App Marketing Tips

Why universal iPad/iPhone apps are good for users but bad for a developers’ rankings

Written by Robert J Weber on 28 July 2010

An app developer of iPhone® and iPad™ apps, Evan McMahon of Veiled Games.com, pointed out something to consider when doing app development for the iPhone and iPad—the app only counts on the ranking for the iPhone or the iPad, splitting the count for a universal app.

In the end, all apps want to score it big in the iPhone app ranks. Evan pointed out that there is an additional consideration when designing a universal app (a single application that can be run on the iPhone as well as the iPad), and the way it is counted in the ranking. With a universal app, purchases on the iPhone count for iPhone rankings only, purchases on the iPad count for iPad rankings only, and purchases in the iTunes desktop application count for iPhone rankings only. Also, if the intended use for the app is iPad and purchased through iTunes, it is counted as an iPhone app. Therefore, creating a universal app creates value for the user as they can use the app on both the iPhone and iPad, but as a developer, creates a possible disadvantage since it splits the count in the rankings.

Another situation that arises from this scenario is the inability to create different price points for the iPhone and iPad app to capitalize on the different price tolerances of the two markets.

Creating a universal app is advantageous to the user, but as a developer attempting to optimize the revenue generated from the app, the developer must choose the most effective pricing and sales strategy possible. It is a difficult balance for developers who want to provide the most utility for users while fully monetizing the investment in the application.

Creating a universal app and how it affects your app ranking is another thing to consider when doing app development for iPhone and iPad apps. Please comment if you have additional tips for app developers.

Insight on How to Increase Mobile App Distribution Based on Android, Blackberry and iOS Application Research with Consumers

Written by Robert J Weber on 19 July 2010

[Originally posted on ClickZ on July 13th 2010]

Through increased understanding of what drives users to heavy mobile app consumption, a more effective marketing plan can be created and executed to increase Android, BlackBerry, and iOS app distribution. My company conducted mobile app distribution research with both B2B mobile app developers/marketers and B2C mobile app users in an effort to understand more about successful distribution tactics. The results are useful as you develop a kick-ass distribution plan.

This month’s column covers the results of our B2C mobile application research focused on Android, BlackBerry, and iOS applications. The results of the B2B mobile application research were covered in my last ClickZ column.

B2C Mobile Application Research Summary

Method

This data was derived from 448 valid and fully-completed responses to our mobile app survey. The survey was hosted online with links distributed through a third-party site. Recipients of the survey link were asked to participate in the survey and received $2 for completion.

Purpose

This survey seeks to quantify aspects of mobile app discovery, acceptable ad formats, app purchases, and Web search from the three leading U.S. smartphone players: Apple (including iPod touch), Google, and RIM.

Criteria

Due to the difficulties in obtaining Android respondents, the survey company focused more than half of their efforts on targeting Verizon customers. Valid users included only those that correctly answered trap questions and met minimum qualifications. User composition by primary device was: 130 iPhone, 103 BlackBerry, 100 iPod touch, and 115 Android. All were from the U.S. All have an app-capable device. All have at least one app installed on their primary phone.

Quantity of Apps on Smartphone

Tip: Make the iPhone your starting point. Currently, iPhone users are the largest, most passionate user group and install the most applications.

How many apps do you currently have installed on your primary phone?

1 to 5 (24 percent)

6 to 10 (21 percent)

11 to 15 (16 percent)

16 to 20 (15 percent)

21 to 30 (10 percent)

31+ (13 percent)

Twenty-three percent of all users have 21 or more apps installed (heavy app users). IPhone owners have the highest ratio of heavy app users (iPhone – 34 percent, Android – 30 percent, iPod touch – 21 percent, and BlackBerry – 7 percent). These figures are reasonably consistent with the secondary research reviewed.

How many apps do you download per month to your primary device?

None (7.61 percent)

1 to 3 (51.23 percent)

4 to 10 (29.31 percent)

11 to 20 (6.94 percent)

21 to 30 (1.79 percent)

31 to 50 (1.57 percent)

51+ (1.57 percent)

Forty-one percent of all users install four-plus installs per month. IPhone owners rank the highest in achieving this minimum (iPhone – 48 percent, iPod touch – 43 percent, Android – 38 percent, BlackBerry – 29 percent).

