Fun

The greatest of these three is Fun. For app store games, no awesome monetization scheme or ad campaign will make up for a lame game. We’re aiming more towards casual games than hard core, for a broad market, for free-to-play, and we are consciously designing for iPhones: pocket sized, touch screen, connected, short pick-up-and-play gaming sessions. So things we consider for Fun include

• Easy to learn / can the tutorial be integrated and very short, or none at all?
• In the first 20s of play, can someone figure out what to do and start having fun?
• Is there always something to do?
• Is it too frustrating to lose?
• Would you play it on the bus?
• Are the controls intuitive? Do they replicate a real world action? Is there a rhythm to the controls?
• Hard to master?
• Natural Flow – does gameplay difficulty adapt to player’s skill level?
• Are there challenges that require some skill?
• Is there interesting / surprising / funny stuff to discover?
• Is there uncertainty / chance?  I.e. do some things the player does have unpredictable outcomes. = more endorphins.
• Is there easily attained progress? Is there a ‘progress checklist’?
• Is there a reason to come back for just one more try?
• Does the game align with common fantasy & basic human drives? E.g. becoming rich, famous, popular, loved, laid, being great at a sport or your team winning, nurturing, driving really fast, flying, being a hero, showing off, …
• Are there cute puppies? Sexy women? Sexy men? Sexy cars, …?
• Is it nostalgic?
• Will you want to talk to your friends about it?
• Will you want to play with or against your friends?
• Will you want to play with or against strangers on the internet?
• When we show someone the prototype, can they play it without instruction?
• When showing the prototype to an adult, do they actually play or just talk about it and then change the subject?
• When showing the prototype to a child, do they keep playing or do they quit and switch to a different app as soon as you turn your back?

Ability

Real programmers ship. Real publishers sell. Given our strengths and weaknesses, some projects are going to be easier for us to ship and sell, and that’s what the Ability score is about. A huge part of the reason to be self employed is to do what you love, and to be motivated as a self employed person you’ve got to love it. It follows then that in order to ship, we only work on projects that we are really excited about. Things we consider for Ability include:

• How excited are we to work in this?
• How big is the project? Smaller projects ship more easily.
• Can it make sense to release a minimum viable product and keep updating it as we build audience and tune fun and monetization?
• Are we artistically capable? Can we produce the game art, can we buy it, or can we hire artists to produce it under our direction?
• What is the balance between programed content (our strength) and artwork content (our weakness).
• Will we have to design all the levels / game world by hand? Can we generate levels with code?
• If we publish this, will we be proud of it or ashamed?

Market

This is a business. It’s our job. We want to make money by entertaining people. We don’t imagine ourselves to be artists, and we really want to avoid the ‘starving’ part of that dream. We think about the game as a sales funnel, about how the game’s name, icon, screen-shots, first play experience, continued play, will all propel players towards becoming paying customers and advocates for the game. To succeed financially we want good conversion at as many levels as we can, and perhaps more importantly, we want to be able to measure conversion and improve over time. Things we consider for Market:

• How broadly will the appeal of the game be, is it mass market?
• Are people searching for title words?
• Will people recognize something from the name and icon (before they specifically know about the game) to imagine that they might like it? I.e. how well will the game’s listing perform? This is a concept we call ‘swimmable’, as in, ‘how strongly will the app swim by itself in the sea of the app store?’.
• Does the concept have international appeal? Is it going to be stronger in some countries’ app stores than others?
• Will the screen shots look cool?
• Will the game seem familiar enough that players will imagine playing it from seeing a screen shot?
• Will the game make a story for the press? Is there a way to market the game to the online games press?
• Is there something new or unique about the game?
• Might Apple like the game and promote it?
• Will the concept appeal to the same kinds of people that are playing our other games? Can we do co-marketing deals with other games who do have our target audience?
• Can we come up with well performing ads for the game? Can we design compelling promotions for the game?
• Will players want to promote the game to their friends? Is it social or viral?
• Is the name memorable, easily pronounced and spelled?
• What In App Purchases will we put in the game?
• Are there multiple price points for IAPs?
• What power ups could we have?
• What wearables / vanity items could we have, and is the game social enough to justify that?
• Can we sell levels packs, new characters, new play environments?
• Is there a content pipeline of IAPs (that we are capable of sustaining)?
• Is there any user generated content?
• Are gameplay & screen layouts suitable for banner or full screen ads?
• Is there a niche that will fit a sponsor?
• What will the games age rating be?
• Is there anything that might be an App Store approval risk?
• Is there a natural progression to episode 2 of the game, or a spin off, or can we lead players into a 2nd game from this that has deeper engagement and more things to sell them?

