After You Have a User Base
At this point, we are going to assume that you have had some moderate degree of success after releasing your application. You now need a way to maintain your user base after it has gone live.
Once your app is deployed, your users are sure to have questions, complaints, and suggestions. At the very least, you should provide them with an e-mail address so they can send questions. To reduce the time you spend fielding these questions, you will definitely want to provide some in-app or online help.
Regardless of how you reach out to your customers, you should make sure that you interact with them in a way that meets their needs. While it can be trying to continually answer the same sort of silly question over and over again, you owe it to the success of your business to focus on your customers’ needs, not your own. By the way, repeated questions can be taken care of via FAQs on the web site.
There are a number of factors that will help make your customers’ experience great. Customers want to have control, so they should feel that you are providing them with options that serve their interests. Nothing is more infuriating to a customer than having a service representative apologize for not being able to fulfill a perfectly reasonable request; or worse, not ever receiving any response at all. An easy way to give customers a sense of control is to give them both information and alternatives. If you tactfully spend a bit of time explaining why things are the way they are, they will feel respected. After you explain the “why,” be sure to provide meaningful options. For example, if a new release has broken a feature, you could say, “I’m very sorry that the feature isn’t working. Our engineers are working on a fix for it right now. The release that broke the feature wasn’t fully tested on your phone because our test team didn’t have access to it. If you want a complete refund, I completely understand. If you prefer, we can upgrade you to the latest version at no cost as soon as it becomes available.”
Maintaining a friendly demeanor is common sense, but it’s easy to forget this when you’re under pressure and dealing with an angry customer. Just as jujutsu is a martial art that seeks to turn an opponent’s strengths against them, you can use emotional jujutsu when faced with an angry customer. If you actively empathize with a customer’s anger (“You seem very angry, what can I do to make things right for you?”), you can neutralize it and provide great customer service at the same time.
You can turn angry customers into product evangelists if you treat them correctly. Begin by carefully listening to their problem without interruption. Make sure that they feel they have been heard. After you have heard the problem, thank them for sharing it with you. This is the first step in winning them over. Let them know that they are helping you make your product better. After all, you can’t improve on problems you never knew existed. Remember to apologize for the bad experience they had. Customers often aren’t looking for justifications; they simply want to know that you are sorry and you are doing the best you can to resolve the issue.
Only after you have apologized should you try to solve their problem. Remember to provide customers with both information and solutions. Ask them what solution they are seeking if it isn’t obvious. Be sure to reach an agreement on what the solution will be. It’s easy to miscommunicate, so repeat the solution back to them to be sure you are talking about the same thing.
After a solution has been agreed on, solve the problem in an expedient manner. If customers see quick results, they feel valued and will look upon your business favorably. Finally, follow up at a later date to be certain that your solution worked. Your follow-up lets the customer know that you really care about them.
Remember that the customers who take the time to complain are often the most influential. After all, they cared enough about your app to contact you; most customers don’t. Even if you lose money on one customer, if they come away with a positive experience, you might benefit from multiple follow-on sales.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to software that helps companies manage their sales, marketing, and customer support. In the context of customer support, CRM software can be as simple as a ticket system that helps you track customer issues. Often customer issues will not be solved with a single phone call, so having a way to track the progress of customer issues can become a logistical problem. Nothing is worse for your company’s reputation than dropping customer issues before they are solved. CRM software can track issues, beginning with the first e-mail and ending with a complete solution.
There are numerous CRM solutions out there, and we encourage you to Google your way to greater understanding of the space. As a starting point, we can recommend the following two online solutions, both of which are good enough to get you started:
- insightly.com: Integrates with Google Apps and Gmail, and provides both CRM and project management. It is free for up to 3 users (customer service reps) and 2,500 contacts.
- mojohelpdesk.com: Basic ticket tracking system that enables you to submit tickets by e-mail and includes alerts and reminders. The basic version (with a 30-day free trial) costs $24/month. It supports up to 11 users (customer service reps) with an unlimited number of contacts.
Online Help
Online help can be as simple as basic instructions on how to use your app. You might think the user interface is completely intuitive, but less-savvy users might still want a written description of how to use your app. For many apps, a basic tutorial can be written in a few paragraphs. Time you spend writing basic instructions will save you lots of time helping customers over e-mail. Additionally, many customers will simply uninstall your app if they can’t figure out how to use it, which will result in not just lost opportunities but also bad reviews.
