How Will You Change?

It is smart to plan for certain changes in life. If you are expecting a new baby in your home, then you build a crib, prepare a diaper-changing station, and baby-proof your home. When the child grows up a little more, you prepare him or her for school, and hopefully you can prepare a college fund for when he or she leaves the house.

In the same way, you have to prepare your application for growth and change. As more and more users download a static or unchanging application, they will discover that it is limited, and they will begin to demand more. You will soon be receiving many e-mails, tweets, and Facebook wall posts requesting certain features that your application “obviously” should have. These requests may soon become demands.

If your competition makes an application that has what your users are demanding, then you can bet they will go to your competition, and quite possibly forget about your application. This could lead to a loss of downloads and a lot more bad reviews.

Take the time to sit down and think about what updates you will want to bring to your application in the future. I will discuss how to update your application later, but for now, think about these things as you consider the future of your application.

Following New Technology

Hopefully, you have subscribed to several tech and gadget blogs on an RSS feeder, just so you are in the know about what new technologies and developments are out there. If you discover a new technology that you can implement on your application, then you should be the first to have it. This is why you have to follow technological trends.

While you are trying to keep up with technology, be certain to be in the know as far as what is going on with Android. I discussed Android versions in Chapter 1, but subtle updates happen to Android on a monthly, if not daily, basis. There was a time when Android didn’t have some of the features that it does now, including Voice Search, Voice Dial, and Bluetooth 2.1. Any advancement that happens to Android now could easily be seen as a standard feature in the near future.

Of course, some of the newest trends in technology tend to come out of the woodwork. I remember times when no one was on Facebook and Twitter, and then all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone was into social networking. Remember when only a few cell phones had cameras on them? Now, no cell phone manufacturer would release a mobile phone into the market without a camera. The same thing applies for Bluetooth and GPS. Word of mouth about tech advancements spreads very quickly.

Figuring Out the Season for Your Application

I’m sure you are quite familiar with Angry Birds, as it is very difficult to talk about successful applications without mentioning Rovio’s hit mobile game. Rovio decided that Angry Birds was not enough for its fans, and created Angry Birds Seasons in the fall of 2010 (see Figure 11-1). Angry Birds Seasons has the same rules of the original game, with the slingshot and the attempt to destroy the evil green pigs who live in poorly built structures. The only difference is that the environments are seasonal. The first version was “Trick or Treat”; it was Halloween themed, and included pumpkins and black and orange props.

Figure 11-1. The game play of Rovio’s Angry Birds Seasons is just like the very popular Angry Birds, but the visuals are made for specific seasons.

Since the first Angry Birds Seasons was a hit, Rovio followed it up with an update called “Seasons Greedings,” which used a Christmas holiday theme. In 2011, Rovio improved Seasons with “Hogs and Kisses” (Valentine’s Day themed), “Go Green Get Lucky” (St. Patrick’s Day themed), and “Easter Eggs” (I probably don’t need to tell you the theme of that). Rovio released a summer-themed Angry Birds Seasons (“Summer Pignic”), and even released another version of Angry Birds, known as Angry Birds Rio. This game is a movie tie-in of a computer-animated movie about birds.

Rovio realized that it needed to change Angry Birds, but it decided not to change the game play itself (a decision I agree with). Instead, Rovio created new versions of the old game, and gave them new themes, anticipating the changing of seasons. It also planned for the release of Rio, and the movie’s success helped promote the game.

In the same manner, you need to update your application with the changing of the seasons. As I discussed in the last chapter about your launch date, every month seems to have a holiday or theme associated with it, and you can make your app more desirable by updating it to account for this.

Planning Around the Holidays and Seasons

When I worked at a retail store, we had sections of the store that were seasonal, and planned for consumers’ needs during certain times of the year.

In February, it was Valentine’s Day, and the seasonal aisles were decorated with red, pink, and white cards and candy. It then shifted to Easter, where the candy was in different packaging with baskets and plastic grass. During summertime, these aisles were filled with squirt guns, portable swimming pools, kites, and other outdoor toys. Then came the back-to-school time in August and September, and these aisles were filled with pencils, paper, and other school supplies. In October, it was candy again, with spooky Halloween costumes and paraphernalia thrown in. I’ll leave you to imagine what was in the aisles in November and December, in anticipation of Christmas.

The reason that I bring up the subject of the seasonal aisles is that it is easy to plan what items will sell at these given times. Holidays are events that you can plan around. And just as important as the holidays are people’s general moods during these time.

In January, people are all about New Year’s resolutions and bettering themselves, so this is a good time to sell health and productivity applications. Valentine’s Day is in February, a time when people tend to think of love and relationships, so this would be a good time to market an application related to these. Any application related to vacation planning would probably sell well in the summer. By now, you should be able to see a pattern forming.

Once you’ve figured out the purpose of your application, you should be able to figure out what times of the year it will sell the best. It might be a certain holiday, or just some time of the year when people will be thinking about doing a certain thing that your application can help them with. Plan for this time and get the word out to your contacts at this time, and you will be able to sell more than you normally would.

Figuring Out Your Peak Period

In the same way, your application may have a peak period during which it sells the most, and may hardly have any downloads at other times.

For example, if you create an application that follows the NCAA games, you are going to see an increase during March Madness, and then nothing until next basketball season.

Some applications, such as tax preparation apps, have longer peak times. With this type of app, chances are you will see a lot of downloads between January and April, as people prepare for the income tax deadline, but only a few downloads by procrastinators in May. Then your application could be completely forgotten during summer or fall.

If you can make a living on one application’s peak period, then you should consider yourself quite lucky. However, a better strategy is to have many applications going at once, focus on each one during its peak season, and use the non-peak off-season to prepare for updates for next year.