Conclusions

We’ve now released two games. Hit Tennis 2 and Santa’s Lil Zombies. Hit Tennis 2 is doing well for us, and Santa’s Lil Zombies makes no money at all. Our FAM score for Hit Tennis is 7 (Fun 2, Ability 2, Market 3), and Santa’s Lil Zombies scored 4 (Fun 1, Ability 2, Market 1). Both of these games were released before we came up with our FAM score as a tool. (The Zombies game was developed as our ‘learn how to use Unity3D’ project that we then subsequently released because we liked it.)

We’re using FAM going forward to evaluate ideas and prototypes. We find the FAM score very helpful at keeping us in check when we get all gooey about a new game idea and when we get fed up with our current main project. FAM keeps us honest and on track with our business strategy. I think that developers fall in love with an idea, and therefore that’s what they’re going to work on, whether or not they are on track for business success. This happens to us all the time, and the FAM score forces us to reflect on why we love a particular idea. I’m not a typical iPhone user – I’m logical, I like optimizing complex systems and shooting at stuff that moves. My favorite games to play are Civilization IV and Borderlands (neither of which is even mobile). Our business strategy is not to appeal to me. FAM helps us see the difference between an idea that we love because we want to play or program that game vs an idea we love that will also be something fun for a broad audience that we can ship and sell.

I hope our FAM scoring factors list will be helpful to you. Use it as-is or develop your own list of factors that fits your business strategy. I’ll write more in the future about all the sources and influences. Many are mentioned the game design and business sections of my book recommendations.

For more advice, check out my book reviews for books on game design and books on app marketing.

The Business of iPhone App Development by Dave Wooldrige and Michael Schneider is an excellent on book that covers market research, app design & design for your promotional materials, different pricing and revenue models for apps, working with the press, connecting with customers, and running promotions. There’s a lot of hands on techniques and information in this book you can really use.  (I was the tech reviewer for the first edition of this book, Dave just updated it in 2011 to a 2nd edition.)

In App Savvy Ken Yarmosh takes the reader through a masterclass in app product strategy, managing app development, marketing and engaging with customers. The book is packed with sophisticated approaches that successful app publishers are using, but all the material is presented in a accessible easy to read form. Ken’s expertise comes from publishing his own iOS apps and working as a consultant on more, but he goes further and includes interviews with plenty of other successful app developers, marketers, and industry experts. App Savvy can give you an up to date understanding of the app store marketplace, will help you understand where your own app plans fit in, and its filled with guidance towards success. I especially love App Savvy because Ken introduces the ideas of Customer Development / the Lean Startup, which have been very influential on my own apps business. Whether you are an indie app maker, or working in a larger company, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

Another good iPhone specific marketing book is Jeffry Hughes’ ‘iPhone & iPad Apps Marketing, Secrets to Selling Your iPhone and iPad Apps‘, and it covers similar ground to Wooldridges book, and had lots of good examples of how app publishers promote their apps, and some financial models to help you make sensible plans.

Suzanne Ginsburg’s ‘Designing the iPhone User Experience‘ has some excellent advice about how to perform a competitive analysis of the market for your app, and lots of detailed information about user research and prototype app testing – key ‘before you build it’ marketing.

‘Positioning, The Battle for Your Mind‘ by Al Ries and Jack Trout was first published in 1981. Its been perhaps the most important marketing book I’ve read, it really changed how I think about how customers feel about the products they buy, and was tremendously helpful in understanding the vast gap that exists between how you feel about and see the app you are making, vs how all those iPhone users our there might feel about and see your app. Really, it comes down to the fact that pretty much no-one will feel anything about most apps because for most apps, no-one will ever even know they exist! Positioning is a huge challenge for companies with millions to spend on marketing, so how can this book be relevant to an independent iPhone developer with a micro budget? The lesson I took away was to make something that people can imagine what it is… that they could recognize what the app will do… that they can make that jump to wanting to check it out when they first see the app icon, name, or a screen shot when they are in the app store or perhaps a website. Check it out, its a great read.

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value is a wonderful read about behavioral economics. It should make clear to you why in app purchases can be so profitable, and why you need to sell multiple things in order to get your freemium game to pay. You know what – real customers are _not_ doing ROI calculations in their head when they consider buying your app!

  Also very influential to how I think about my iPhone business are the ideas of Customer Development and Lean Startups from Steve Blank and Eric Ries. Customer Development is about taking the risk out of startup businesses by figuring out what to make and how to sell it before investing lots of money on sales. Another way of looking at the basic idea is to say its about figuring out what people want to spend money on that you are capable of making, and it lays out techniques you can use to get there. Steve Blank explains this in his book ‘The Four Steps to the Epiphany‘. You can also check out the more recent The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. If you get a chance to hear Steve or Eric Ries speak, take it.