Role of the Desktop Computer in Mobile App Discovery

Tip: Syncing is a routine behavior, so marketing via the Web is a viable distribution tactic with links back to the App Store. Don’t ignore the influence of desktop websites to mobile app discovery in your mobile distribution plan. Submit free copies of your app along with marketing information to the various mobile app review websites. Users prefer to search the App Store for your app, so make sure the keywords most commonly used for your app quickly bring up your app in search results.

Syncing their mobile device with desktop computer: Eighty percent of Apple mobile device users fully sync at least once per month. Sixty-two percent fully sync at least once per week. These figures are relatively the same between the iPod touch and the iPhone. It would appear that Apple mobile device users are familiar with syncing and for most it is a routine behavior.

Downloading apps using desktop software: Ninety-two percent of Apple mobile device owners understand that you can download apps using the iTunes desktop software (96 percent for iPhone, 86 percent for iPod touch). Seventy-two percent download at least one app per month using this method (76 percent for iPhone, 64 percent for iPod touch). Forty-six percent download at least one app per week using this method (48 percent for iPhone, 40 percent for iPod touch).

Preferred method for downloading an app discovered while using their desktop computer:

Apple mobile device owners:

56 percent prefer to search the App Store from their mobile device for the app

17 percent prefer to use the iTunes desktop software

13 percent prefer to have the download link sent via e-mail

>7 percent prefer taking a picture of an app’s designated bar code, receiving a link via SMS

>7 percent prefer receiving an alert via a mobile app

BlackBerry owners:

42 percent prefer to search the App Store from their mobile device for the app

40 percent prefer to have the download link sent via e-mail

Android owners:

72 percent prefer to search the app store from their mobile device for the app

11 percent prefer to have the download link sent via e-mail

Mobile App Purchases and Advertising Formats

Tip: Offering the mobile app for free increases distribution. IPhone app users are most willing to pay $0.99. Users are receptive of an ad-supported model. Users are also receptive to paying for additional features. IOS app marketers are successful with the freemium model.

Installing free apps as a substitute for paying: Most users would prefer to install three free apps (52 percent) over paying $0.99 for an app or premium feature (42 percent). IPod touch, Android, and BlackBerry users all shared this preference (58 percent, 53 percent, 55 percent, respectively), whereas iPhone users preferred to pay the $0.99 (54 percent compared to 43 percent to install three free apps).

The remaining users (6 percent) selected the other option, which asked them to submit their own custom answer. The general response was that these users would simply avoid apps that require some form of payment.

Ad formats for free apps: Users showed a strong interest in new advertising formats when asked to select their top three options in supporting free apps.

New advertising formats:

Submit a rating and a review for an app I like every five uses (25 percent)

Complete a short survey every five uses (24 percent)

Select and install a free app from a recommended list after every five uses (21 percent)

Existing advertising formats:

See a 20 second ad once during each use (33 percent)

See persistent small ads during use (24 percent)

Select and install a free app from a recommended list in exchange for a virtual good (16 percent)

Influences to purchasing a paid app or extra feature: Forty-two percent of all users have purchased an app or extra feature, after first trying the free version of an app. Apple mobile devices show a much higher composition of users that made such purchases (iPhone – 55 percent, iPod touch – 49 percent, Android – 27 percent, BlackBerry – 34 percent).

Users ranked what motivates them to purchase a full version app or an extra feature (selecting all that apply):

Expanded features and capabilities (77 percent)

Remove ads (44 percent)

Trial expired (35 percent)

To support the developer (22 percent)

Curiosity (16 percent)

Mobile App Discovery

Tip: Appearing in the top 25 and category lists is essential for effective mobile app distribution. Users prefer to find apps using the top 25 and category lists in the app stores. Popularity (past 24 hour downloads) and total following (overall active users) are the two preferred options for sorting apps from a list. It’s no surprise that in our B2B survey, incented app distribution was the most effective type of advertising for mobile app marketers. This is generally the low-cost, predictable, high-volume source of distribution. Since search is also important, paying close attention to keyword and description SEO tactics is important in your app marketing campaign.

