alive. At such a point, the developer should examine why the app is selling so few copies and whether to end development and move on to bigger and better apps, or to invest more in advertising and PR. This depends on the quality and scope of the app.
Because financial data is kept privately by most developers, there is no way to compare an app’s financial performance. Many developers, however, use ranks as an indication of performance when comparing their app to a competitor’s.
Ken: What guidance would you provide to developers about pricing and the “race to the bottom” of the App Store? How can they find the “sweet spot” for their app to maximize returns, that is, the price that yields the most revenue and not necessarily the most downloads?
Ariel: The “race to the bottom” is very tempting, but should not be the first choice for a new app. If there is one thing to learn about the App Store it is that one price does not fit all. That’s even more so on the iPad App Store.
Finding the sweet spot will depend on the app and the competition. The best approach is educated trial and error. Try different price points and see how the App Store reacts. The best time for a price change is with the release of an update.
The freemium model has become a great sweet spot for many developers, ever since it was made possible by Apple in mid-2009. The freemium model has great potential in my opinion because it sucks in users who would otherwise not be interested in paying and increases the potential to get those users to pay via In App Purchases. The model does have its cons, and so developers should not consider it for all apps.
With the recent release of the iPad, many developers have enjoyed the ability to charge a much higher price for the same app when on the iPad. This is a trend I believe will continue because of the iPad’s increased capabilities and larger screen. These capabilities will allow developers to target larger industries such as retail, hospitality, and entertainment, which would open up the market to a wider audience that’s used to spending large amounts for applications.
Ken: How can developers use reporting to decide if an app is no longer worth investing in? What sort of changes in metrics might indicate that the app has stabilized or previously reached its peak? Are there early warning signals that can help prevent that from happening?
Ariel: When looking at reports, developers should always look for trends and try to analyze them. Trend analysis will give developers an indication of whether the app is still in motion or if new efforts are needed to bring an app to life, and also allow developers to react fast.
There are many trends to watch for, but most would depend on the type of app, market conditions, and the competition. Here are some more common trends that are easy to spot:
- A slow decline
This is the most common trend to spot, and is a clear indicator that more needs to be done. Limited-time price drops are one way to change the trend; another is by releasing an update or promoting the app.
- A zigzag
This is common for niche apps or apps with very little/no promotion. One way to capitalize on the zigzag is to increase the price of the app. To turn the zigzag into an upward trend a developer should consider releasing an update or promoting the app.
- A sudden sharp increase in sales
This is the most desired trend and usually means the app got featured. When an app gets featured its sales will skyrocket for about a week. Reacting fast (by changing the price, releasing a press release, mass mailing, asking for reviews, etc.) can make the difference between remaining on top and disappearing completely after the featured week is over.
Developers should also read reviews. I’ve mentioned it before, but stress its importance once again. Reviews can tell you if your app is healthy. Not having reviews means it probably isn’t.
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