Starting your own business as an iPhone app publisher means you’ve got to deal with a bunch of legal and admin stuff. Whether you hire a lawyer or not, I recommend learning some of this stuff for yourself, how else can you be in-charge of your own business? For those of us in the USA, Nolo is here to help. A few of their excellent books to check out include ‘Legal Guide to Web & Software Development‘, ‘The Small Business Start-Up Kit‘, and ‘Consultant & Independent Contractor Agreements‘.

I’ll leave you with one final book recommendation which can serve you well in life generally, and especially well if you take on some iPhone app consulting / contracting work! ‘Bargaining for Advantage‘ by G Richard Shell is a great and easy read that will explain what master negotiators do, will help you defend against getting bullied in negotiations, and will help give you the confidence to find agreements that work for you – including decent contracting terms and rates.

More book recommendations: iOS Programming, App Design, Games & Unity.

Apple made us an amazing market for our software and threw in a fantastic distribution & sales platform. All that for just 30% of receipts, which IMHO, is an incredibly good deal for developers. But the app store doesn’t help anyone find your app right? Wrong! The app store is a catalog of ads for iPhone apps, and millions of people are browsing through those ads – especially the top 100 lists. These browsing people are primed and ready to download, you just have to make them notice your ‘ad’ among the 200,000 others. When people are looking in the app store they are scrolling through a table of app listings. It doesn’t matter if they are checking out the top 100 games or they searched for ‘gardening’, everything in the app store is shown as a list of apps. The listing shows: icon; app name; price; star rating, company name. Get someone to notice your listing, and they will tap through to your app’s page. There they see the screen shot and maybe download your app, but that can’t happen until they’ve tapped on your listing in the first place. The key then, is to get them to tap on your listing. To make the very best performing app listing you need to carefully select the best icon and the best app name. How do you know what will be the best performing, and what do I even mean by best performing anyway?

If you study how to be successful advertising on Google, or you learn about AARRR metrics for online business, you will discover that a key metric for online ads is is the Click Through Rate. CTR = clicks / impressions. (Clicks: number of times it was clicked on by people; impressions: number of times the ad was seen by people.) Better CTR means a better performing ad. Study this or try it yourself, and you’ll soon find that no-one makes money on Google by writing an ad, paying for the clicks, and sitting back while money pours in through their web-site. This is because it nearly always cost more for the ads than you can make back by selling your stuff! To make money you need to test several ads, figure out which is the best performing, take that ‘winner’ and make more variations to test. Keep repeating this until you have discovered one that performs well enough so that it is cost effective to pay Google a bunch of money to run the ad in large volume. iPhone app developers should use this same approach to figure out the best performing app listing: change name or icon, measure, compare, repeat.

OK, so how do you measure CTR of your app listing? You need to know impressions and clicks. But you don’t know these, only Apple knows how many times your app listing was shown and how many times people tapped on it (assuming even they are tracking this stuff). Hmmm… What we need is a way to test our app listing outside of the app store. It turns out there is something almost as good and extremely affordable: Admob. Below on the left is an app store listing for one of our old apps ‘Smart Caller’. On the right is an Admob ad in an iPhone app. Consider the content, structure, and context – they are very similar. So what I’m saying is that you can use Admob ads to test different icons and different app names for your app, to figure out the very best performing app name and icon for your app in the app store.

You can run an Admob mobile banner ad campaign for as little as $50, which will buy you 1000+ clicks (click prices vary by geography and demand). You might have a CTR of 1-2%, so that $50 is buying you 50,000+ impressions. This means you can test your icon or app name by sampling it 50,000+ times (which probably translates to almost 50,000 different people) all in a day. Survey 50,000 people in one day for just $50 to see which icon or which app name most catches peoples attention? Wow, if that doesn’t blow your mind then you’d better leave your app marketing to someone else. You can even test several ads at once in one $50 campaign, though you might have to baby sit it a little in order to get even testing of each. Now repeat a few times and you can find an app name and icon that performs much better than the ones you started with, all this for around $200 and a few hours work.

OK, here’s some proof for you of just how powerful the app icon and app name is. The graph below is real download data for one of our free apps. I won’t explain all the in & outs of the various name and icon changes the app has been through here, but you can see from the graph what a huge effect changing the name and icon had on downloads. Each blue line marks where we changed name or icon, and the red line is the daily download rate. (Of course when you do this, you are trying to increase downloads, and you can see that we decreased downloads… but exactly what happened there is for another blog post!) For this app, we saw 20x difference in download rate for the best app listing vs the worst. Wow. Now in testing via Admob you won’t see such a huge difference in CTR, because live in the app store, a better CTR for your app listing has a leveraging effect. Double your CTR and you double downloads. Doubling downloads will increase your rankings a whole lot, and with increased rankings more people will see your app (more impressions), which leads to even more downloads. Your app listing CTR has massive leveraging power, which I’ll discuss more in a later blog post.