Methods tried by users for finding new apps (select all that apply):

Categories (57 percent)

Search (57 percent)

Featured – new (52 percent)

Top 25 overall (52 percent)

Features – what’s hot (48 percent)

Featured – personalized recommendations (e.g., Apple’s Genius) (18 percent)

Ads in other apps (12 percent)

Apple mobile devices have the top two selections being categories and top 25 overall (iPhone Top 25 – 65 percent, iPod touch Top 25 – 63 percent, iPhone Categories – 61 percent, iPod touch Categories – 64 percent). IPhone users are far more likely to try a personalized recommendation solution than other device owners (iPhone – 27 percent, iPod touch – 17 percent, Android – 12 percent, BlackBerry – 15 percent).

Methods preferred by users for finding new apps (rank order):

Most popular topics (7.3)

Ads in other apps (7.0)

Featured – personalized recommendations (5.2)

Search (4.5)

Featured – what’s hot (3.9)

Featured – new (3.3)

Top 25 overall (2.3)

Categories (2.6)

There was no significant variance between devices.

User preference toward different sorting options in their app store (rank order):

Buzz – media mentions and links (7.2)

Recommendation – based on other apps you have installed (7.1)

Discount (6.8)

Newest (4.9)

Expert’s rating (4.9)

Friend’s rating (4.8)

Everyone’s rating (3.8)

Total following – active users (3.4)

Popularity – past 24 hour downloads (2.1)

The order is consistent between devices, but on Android, the Everyone’s Rating option is noticeably closer to the Total Following option (Everyone’s Rating – 3.6, Totally Following – 3.5, Popularity 2.0). It’s noticeable that several very popular sorts are not yet available in Apple’s App Store (Total Following, Friend’s Rating, and Expert’s Rating).

By understanding user preferences, you can put a more effective mobile app distribution plan together for your Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone app marketing campaign. Hopefully this application research gives you some ideas on elements that are important in your marketing and design tactics. Be sure to read last month’s column on B2B mobile application research and its implications. If you have any thoughts on how to get top iPhone apps, please leave your comments below.

Tips for Promoting Apps Using Twitter

Written by Robert J Weber on 08 July 2010

Twitter works. Read on to find out how I used Twitter to successfully launch my companies new app promotion business, Apperang; along with other tips from a top tech journalist on how to use Twitter for app promotion.

I read Twitter Means Business by Julio Ojeda-Zapata on vacation in Mexico. Julio is a nationally recognized tech journalist (for example, see his post about his recent appearance on TWiT) who covers tech news for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

A quick tangent on my Mexico trip before I continue…

I knew Nokia was #1 in global market share for mobile phones, but I haven’t traveled outside of the U.S. much over the past year so this hadn’t really sunk in. I was amazed at how many low-end Nokia feature phones there were in Mexico. For example, I sat on a ferry ride next to a young guy who worked for mobile game company Gtech. In my extremely choppy Spanish and his choppy English, we discussed the difference in iOS versus Android, and games built for feature phones. Pretty funny discussion on who’s the target market for various phones.

I was late to adopt Twitter… Why?

I was down on social media after watching Facebook transition from its initial early adopters to its current position of mass consumer penetration. Through the transition to the mainstream, Facebook ended up becoming a pretty worthless professional tool for me. I’ve always been a LinkedIn fan, but I find LinkedIn tends to be where relations go to die versus to develop.

What caused me to finally pay attention to Twitter?

I was urged by friend and fellow Minnesota tech entrepreneur, Philip Hotchkiss, to adopt Twitter for professional purposes about a year ago.

How did I get started?

I started following individuals I came across during my general professional life.

Eventually, the number of relationships I followed became hard to manage so I started building Twitter lists on key conversations I like to participate in, such as app marketers, app developers, tech media, and Minnesota tech.

What did I miss during the Twitter early days?

By being a late adopter to Twitter, I missed out on some of the early business success stories. Julio’s book did a great job of retelling these early stories. Here are a few excerpts that specifically apply to app developers:

Evernote’s stellar customer service, for Windows apps and other OS apps, fix problems before most users even notice them. “Twitter has proven invaluable for identifying problems with its software, if a bug crops up, Evernote will hear about it, almost instantly,” comments Andrew Sinkov, Evernote Marketing Director (page 58). Evernote built a strong following due to its popularity with the web-tech set. Tweets help identify bugs, as well as capture usage ideas, as a vehicle for new product/feature communication, and a polling medium to get user feedback.

