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I focused on growth: app downloads grew from 1 to 1355 a day

12 points by luke5dm ↗ HN
Typeli Notes (http://www.typeli.com)

Imagine putting a ton of work (months of development) into building outstanding software, pricing it at less then a cup of latte (2 minutes of 'development'), so you can reach everyone, and then only being able to get on average 1 purchase/day. Discouraging, no? Well, that's my experience with Typeli- a note-taking app I launched a few months ago.

On the upside, those few "spenders" who bought it, loved it. And not only did they like it, they thought the app was worth the money.

So I researched a bit and it seems that we've collectively exhausted our trust. I think we cried wolf way too often- said that note-taking app, a todo list, a chat-client was ground-breaking, revolutionary, worked like magic- except it didn't. And $1.99 after $1.99, our patience steadily diminished. When you buy a $5 Starbucks, you know what you're getting. When you get the $2.99 Typeli, all you have is the sour taste of some unpleasant previous purchases.

Now, we can't easily change the status quo, but once we understand the environment, it's much easier to align yourself with people's expectations. So since yesterday, I'm been giving away Typeli for FREE.

Reaction? New daily purchases grew from 1/day to 1355/day.

Obviously my revenues are $0 but I think of this as an investment. I'm acquiring new users for $10/each (average price for similar apps). Once I have the base I can then add value by offering extra features that people need and are more than willing to pay for.

(e.g. ability to type auto-highlighted code- hell yeah I want that for $1.99, pictures in my notebooks- definitely worth $0.99 etc.)

I wanted to marinate you with this data to get feedback and spread the word about the realities of the Mac Appstore. Please feel free to share your thoughts and questions.

8 comments

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Bostwick
I would differentiate between "Purchases" and "Downloads" here. Purchases mean people paid for the application, while downloads imply no revenue.

It's great that your app took off when you dropped the price to free, and it's a good idea to pivot to offering extended features to power users. You're pivoting your app to a more 'freemium' model.

You might consider taking a survey of your users to find out what they want out of Typeli. iMockups has done this a few times, and it's worked well for them. Are you sure that your users want "auto-highlighted code"? You'll experience the same disappointment with sales if you build something before considering what your users actually _want_ from your app.

luke5dm
Yeah, I will definitely work off of the user feedback- at this point it's still the best idea (as opposed to pure innovation). The "auto-highlighted" code is just an example I choose for HackerNews, something that I really want, and some of my hacker friends asked for.
laazer31
Its been a while since I've used the mac app-store since my recent switch to pc. I have found that the app store is cluttered by apps that are simply useless and either preform poorly or not at all. If the app works well I would say that the next step is adding mini purchases within the app. This could be things like language packs, mathematical equation inputs, ect. I would go to people of different majors and see what kind of things they most often wish they could transfer from their notebook to their laptop. That will give you the best idea of what to add next.
luke5dm
Yeah, that's the idea. People will pay but only if they actually really need something- can see how it will improve their life.
padobson
The good thing about having lots of users is that you now, also, have lots of guinea pigs.

So you can listen to your users clamor for more features, and then monitor how often those features are being used once you add them. Then you can find ways to differentiate which feature requests are adding value to your app, and which ones are just noise.

hmgauna
You could also consider the very long trial approach as WhatsApp. In that way, you will get a lot of users that will think that they have plenty of time to try your app and then look for another as good as yours, or switch before if they are dissatisfied. If yours is really that cool, they will rather pay three dollars at the end of the year, than look for another disappointing unknown app. Still have a lot of guinea pigs for the long haul to make yours the best out there.

PS: It seems that you need to update your homepage 'Buy Now' -> 'Get if for FREE now!'... (good place to make some marketing) you could A/B experiment with different phrasings like: 'Free for a limited time!' and others...

luke5dm
@"BuyNow Button" thanks for pointing that out.

I very much prefer the long-trial solution. From what I understand though, Apple doesn't let you do that on the Mac Appstore- which is really good in the beginning for handling security, payments, returns, and marketing.

mansigandhi
We actually did the same with our app Soundbox (https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/soundbox-for-youtube/id44466...).

On "regular" days we tested price points $0.99 and $1.99 to see which worked better. On holidays & long weekends we'd give it away for free.

It worked fabulously in terms of getting users...and surprisingly, the retained % of users was the same irrespective of whether they were paid or unpaid. On a particularly good weekend we got ~30,000 downloads.

We wanted the high number of users to: 1. Prove that people actually wanted the app 2. Using the high number of users as a channel for growth

We achieved #1 without question, the #2 is yet to be achieved.