Often when app publishers (especially indie developers) look at paid promotions like Admob ads, it’s not clear if it’s money well spent because of the question of how many actual downloads you will get for your money. It can cost a lot per download (Admob does have a way to measure downloads per impression and per $ spent, which is very neat). For example, one campaign we ran ended up costing us $2.50 per download for a free app, which was not a cost effective way of acquiring users for that app. Figuring the download rate (aka conversion rate) for your ad is a more sophisticated way to measure how ‘good’ the ad is, and you should try to measure conversion rate if you are using ads to acquire users / makes sales. But here I’m not talking about acquiring users, I’m talking about A/B testing your app name and icon, and for that, your $200 might well be the best money you’ll ever spend.

Why do I claim this is ‘the best’ thing you can do? Consider your sales funnel. Below is the sales funnel for a free apps that doesn’t have a bunch of PR, blog reviews etc. Its downloads come only from people finding it in the app store. To get people out the bottom of the funnel where you actually get paid, you need people to enter in at the top and keep moving down the funnel. To improve the conversion rate at which people will move down from one level to the next, you have to do more work and spend more money. All the conversion rates multiply together to result in the overall conversion rate of your sales funnel, so you can double your overall conversion rate by doubling conversions at any one of the stages. Improving how much people love to use your app (app use stage, or activation and retention in AARRR metrics) is probably quite hard and expensive, but improving how many people click on your app listing in the first place (acquisition) is quite easy and cheap by doing what I just described. Then on top of how cheap this is to do, add in the leveraging effect your app listing CTR can have and I hope you can see the potential here.

You can and should test your app name before you release your app, but you can also do it for an app that’s been out for ages. Got an app sitting there not selling? Experiment with different names and icons and find something that performs better for you. In our experience, existing users won’t mind you changing name & icon, but do consider changing only one at one time unless you go for a full rebranding, in which case just tell existing users what you are doing.

Would you like to de-risk your entire app making business by using this technique? Do app name testing before you ever write a line of code or design a single pixel. Are you an iPhone game developer? I bet you have many ideas for different games, but you’re not sure which one to invest the time and money to develop? Use ads to test several concepts, and build the one with the best click through rate. By doing this you’ll be pre-picking the one that has the best chance of being noticed by people and rising up the app store charts. Up-front market research like this is part of what the customer development & lean startup approach is all about – testing your idea as early as you can.

When you try this watch the CTRs for your ads and see if they change over time. When the ads first run, CTR tends to show higher in the reports than it will end up. As time goes on CTRs drop. Then leave it a few days and you’ll sometimes see CTRs rise again (even once the ad campaign has finished). I think it’s just differences in timing of how the click data and impressions data gets reported. I also suspect there’s an effect because of ‘ad-click jockeys’, users who really like clicking ads to see what new apps are out there, so these people click on new ads as soon as they see them. If this is happening its just fine, because click jockeys are the same people who are going to push your app up in the charts. So do keep an eye on the CTRs, and check back after a few days to see how the numbers settle.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who’s doing this kind of stuff with their mobile app business, and if I’ve inspired you to try it, let me know how it works out for you. Comment below or email markj at markj dot net. I’d love it if you could share the CTRs you get for different kinds of apps and the ranges you find between best and worst performing in order to develop some benchmarks for evaluating app ideas. I’ll be writing more on these topics myself, so please consider subscribing to this blog. Below are some references to the people I learned these techniques from, I encourage you to go read their blogs, books, and hear them speak if you can.

Steve Blank: developed the ‘Customer Development’ approach to the startup business, which my iPhone business is based on.

Eric Ries: was Steve’s student, and went on to pioneer customer development for online businesses in combination with agile engineering practices, resulting in the ‘Lean Startup’ movement.

Dave McClure: has fantastic work on metrics for online businesses and understanding your sales funnels, a lot of which applies well to the app store. AARRR!

Sean Ellis: Lots more great advice on startups and marketing.

Al Ries and Jack Trout: their book ‘Positioning – The Battle for your Mind’ explains the challenges in communicating with your customer, and sets the background for just why your app name is so powerful if you get it right.

Perry Marshal: great material on understanding online advertising with Google (and by proxy Admob etc).

Glenn Livingston: teaches online marketing, emotional marketing, and understanding customers (which is at the heart of whole customer development approach).

Neil Young: At iPhone and game conferences, Neil stands up and lays out ngmoco’s strategy to us. (And I started on a ZX Spectrum too!)

360idev: great place to learn about this mobile apps biz. I first presented this at 360iDev San Jose 2010.

Dave Wooldridge: The Business of iPhone App Development a great practical marketing book for iPhone devs. (Which I was the tech reviewer for.)