Promoting the MyLite iPhone App- Graeme Thickens and DoApp: “He (Graeme Thickens) used his @DoApp identity as a sort of news feed to keep followers apprised of developments in iPhone application development, which was a superhot subject in the consumer-technology universe” (page 57). Thickins searched for mentions of DoApp on Twitter and asked for permission to post some of the more creative tweets. Users were finding all kinds of interesting uses for the myLite program, which is a combination strobe, emergency flasher, and rock-concert lighter. Nearly two dozen uses were identified including: a radiologist setting it to red for use in the x-ray room; and a WVA medic using the emergency flasher at night festival “so other members of rescue and fire could find me in a dark sea of people.”

Amy Worley, Director of Digital Marketing, H&R Block, used Twitter to increase awareness of their desktop software (page 41). Worley was on a crusade to publicize the company’s digital offerings, including its TaxCut options, for doing taxes online. She used Twitter to broadcast tax tips like tax deductions commonly missed or W-4 tips. She also used Twitter to answer tax questions, creating a two-way conversation with users. Twitter evolved to become an integral part of their marketing efforts showing that H&R Block is a true advocate for the taxpayer.

My own personal Twitter business success story

While on vacation in Mexico, I joined my fellow colleagues at W3i in launching Apperang, a service which pays consumers to try iPhone and iPad apps.

A couple of weeks prior to the launch, I used Twitter to reach two app developers, which resulted in their participation in the public launch of our iOS app promotion service before we were even live. I found that many app developers are hard to reach, and Twitter is a very useful tool for engaging in conversations with them.

Perhaps even more telling of the business value in using Twitter, as a part of our launch, was how an unsolicited tweet was able to connect me to a writer at TechCrunch named, Gagan Biyani, which ultimately landed us a story in Mobile Crunch. This was no small feat for a company headquartered in central Minnesota, far from Sillicon Valley. Later on, several other tech blogs followed on the TechCrunch coverage and they wrote their own stories. The post Biyani wrote ended up being among the most popular in Mobile Crunch for the entire week – during a week that was competing for coverage against the iPhone 4 launch. Not only was it good industry buzz that resulted in several leads from additional new app developers who wanted to participate in our app promotion service; but it helped provide a big organic boost in early adopters on the consumer side of our service as well, which has provided great feedback while we are in our public beta phase.

I would highly recommend Julio’s book for anyone involved with using Twitter for business purposes. I am also looking forward to reading Julio’s new book when it is published on how businesses are using the iPad.

If you are an app developer interested in tips around the business of apps, I would recommend following @W3i, or if you are interested in following me personally, @robertjweber. Please comment if you have any interesting stories on how you used Twitter to grow your app business.

iPhone, Android, and Blackberry App Marketing Research

Written by Robert J Weber on 24 June 2010

[Originally posted on ClickZ on June 15th 2010]

With the proliferation of mobile applications, the age-old marketing problem of discovery is now paramount. What can you learm from mobile app marketers across various operating systems like iPhone (iOS), Android, and Blackberry?

My company conducted mobile application research with both B2B (define) mobile app developers/marketers and B2C (define) mobile app users in an effort to understand the successes and challenges developers face when vying for the top spot in various app stores. The results are useful as you develop your plan to market mobile apps.

This month’s column will cover the results of my company’s B2B mobile application research. The results of the B2C mobile application research will be covered in my next column.

B2B Mobile Application Research Summary

Method

This data was derived from 33 survey responses to our Mobile App Monetization and Business Model research. The survey was hosted online with links distributed through third-party sites and personal e-mails. Recipients of the survey link were asked to participate in the survey and received a white paper as an incentive.

Purpose

The purpose of the application research was to uncover app marketing techniques employed to drive mobile app discovery and downloads of native apps developed for the top mobile platforms in the U.S.

Criteria

A respondent was required to be a developer of native mobile apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Each of these platforms offer a proprietary “app store” to developers for managing the discovery, download, and monetization of apps developed on their respective platforms. Most respondents to our survey were iPhone app developers (53 percent) that develop native iPhone apps as their primary business (47 percent).

