Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs of Launching an App

The weather in Melbourne has been fantastic, sunshine, blue sky and warm balmy nights.  It is much harder to be grumpy when the sun shines on you.

It has been nearly three weeks since we launched our Well-being Check-up iPad App and we are gaining some interesting insights from our new development.

STAGE 1 FEAR & TREPIDATION

 

When launching a new product and service there is some fear and trepidation. Will our baby, I mean app be noticed, accepted, supported, rejected or just ignored?  Once 10 people in the world purchased the app, my fear subsided.  Totally illogical I know, but subconsciously I just needed 10 people to validate the app and suddenly the fear dissipated.

STAGE 2 SOCIAL MARKETING

    
Well, this is an area I sort of know not a lot about!  I certainly didn’t want to have anti-social marketing this just didn’t seem nice.
We had done the research; all good apps are supported by effective social marketing.  This included a website that links to the app, a blog that talks about the app, a Facebook page where people could share their stories and experiences and access more knowledge. There was also talk of Twitter.  The social marketing needs to be relaxed and personable and give people an opportunity to socialize.  Apps that go ‘viral’ are the ones that really are successful, it is funny in other contexts viral could be the last thing you would hope for…

There were also the traditional marketing techniques, including media releases, sending free trials to Connectors and Mavens, and hoping and praying!

One of the biggest dilemmas we experienced was getting our App rated which means people need to review and provide a rating of their experience of the app.  We had been waiting for the magic 5 reviews as this then triggered an overall rating. It was a triumph when we hit 5 reviews and ratings, it did put a smile on all our faces.

If you really enjoy using an app I would encourage you to spend the extra 2 minutes providing a review. Your feedback is worth a lot more than you realize.
So our social marketing has been poor to average. We did do the Internet page, blogs (obviously), we did pre-launches and launches on LinkedIn. We still need to do a lot more work on getting the right strategy and content for a Facebook page – so I’ll keep you posted on how this progresses.

STAGE 3 FEEDBACK SO FAR

Thank you to our colleagues, friends and family who have invested the $2.99 and cared enough to give us feedback; we really appreciate this.  The other part of releasing something new, it is always interesting to see who cares and who doesn’t.  There are always surprises in who you can reach, when people in Switzerland, Canada, Columbia, Brazil and China purchased our app – it was kind of cool and amazing.

The feedback we have received has been consistent.  There are small enhancements that can help such as an action plan and more tips to improve, a get results button…we will prioritize all the feedback in our lessons learnt session next week. There were obvious things we forgot, like a link back to our website and the ability to email us for further assistance. We are aware that an iPhone and Android versions are in demand, all part of our future development plan.  Here are some comments we received:

Great to see where I’m going well. It’s great to be able to pinpoint exactly where your improvements should be. It’s like you know there are things missing but you don’t know where or what.  Gotta go, got some thinking to do.
You have been busy what a fun idea well done
I never really thought about some of the life aspects highlighted by this app.  Now that I do, I can take action in those areas.

There are more comments on the app review page, if you are curious.

STAGE 4 NEXT STEPS

 

 

We have a lot of learning and development to continue doing.   The best part is that I am working with fun, smart people and we are in it together.  I look forward to sharing more of the trials, tribulations and triumphs after our lessons learnt session.
By the way if you still haven’t seen our Well-being Check-up App – here it is (you need an iPad):

 https://itunes.apple.com/app/well-being-check-up/id589563823?ls=1&mt=8