Dindy was released a month ago and now it’s time to review statistics, look back at my feeble “marketing” efforts and figure out how to continue. So far 17 people downloaded Dindy. Out of these 17:
- 3 people used the option to uninstall Dindy for a full refund (they’re allowed to do so during the 24 hour period that follows the purchase.) They all returned it a few minutes following the purchase, so I guess either it was unclear to them what Dindy does from the description or they simply looked at it and uninstalled.
- One person uninstalled Dindy after paying (so he didn’t get refunded.)
- One person’s payment was declined by the credit card company so the order was cancelled.
- I refunded one purchase to someone that gave Dindy its only review. He gave Dindy 5 stars, which is very nice of him, and immediately caused a “surge” in sales on the following day, when about 5 people bought it.
I concluded from the surge in sales that followed the review that I need to get Dindy reviewed more, so I sent the following email to some of the buyers a week following their purchase:
Hi,
My name is Amit and I’m the developer of Dindy for Android, an application you recently purchased for your Android-based phone.
As Dindy is relatively new it desperately needs ratings and comments in the App Market. If you have been using Dindy, I would appreciate it if you take a few minutes of your time to rate Dindy and/or write a comment about it in the App Market.
Thanks in advance,
Amit
Notice that I didn’t ask for positive reviews… just reviews. After all, I believe in my product.
Unfortunately, non of the receivers of this message reviewed Dindy. Additionally, my requests from several Android-related sites for a review have not been answered, so I decided to try something else: I developed another (small) application called Sleepless, which basically blinks the phone’s led to let you know the CPU is running and that it’s wasting battery. My intention was to give it for free and promote Dindy through it, but then it hit me – because Sleepless can be misunderstood (for example by thinking that it will always blink) it might have a negative effect on what potential buyers think about me or my apps.
I consider this my first lesson in marketing software: Once you start selling software, you have to make sure all your software products are top quality, both free and paid ones.
So right now I’m considering two options:
- Offer a free, crippled “lite” version of Dindy. It’s basically a good idea but as a user I dislike “lite” versions of software so I’m not inclined to offer them to others.
- Make something out of Sleepless, like maybe publish it in forums to get recognition.
Or I can just wait it out and see how Dindy does without my help. Maybe it’ll get enough “mouth to ear” publicity, now that there are so many Android phones out there.
First, I don’t know much about the general statistics of the Android App-Market, but I would guess your figures are not bad at all for a new app from a completely unknown developer. And it can still pickup considerably, so don’t discourage.
To the point: I think you should remember that Dindy is pretty much a niche product which is oriented towards a nich market, namely: those who like the idea of a “DND” mode. (An obvious fact when stated this way – but nonetheless an important one.) It follows from this that promoting Dindy by word of mouth or through another app is not going to be very effective, because the correlation between one person’s preference of DND and her friends’ preference of it is probably low, and the correlation between one person’s liking of another unrelated app and that of DND is probably even lower. (If you want to develop another app – that’s great, and may promote your developer rating in the App-Market (if there is such a rating) – but don’t do it just for the sake of promoting Dindy).
I think what you should do is this:
a. Make sure that those who do like the concept of a DND mode also like Dindy itself. In other words: that it actually solves the problem for them in a way they like. For example: Does your app support all the plausible ways of implementing DND mode or just one? If just one – you are probably losing customers who would like it differently. There is no need to do everything – just enough to satisfy, say, 80% of the target audience.
b. Make sure your app is accessible to as many people who do want DND mode. This one is tougher, but I guess the way to do it is: 1. Make sure Dindy is indexed in the App-Market search engine correctly (if there is such a serach-engine – I don’t know much about the App-Market), 2. The same for general search engines (this may require creating a web home page for Dindy and doing some basic SEO), and 3. Actively search for any forum-thread or blog-post that asks about DND solutions for Android (there must be a few) and get Dindy mentioned. This should optimally be an on-going effort. Google-Alerts may help.
Wow… thanks (yet again) for the detailed response.
Since Dindy costs money I get more accurate statistics with regards to uninstalls (people want their money back so they have to be online when they uninstall it.)
It’s true that Dindy is intended a niche product and I guess you’re right that it won’t get word of mouth publicity.
I think Dindy is pretty flexible when it comes to different modes of “away-ness”. The biggest missing feature is doing the same work for SMS messages, but this is Google’s fault – there is no official API for being notified about incoming text messages (as there is for calls.) Other than that, Dindy is pretty much feature-complete. Other features I tried to think of are small and I believe insignificant.
I think I should try to explore the world of auto away responders and see what else is out there and whether I should incorporate more stuff into Dindy.
The App Market is still a little problematic. Developers get only 325 letters to describe their applications, and I found it hard to describe Dindy in such small space _and_ include all the search keywords I would have liked.
And finally – I do have Google alerts set up and I try to push Dindy in forums, but I’m also careful as I don’t want to become one of those people that fill forums with advertising Graffiti. My online reputation also matters to me.