Keeping Score

What to Measure to Win the App Game

I stepped off the train and onto the platform in Berkeley, California, and was met with a blast of hot, dense air. It was an unseasonably warm day, and without question I was wearing the wrong outfit. I had relocated to San Francisco in hopes of learning more about the mobile app space and growing my business. I didn't know anyone, and I felt a bit uncertain in this new city and in my business.

I was on my way to meet a top apprenuer who had randomly emailed me the previous week in the hopes of networking. I wanted to make a good first impression, so I had to project confidence in this arena even though I had been in this business for only a few months.

Alan was pleasant. We met at his favorite lunch joint, the infamous Smokehouse. While clogging our arteries with what he called the best burgers and hot dogs in America, we began to discuss the app business.

“How many downloads do you have per day?” Alan asked.

Not knowing the answer, but wanting to appear informed, I estimated, “Umm, we are doing about one to two K a day.”

“Cool. And you have free apps with traffic pointing to your paid apps, I'm assuming?” he continued.

“Uh, yeah. We are working on that right now,” I deflected.

Dodging more questions, I asked, “How is business going for you?” Phew, I thought, I'd be able to avoid more questions by getting him to discuss what he did, but he was just getting started. He continued with his relentless barrage of questions:

“How many active users do you have?”

“How many banner ad clicks do you have inside your apps?”

“Do you have a nag screen?”

“Is it converting?”

“You have a ‘More' button, right?”

“Are you translating your marketing materials into other languages?”

After this onslaught of questions and my vague and uncertain responses, he and I knew how clueless I was with my own business.

I just wanted to scream, “I don't know!!!”

But, why didn't I know?

As soon as I asked myself that question, a light bulb went off, along with a hallelujah, followed by an open hand slap to the back of the head, with a Homer Simpson-like “D'oh!” I had been unknowingly neglecting one of the most critical elements of my business. Could that be why I was not achieving the goals I had set for my business?

I was focused and was able to develop new apps quickly, but I wasn't following through on what I was creating. I wasn't tracking my results and strategically improving my apps based on that data. That one seemingly minor distinction to measure everything was a complete game changer and allowed me to take my business to a new level. I could make informed decisions and adjustments on the fly and have measurable results.

Tracking your app stats gives you more clarity and control over your business. Without solid data, all you have are limited perceptions about what is going on. You must scrutinize the metrics of each app you create and understand what you can do to maximize visibility, downloads, and user activity. When you understand these trends, you can dissect the info and start diagnosing and testing ways to improve your overall revenue.

It's like going to the doctor when you feel something might be off. Initially, the doctor doesn't know the problem, so he or she asks you questions and tests you to measure your condition. Once the doctor has a conclusion based on the data, he or she can prescribe a treatment to see if it fixes things. If that doesn't work, the doctor moves to the next feasible treatment until you're healthy again.

In this chapter, I show you what to look for in your data. You'll understand what stats to check, what tracking software to use, and how to use the data to tweak your apps, boost traffic, and earn more money.

THE STATS THAT MATTER

I have found that the most important stats to track for your app business are your traffic, rankings, user activity, and revenue.

Traffic

Most developers look at the number of downloads their apps are generating because they want to know how much money they have made. This makes sense and is important, but you must look at app downloads as your traffic. The more free and paid downloads your have, the more traffic you are generating.

This traffic can be used in many ways to further monetize your apps. It's almost as if each one of your apps is acting like a website that attracts a certain number of visitors daily. That visibility is of tremendous value when directed properly. I examine the daily downloads of every one of my apps. If I see the number slipping, I try to understand why and take immediate action to bring back the traffic.

Rankings

As mentioned in Chapter 3, the App Store constantly shows the popularity of apps based on the number of downloads and other undisclosed metrics. As talked about previously, Apple has top overall app charts and category-specific ones. Your apps must appear in these lists because of the additional visibility they provide. Your app's position in these lists can be considered its ranking. (See Figure 7.1.)

Tracking app rankings is something that most developers neglect because they think they have no control over it. That couldn't be further from the truth. Your rankings are an important metric when it comes to assessing your app's performance, and you can improve your rankings through various marketing techniques. I'm constantly focused on getting my apps ranked, and once they are in the charts, I keep close tabs on their rankings. If I see an app slipping in the charts, I immediately focus on it and figure out why that's happening and what can be done to raise the ranking.

User Activity

Yes, it's great for users to download your apps, but your ultimate outcome is to turn them into customers who use your app consistently. Every user interaction presents an opportunity to monetize your app portfolio. The only way to know if your users are loving your apps is to track the user activity within your app. The nice thing is that it's easy with Flurry. You can track anything, such as how many times a button is being touched or how often the app is used.