After you have help online, it is fairly straightforward to launch a browser from within your app that points at your online help. Doing this gives you in-app help with the benefit that you have to update your help instructions in only one place. You can also consider writing a FAQ on the web site, which should address the most common user questions. Numerous online web site–building apps exist to build your online help site. We have had great results with www.weebly.com .
A lot of applications include a quick tutorial window, with the option for the user to disable the tutorial after the first use. You might consider the option of the tutorial window if your testing group finds that your application is not as intuitive as you thought it was.
E-mail Support
E-mail is perhaps the most common way an app developer interacts with customers. Unless you have a very established app with significant margins, you cannot afford to provide phone support. Be sure and save all your interactions with customers. Often a previous e-mail response can be reused for a new customer with a similar question or problem. Be careful to use good spelling and grammar in e-mail. Nothing says “amateur” like a poorly constructed response. Another aspect of e-mail support that says “amateur” is when you use a mail service such as gmail.com or yahoo.com. If you haven’t done so already, take the time to create a custom domain for your e-mail service. Because e-mail is so important, consider providing a way to launch an e-mail app from within your Android application. This is relatively easy to do, as shown here:
Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
emailIntent.setType("text/plain");
emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[] { "[email protected]" });
startActivity(emailIntent);
Forums
Forums can be a great way to help customers help each other, which reduces the workload for the developer. By using a forum, a developer can post help responses that will be read by the entire community of users. Forums can be added to Weebly using the techniques discussed at this site: http://weeblyforums.com/2011/07/how-to-create-a-forum-in-weebly/ .
Listening to the Customer
When you first write an app, you have specific ideas about how it will be used. Often your customers will surprise you. By listening to your customers, you can build an app the way they actually want it to be, instead of merely guessing.
You should always prominently list your contact information within your app, so that users have an easy way to get in touch with you if they have comments, concerns, or issues. It is best if you have launched a web site, and that web site also includes a way for customers to reach you. If you can afford the cost and overhead, listing a phone number is great, too. You want all the feedback you can get! You might even consider using an inbound call center. While not cheap, it certainly creates the impression of professionalism. Note that although some inbound call centers charge by the minute, they often have minimum fees, so this option makes sense only if you are expecting to earn quite a bit on a per-customer basis.
Roy has had great feedback from his customers and has learned about use cases for some of his apps that he never even considered. In fact, he even had one user who volunteered to improve the user interface for his BPMDetector app for free! That’s quite a payoff just for listening to your users!
Google Play’s Android Developer Console is a great resource that Google provides to Android developers. The Developer Console includes statistical information on your app that enables you to learn about your customers.
The statistics section of the Android Developer Console lets you view graphs for active device installs and total device installs, among other things. Active device installs are the installs of your app that people still have on their phones. Total device installs include the installs that were later removed by users. The ratio between active and total installs lets you see how many users are still using your app. If the ratio was (hypothetically) exactly 1.0, it would mean that every app downloaded was still being used. You want this ratio to be as high as possible because that means your app appeals to your target audience. It also shows that your customers actually find your application useful and are using it instead of just trying it once out of curiosity and then removing it.
The statistics section also includes statistics for use by Android version. You can compare your statistics to the published overall device statistics available at http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html .
If your statistics differ significantly from the overall statistics, it might mean that your app has a problem when running on that Android version.
Similarly, statistics on Android devices tell you the most popular hardware platforms (phones and tablets) for your app. You can use this information to prioritize testing of your app; you should try hard to be sure your app has been tested on the most popular platforms.
Finally, statistical information on country and language can let you know where in the world your app is most popular. You can compare the popularity of your app to the average for your application category. This information can be useful to uncover language issues (perhaps you should add human-translated foreign language XML files instead of relying on auto-translate?).
Also, app popularity in certain countries might mean that you should support their language in order to further boost your app’s marketability in that region. You can see in Figure 10-1 that one of Roy’s apps is being downloaded more often than normal in the United Kingdom, but at below average percentage for its category in South Korea. He would probably improve downloads in that country if he offered a good quality Korean translation.
Figure 10-1. Active device installs by country/region for one of Roy’s apps
You can use this information to figure out important information about how your application is progressing. For example, you might notice that your application is not being downloaded on certain models of Android phones. Uh-oh! Does that mean that your application is having problems downloading on that particular type of phone? That is most certainly worth looking into.
