About 80 days ago Dr. Ivan Egghead's Amazing Idiot Detector went on sale on the App Store for $0.99. In part 1 of this series I explained how this was an experiment to experience selling on the App Store and various marketing ideas. Part 2 of this series showed what happened when we took out an online advert. Now in part 3 we're going to explore what happened when we released a free 'Lite' version to promote the full paid-for version.
The Lite version has just one theme - the one that looks and sounds like a military sonar device. To keep things simple, we only included the accelerometer control mode. The other thing we did was to stick a big full screen advert at start-up to directly promote the full paid-for version. So what happened?
Well, we were very happy with our download stats for the free version. In fact we were pleasantly surprised! We reached No. 1 in the Entertainment section and around No. 4 overall in several European countries. In contrast we also received incredibly bad ratings and pretty vicious comments on iTunes! It seems from the comments that users just didn't 'get' the subtle accelerometer control we had implemented.
There is plenty of evidence from various sources that releasing a free version is a good way to drive sales of a full paid-for product. And it makes sense - what better way to target your marketing than directly to those iPhone users who have shown enough interest in your product to have taken the time to download it! So, what was our experience?
No increase in sales at all. There are probably a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, we pulled the online advert around the same time as we published the Lite version; sales coming from this advert may simply have been replaced by sales from the Lite version. Secondly, if most people hadn't figured out the accelerometer control and thought the application just didn't work, they would not be happy to pay for the full version. Finally there is the fact that it's an Idiot Detector! It's just a bit of fun you might run occasionally for a laugh and if you can get it for free, why would you pay for it?
So what can we conclude?
- Write software people actually place value in (i.e. not a Idiot Detector!).
- Make it really easy to use and listen to your users' comments. If they're struggling to understand - it's your fault, not theirs!
- People like free stuff - but if you're using a free version for promotion, make sure there is still value left in what you're selling.
- People will be very vocal in their disapproval if you get it wrong and, because their reviews are pretty much anonymous, they can be quite abrasive. Although it may be hard to take, this is the most honest opinion you will receive. If you get it wrong you WILL be told, so get it right first time. A wider beta test would help.
- The App Store is a huge place. Even with a silly little app like the Idiot Detector we are still attracting several thousand new users a week.
So, the experiment is over. What's next? We've withdrawn the paid-for version from the App Store but we're going to keep the Lite version available for a while. We've listened to the user feedback and are implementing a touch mode to make it easier to control. As a bonus we're also bundling a second theme into the Lite version. If you want to check it out, it is available here on the App Store.
2 Comments:
On the ratings side, you have one very big thing working against you - any time you delete an app, you automatically get an instant popup asking you to rate it.
I imagine that most people who delete apps do so because they don't like them... so all those people who didn't like the app get an easy way to express that opinion. People who like your app and keep it will have to go back to the App Store (or iTunes), find your app, and enter a rating... how many people are going to go through that effort?
I have found the bias towards negative reviews to be one of the biggest downsides of the app store. With Balcassa, we have found that we are getting far fewer reviews than with the Idiot Detector. I would like to believe that this is because people are not removing it from their phones ;-)
Something I would like to see would be a way for developers to comment on reviews. I have seen a few good apps with very bad reviews simply because the reviewer did not understand what they were buying or because they thought a feature was "missing".
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