For example, at one point I saw in the reviews of one of my apps that the users didn't even know how to use the app. Needless to say they weren't happy. This was surprising to me because the app had an instructions page. Perplexed, I decided to track how many people were clicking the button to open the instructions, and to my surprise only five percent of users were opening them. To fix this problem, I made the button more visible and after that small tweak, 70 percent of users were clicking the instructions button. From that point on, more people left positive reviews and my app became more successful.

FIGURE 7.1 Top paid apps rankings.

Revenue

All of the previous metrics are indicators for the most important and obvious metric: your revenue. You have to track your revenue every day and continuously observe your daily, monthly, and quarterly trends. This sounds obvious, but it's easy to overlook revenue as a metric that can be tuned like the others. As soon as I see any positive or negative change in revenue, I want to understand what's causing that activity. Do my apps have more or less traffic? Did they move up or down in rankings? Has user activity increased or decreased? I want to understand what is causing the change in revenue and take action accordingly. Every change in revenue is an opportunity to understand the intricacies of your app business. Again, this might sound tedious, but it's very simple to do. App sales will not be your only source of revenue. You will make money from banner ads and affiliate marketing, so check on all sources of revenue daily to get the complete picture.

TOOLS FOR TRACKING STATS

You have various ways to monitor your app metrics. One option is Apple's Developer Portal. Apple shows you the number of downloads, your revenue, when you will be paid, and even your iAd banner advertising statistics. The site is intuitive and useful. (See Figure 7.2.)

Even though this is nice, I prefer AppFigures (appempire.com/appfigures). AppFigures is great for tracking numbers as well as other aspects of your business. (See Figure 7.3.) Once set up, the site automatically downloads your stats from your Developer Portal and displays the information in a much more intuitive way. You can investigate one app at a time or all of your apps together. You can see your app rankings and reviews. You can review your app downloads over time or based on countries.

FIGURE 7.2 Apple developer portal stats.

FIGURE 7.3 AppFigures.

AppFigures sends daily e-mails that summarize the previous day's app stats. This is nice because you don't have to log in to get the information. I receive an e-mail every morning that gives me a breakdown of apps by the number of downloads and the amount of net profit (see Figure 7.4). Plus, I get a breakdown of the iAd profits. This is convenient and is like getting a daily check-up for your business.

App Annie is another service similar to AppFigures (appempire.com/appannie). Like AppFigures, App Annie shows your apps' movement and rankings and how much money you're making. App Annie also shows you the historical ranking data of all apps in the App Store.

There are also mobile apps that can give you this information at a glance. This is particularly useful if you have a mobile lifestyle. The app I use is Position App (Figure 7.5), which shows your apps' rankings and whether other apps are moving up or down in popularity.

FIGURE 7.4 Daily AppFigures summary e-mail.

Also a useful tool for tracking user activity within your apps is Flurry (appempire.com/flurry). This takes bit of extra programming within your apps but can give you powerful insights, such as how often and for what duration your customers are using your apps.

USING STATS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

We talked about the importance of constantly improving your app marketing in Chapter 6. It's not only about how good your apps are. It's about how good you are at quickly and appropriately adjusting to market changes. Constant improvement is the mechanism that moves this business forward and keeps it sustainable.

FIGURE 7.5 PositionApp ranking trends.

How do you know what to improve? Stats. You can make changes based on your hunches and see if something hits, or you can take full advantage of the data you'll be getting to make informed decisions.

These are the questions you need to ask yourself while reviewing your stats and thinking about how to improve your apps:

• Has the app gone up or down in the rankings? Why?
• Are there more or fewer downloads and in what countries? Why?
• Could I be doing more to promote and market my app?
• Is my marketing converting, or do I need to do a better job?
• What do the reviews say? Can I fix the things people are complaining about? (I don't recommend following everybody's advice, but if you discover a negative trend, fix it.)
• Do people like this app? How often do they use it?
• How can I add more value for my users?
• Can I monetize this app better? How?

Icon:

• Is there a style of icon for a competing app that I can emulate?
• Can I keep my current design but try different colors?
• Are users able to understand what the app is for by looking at the icon?
• Am I sticking to icons similar to the ones that have proven themselves in the market, or am I trying to be overly creative?

Title:

• Is my title clear?
• Does my title describe the app's functionality?
• Does my title use strong keywords?

Description:

• How can I make my description less cluttered and easier to read?
• How can I better explain the functionality of my app?
• How can I make it more exciting?
• Do I have a call to action?

Screenshots:

• Can I make my screenshots more impressive visually?
• Do their themes fit the theme of the icon and rest of the app?
• How can I make my screenshots less cluttered and easier to understand?
• Do they have text banners that explain the functionality?
• Can I improve the text banners to mention more and better features?

Keywords:

• What words does my target demographic use to look for my app?
• What keywords are the competitors using?
• What other relevant keywords can I test?
• Am I using all the space available for keywords (100 characters)?

Categories:

• What other category could my app be in?
• What category are the competing apps in?
• What category is less competitive and might provide more visibility?