Perhaps the most useful information the Google Play Developer Console provides is information you never want to see: crash and application not responding (ANR) reports. An ANR typically occurs when your application hogs a resource that prevents the user interface from interacting with the user. This is a serious problem that should be addressed right away. An application crash is exactly what it sounds like, and is also something that should be corrected right away.
The Developer Console not only shows you statistical data on the frequency of each crash or ANR but it also gives you specific information on where the crash or ANR occurred in your source code, which makes it easier to track down and correct. Because the Developer Console keeps track of how many crashes or ANRs of each type have occurred, you can prioritize your bug fixing and go after the most commonly occurring problems first.
Hopefully, you can use this data to discover problems before your users start complaining about them in the form of negative reviews!
Analytics
Although Google Play Statistics gives you some information about your app, if you truly want to see what your users are doing, you need to use Google Analytics. The Google Analytics software development kit (SDK) for Android allows you to easily track key user engagement data, including the number of active application users, usage of specific application features, in-app purchases, and nearly anything else within your application.
Google Analytics supports an “EasyTracker” implementation that allows you to get up and running quickly with basic analytics capabilities for your app. The default EasyTracker example provides you with a way to measure app installations, active users and their demographics, screens and user engagement, as well as crashes and exceptions. Although the Developer Console already tracks system crashes for you, the ability to track exceptions can be a very powerful debugging tool. Simply place code like this in your app:
try {
...
} catch (IOException e) {
Tracker myTracker = EasyTracker.getTracker(); // Get a reference to the tracker.
myTracker.sendException(e.getMessage(), false); // false ➤ non-fatal exception.
}
You can then get a message every time this exception occurs. It is great for tracking how often nonfatal exceptions occur in your code. Often you make assumptions about how frequently (or rarely) exceptions occur, and a better understanding of their frequency can help you improve your application.
You can learn the steps for setting up EasyTracker here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v2/#analytics-xml
The Google Analytics SDK can also measure the effectiveness of your mobile marketing campaigns. For example, you could measure how many users were directed to download your app from the Google Play site. Perhaps they clicked that link you have on your web site, clicked an ad you purchased, or maybe they discovered your app from a link within a different app that you have. Either way, you can learn the details using Google Analytics. If you want a way to quantify the success of your marketing campaigns, this is the way to do it. Learn how from the source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v2/campaigns
Similarly, you can learn about your user’s interactions with social networks. Want to know if they’re clicking that Facebook “Like” widget? Want to find out if they’re using the Tweet button? Google Analytics can do that as well. The details are here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v2/social
Google Analytics is a very powerful, extensible API that includes the potential for custom metrics. Nearly anything you can imagine can be measured. Learn about custom metrics here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v2/customdimsmets
You can download the Google Analytics SDK for Android here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/resources
The API is still in beta, so there might be some rough edges, and things can change at any time.
A/B Testing
All your feedback from users and analytics might inspire you to add a bunch of new features. But how can you be sure which feature is best? A/B testing is the process of scientifically trying two different features to determine which one is favored by your users.
The basic idea behind A/B testing is simple. If you deploy multiple versions of the same app, each version having a difference in a particular feature, and you have a bunch of users who try each of the two features, you can learn which one is better by comparing the results of the two groups of users.
For example, if you have a Click To Buy button on your app, is it better if the button is a standard size, or does a big button generate more click-throughs? You can A/B test to find out. If 1,000 of your users see the standard size button, and 1,000 other users see the big button, you can compare click-through rates to determine which button size will give you better results.
Particularly when it comes to measuring ad campaigns, Google Analytics can be used to do A/B testing. There are, however, other options that are designed from the ground up for A/B testing.
Arise.io ( http://arise.io ) provides developers with an easy way to A/B test their apps. By installing a JAR file in your app and then writing simple test code, you can very easily introduce A/B tests into your apps. See Figure 10-2 for an example. Arise.io is in beta and is currently free for personal and nonprofit apps. When released, the commercial version will probably introduce pricing tiers, although the lowest tiers are likely to be relatively affordable.
Figure 10-2. An example from the Arise.io web site: http://arise.io/features/
Amazon provides A/B testing as a feature, but you need to place the app in its app store. A/B testing with Amazon is free, and might just be the reason you need to finally deploy in its store. You can learn more here: https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing.html
Figure out the Season of Your Application
We’re sure you are quite familiar with Angry Birds because 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 so it created Angry Birds Seasons in Fall 2010. Angry Birds Seasons has the same rules of the original game, with the slingshot and the attempt to destroy the evil green pigs. The only difference is that the environments are “seasonal.” The first version was Trick or Treat, and it was Halloween-themed with pumpkins as well as various other black-and-orange props (see Figure 10-3).
Figure 10-3. Rovio’s Angry Birds Seasons is an entirely different application than its very popular Angry Birds predecessor, designed for many seasons
Because 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 (we probably don’t need to tell you its theme). Rovio released a summer-themed Angry Birds Seasons (Summer Pignic), along with more seasons with puns related to birds and pigs. It even released another version of Angry Birds known as Angry Birds Rio. This game is a movie tie-in from Rio, a computer animated movie about birds. After another version called Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds is now even embedded in another famous franchise, with the release of Angry Birds Star Wars.
Rovio realized that it needed to let Angry Birds grow and evolve. We agree with its decision not to change the gameplay itself, which is why it created new versions, and gave them new themes, anticipating the changing of seasons. Rovio also planned for the release of Rio, and the movie’s success helped promote the game.
In the same manner, you can drive more traffic to your app by updating it in ways that reflect the season. Simple things like an updated background or splash screen can renew interest in your app. Nearly every month has a holiday you can leverage to customize your app. Some events, such as holidays, happen on a specific day around the same time of the year. Other events are more ambiguous, based on a mood of the season. Use the seasons to your advantage; anything that grabs a user’s interest can help keep your app downloads rolling in.
Plan Around Holidays and Moods
When Mark worked in retail, there were 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; 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 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. We’ll leave you to imagine what was in the aisles in November and December, in anticipation of Christmas.
The reason why we bring up the subject of the seasonal aisle is that it is easy to plan what items will sell at these given times. Holidays are just one event that you can plan around. It is more than just holidays; also the general mood during that time.
In January, people are all about New Years’ resolutions and bettering themselves, which is a good time to sell health and productivity applications. Because Valentine’s Day is in February, people tend to think of love and relationships, so it is a good time to market an application related to that mood. Any application related to vacation planning probably sells well during spring and summer periods. By now, you can see a pattern forming, and we’ll let you guess what kind of applications sell around Christmas time.
Because you figured out the purpose of your application in Chapter 2, you should be able to figure out during what times of the year it will sell the most. 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.
Figure Out Your “Peak Period,” if Any
After your app is in the marketplace, you might discover that it has a “peak period” during which it sells exceptionally well for whatever reasons, but has few downloads outside of this time period.
For example, if you create an application that follows NCAA college basketball games, you will see an increase during the “March Madness” tournament, but then nothing until the next basketball season. Perhaps your application will have a longer peak period. For a tax preparation application, for example, you will see a lot of downloads during the months of January to April as people prepare for the April 15th U.S. income tax deadline but only a few downloads by procrastinators in May. Your application could be completely forgotten during summer or fall.
If one of your applications has a peak period, you might have trouble making money year-round. A better strategy is to have many applications going at once and to focus on each app during its peak season. You can use the nonpeak off-season to prepare for updates for next year (or simply write an app that is less peaky). Also, remember that the holiday season is almost always the busiest time of year, and the first few months after the holidays can be slow. These sorts of annual fluctuations are common in many markets.
The Price
By now, your application is out on the market and has a price, even if it is free. You might be using that suggestion in Chapter 6 about having a paid version and a free version.
Although Google Play does not let you change an unpaid app into a paid app, you can always change the pricing of your paid apps.
Because the price can be changed, you might want to experiment with your application’s price, just to see how your users react. One developer told us that he had a $.99 application, and he upped the price from $.99 to $1.99 for a week, then to $2.99, and then to $3.99. What he learned was that he had 100 sales in a week at $.99; then he had about 45 sales at $1.99. He made less over all…but close. Then he upped the price of the application to $2.99, and he still had 45 sales—roughly 136 percent of the $.99 app revenue. That’s not bad.
In some cases, then, you can raise the price of your app and make more money. In other cases, raising the price will cause you to make less money than you potentially would have. Economists talk about the “price elasticity of demand.” The idea is that for some purchases, people will be very sensitive to pricing. The demand will decrease quickly as the price goes up. For example, if your favorite soft drink is suddenly more expensive than all the others, you’d probably switch to a different drink. On the other hand, some purchases are very “inelastic.” People just have to make these purchases, regardless of price. The cost of taking your child to the pediatrician is a good example of this. You’re going to pay for it, even if the price goes up.