You have to be like a coach slicing through game footage. You need to review your game plan every day to decide what changes to make. Most developers take the shotgun approach and attack the problem by improving everything simultaneously. The worst part is if something works, they don't know what it was because they changed ten things at once. You must test each one of your changes individually so you can determine which changes are actually effective.

Improving an app's performance can be simple. One of my apps, Alarm Security, wasn't working, and I was trying to bring it back up in the rankings. I initially tried changing the name and keywords, and it didn't move much. The one thing I hadn't tried was switching it out of the Entertainment category. Since it was more of a utility app anyway, I decided to move it to the Utility category. The reason I had placed it in the Entertainment category was the app contained various alarm sounds, like loud screams or gunshots. I assumed users would use it more as a goof than as a tool, but I was wrong.

Once I moved the app into the utilities category, the number of downloads skyrocketed. After five days, the paid downloads nearly tripled, and it was only because of a category change. If I wasn't constantly working and improving the low performers, I could have easily missed this change that paid off in a big way.

One of the questions I often get is, “How long should I test a tweak?” When you tweak something to make it better, measure the results for about one week before you make other changes. You'll see quickly if your improvements are producing positive results.

Keep your budget in mind. A lot of these tweaks won't cost you any money like changing the title, keywords, description, and categories. You should try those first. You can make some changes to the icon and screenshots, but keep costs as low as possible. Do not dump thousands of dollars into your improvements while you're still testing the market demand for your app and trying to recoup your investment. Work on improving the app only after you have gained traction with your marketing tweaks.

I recommend you set up a specific time you check in with your stats on a daily basis. Set up a routine that works for you and stick to it. When you are reviewing your stats and asking yourself the questions above, you will have many ideas for improvement. Make sure that these don't get lost. Capture and implement them one by one. Keep track of your changes and follow up with them because otherwise you will be unable to learn which of your changes had a positive effect. You can check out appempire.com/trackchanges for a spreadsheet that will allow you to easily track your changes.

PAYING ATTENTION TO REVIEWS

Another good way to find what you need to improve in your apps are your app reviews. The App Store allows people who have downloaded your app to rate it (one to five stars) and leave a brief text review. (See Figure 7.6.) You will get more reviews as your apps gain popularity. Some of them will be great, some not so much. Cue violin and tissues. It's crucial to view user reviews as constructive criticism. They may show you that you have a bug in your app you don't know about or reveal certain features that a lot of users would like to see.

FIGURE 7.6 Reviews of Angry Birds.

Launching the Tic Tac Toe app was another great lesson for me about the importance of reviews. In its first version, the app flashed a sign when people won a game. But multiple reviews mentioned that there were no sounds, and that they wanted to be able to play against their friends. I used the customer feedback and had my developer add sounds and a multi-user feature. After that, one of the previous reviewers came back and said, “Hey, thanks for the change. These sounds are great.” You could see it made that customers happy, and it was great marketing for the app.

As bad reviews can have a negative effect on your income, positive reviews can bolster sales. Reviews that are funny, exciting, and give credibility to your app will convert more customers. If the reviews are great, you may want to include them in your app description.

Something else you can do to get more feedback is to check your reviews from other parts of the world. It helps to get a perspective of how your apps are being received globally. You can use the AppFigures service to check what people in different counties are saying about your apps. AppFigures will translate the reviews for you. These translations are not perfect, but most of the time you will get the message. Priceless.

CUTTING YOUR LOSSES

Like most businesses, the app business is a numbers game. Some apps are going to work, and some aren't. Sometimes apps don't perform as expected even if you have an awesome icon, exciting screenshots, an appealing name, and a well-designed app. This is why I don't spend a lot of money to begin with until I see a demand in the market for the app. After you've tried to improve your app and its marketing elements based on the suggestions mentioned earlier in this chapter for three to four months, it's time to move on and focus your energy on a different app. Like any relationship or investment, cutting losses is difficult, but it's vital for you and your business.

For instance, I had created a paid app called Flashlight, which used the iPhone's camera flash to turn the phone into a flashlight. For about nine months, the app did alright. I noticed sales were falling. I focused on improving the core marketing components for a few months yet the app's sales still declined. At that point, I had to decide to cut my losses and stop investing time and money in the app. I decided to make Flashlight a free app and use it to funnel traffic to my other apps. Although Flashlight never became a huge money maker, it contributed to the overall ecosystem of my app business funneling traffic to my other apps.

Now that you understand the importance of measuring and how to tweak your apps, in the next chapter, you're going to learn how to increase your firepower with some advanced marketing techniques.

What I Learned

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Actions to Take

1. Sign up for AppFigures or App Annie and start becoming familiar with these tools.
2. Sign up for Flurry to track activity within your apps.
3. Decide what activity to track within your apps and why that information is important.
4. Set up a schedule to check in with the stats daily.
5. Create a simple spreadsheet to measure your changes.