So is your app more like a soft drink or more like a visit to the pediatrician? Well, this is a lot like the vitamin versus pain-killer comparison we discussed in Chapter 2. If your app is a pain-killer, it’s going to get something closer to pediatrician pricing. On the other hand, vitamins often get priced like soda. You can see that the price customers are willing to pay often depends on the necessity of the app.
There are other factors as well. If you’re the only game in town, you can charge more. So if you’re the only solution to a problem, users will have to buy your app to solve the problem. On the other hand, if there are lots of other equivalent solutions, at some point there will be a “race to the bottom.” That means that all the players offering solutions will have to compete with each other on price, which will drive the price down for everyone over time. We can call this factor the availability of equivalent solutions.
The characteristics of your user base are other factors that determine price. If you’re selling to law firms, you can ask for a higher price than if you sell to teenagers. Obviously, who’s paying for it is a factor.
Finally, branding is a factor. If you know that an app is made by Oracle, Microsoft, or any other big player, you expect a certain minimum level of quality. These companies are well-known brands, and people will always pay more for the well-known brand. Be sure to create and foster your brand identity as you bring new apps to market.
When to Price High
No consumer likes a price increase. But the fact is, a price increase can be very good for you. Price increases happen all the time in the business world, and you should not hesitate to increase your product’s price if it makes you more money. Naturally, if your app is necessary (it’s a pain-killer) with no equivalent solutions, and you have customers with deep pockets and a great brand, you should start with a high price. You can always lower your price and see how that affects your price elasticity of demand curve.
You can even play around with increasing the price of your app during peak periods or your app’s “season.” Perhaps your app has a lower elasticity-of-demand in its peak season. If so, you’ll make more money overall with a higher price.
When to Price Low
On the other hand if your app isn’t really necessary (it’s a vitamin) with lots of equivalent solutions, your customers have limited means, and your brand isn’t well known, you should start with a low price. You can always increase your price and see how that affects your price elasticity of demand curve.
Occasionally, you will discover that your application isn’t working out the way you expected it to. You might discover that there have been very few downloads.
Besides trying new marketing routes to inform more people about your application, you can try to increase sales by marking the app down. You can even consider making it an ad-supported app and give it away for free. That’s better than not making any sales at all. If the application is just totally hopeless, it might be worth taking it off the market entirely just so it doesn’t diminish your brand simply by being associated with you.
You might have a simple problem child that just needs to be improved before the real sales on it begin. If so, we recommend a temporary price decrease on the current version. You have to get the word out through your media outlets, social networks, and other methods of informing your target market that you are doing this.
We have discovered that news of a price reduction can often lead to rumors about the demise of a product. For example, when Nintendo reduced the price of the GameCube to $99.99, it looked pretty bad for the company. As it turns out, it was a way to compete with Sony and Microsoft until the Wii could be launched. In other words, if you spread the word about a price reduction on your application, don’t be surprised if someone else spreads the word saying that your application is dying. But hey, there’s no such thing as bad press, right? This is the perfect time to prove them wrong by releasing an updated version.
This way, Android users discover something worthwhile at a lower price. Then, by the time the application goes back to the regular price, people are more willing to pay it because the app has been improved.
Keep Moving Forward
We have essentially finished discussing marketing your Android Application. Let us give you one last bit of advice: Keep moving forward when it comes to your applications. If you want to start a career as an Android developer, you have to continually create new applications as well as improve on the older ones. That can be a difficult juggling act.
The important thing is that you keep on trying, keep on learning, and keep advancing your career. This is a time when you want to hold on to milestones such as your one millionth download or one thousandth download. You keep those milestones around not so you can brag but so you can keep track of your progress.
We have found that programming applications is rewarding because there is a certain joy that comes from creating something new. Although this book is intended to teach you to be a successful app developer, financial success is easiest to attain when your heart is in your work. Create something that you are truly proud of and you will profit, both financially and personally.
We wish you the best in bringing your app ideas to life and hope that you find the journey as rewarding as the destination.
Summary
- Do your users have an easy way to get in touch with you? Preferably more than one way?
- Are you tracking customer support issues and reducing your support workload?
- Do you monitor Google statistics for trends and modify your app accordingly?
- Have you integrated analytics into your app to improve your understanding of customer motivations?
- Do you use A/B testing to improve your app?
- Do you need to change your app after its release?
- Is there a “peak season” for your app?
- Do you need to do a price increase/decrease?
And the last and most important question: Are you moving forward?