App Store Rankings

Tip: Learn how rankings in each app store work and how they affect the number of installs an app receives. Many of the top apps are using mobile app advertising campaigns to get them to the top of the ranking. Try flighting – run promotion to get to the top and then stop promotion and let it ride until the app drops below the top rankings, then run promotion again. Other app stores to consider are: Handmark, Handango, GetJar, and carrier app stores (long approval time).

Each of the three app stores addressed in this application research (i.e., Apple iTunes App Store, Android Market, BlackBerry App World) have specific methods for ranking mobile apps. Only half of the respondents to this survey had a clear understanding of how rankings impact the number of installs they receive. Most BlackBerry and Android developers don’t know their peak popularity ranking in their respective app stores. IPhone developers have a better understanding of where they fall within the various rankings.

iPhone: Fifty percent of iPhone developers have achieved peak popularity in the App Store for a free iPhone app. Twenty-eight percent have made the top 100 list for a paid app.

Android: Thirty-six percent of Android survey respondents have achieved peak popularity in the top 100 rankings for a free Android app. Most Android developers (90 percent) don’t know their peak popularity ranking for a paid app and 63 percent don’t know their peak for a free app.

BlackBerry: Two out of nine BlackBerry respondents have achieved peak popularity rankings in the top 100 for both free and paid apps. Seventy-eight percent don’t know what peak popularity ranking they’ve achieved.

Business Model

Tip: Understand how pricing will affect your demand. Offering a mobile app for free can rapidly grow your user base; however, to sustain your business you must have a source of revenue. Charging for your app is one option, other options include: ad supported, selling virtual goods for micro payments, and sponsorship. Run tests to optimize pricing.

Revenue from paid apps is the primary business model of most of our respondents (43 percent), followed by ad-supported free apps (22 percent). The three most important factors in determining the business model of their apps were: user acceptance/experience (81 percent), revenue-per-install (71 percent), and quality reporting (33 percent).

For the majority of respondents (81 percent), user experience and not revenue-per-install, was the more important factor in determining the business model of their app.

Advertising Techniques

Tip: Paid search is only one option. Because mobile advertising is experiencing slow adoption from major brands, much of the mobile ad inventory is affordable (think remnant). Also, once you have an application with a large user base, use cross promotion to introduce a new application. Cost effective tactics are PR, blogger outreach, social media, and the elusive viral marketing.

Most survey respondents have tried at least some form of advertising. The three most common practices were: offering ads within another mobile app (35 percent), mobile keyword search (26 percent), and ads on a desktop website (22 percent).

A significant number (30 percent) of respondents aren’t using any of the common advertising techniques to drive demand for their mobile apps. This could mean that they either aren’t advertising at all or are experimenting with entirely new and different techniques altogether. However, if we take into account that 42 percent indicated that they don’t spend any money on advertising, we can safely conclude that this 30 percent simply doesn’t advertise.

Although survey respondents have tried most of the common app advertising techniques, most (52 percent of ad techniques) yield average results.

User Engagement

Tip: Don’t forget, retaining the user is as important as acquiring the user – depth of content and fresh content are both important to engage users. It’s easier to plan engagement features into the development of the app than to try to retrofit. And you can’t improve what you don’t measure. How to measure: segment subscribers by multiple variables, prioritize segments, determine variables to measure, run A/B tests, roll out across segment, and continue to optimize. Reports can include: device reports by vendor and model, traffic reports on how content is being consumed, destination reports to identify potential partners, or places to run ads.

Most respondents are satisfied (52 percent) with how their apps were rated in the app store. However, 48 percent see that their ratings either need improvement or are not important.

When we asked app developers what they valued most, increased usage ranked highest (48 percent). Given the option of increasing usage of an app by 10 percent or increasing the number of installs by 10 percent, developers would rather increase usage. This is consistent with earlier responses, which indicated that 81 percent of developers value user experience and user acceptance over revenue-per-install.

Marketers are just beginning to get an understanding of how to get top iPhone apps. Hopefully this application research will give you some clues on elements that are important in your marketing and design tactics. Stay tuned for next month’s column on the results of the B2C application research of 448 U.S. smartphone users. If you have any thoughts on how to get top iPhone apps, please leave your comments below.

Android vs iOS- Where should app developers spend their time?

Written by Robert J Weber on 19 June 2010

It was Christmas in June for me this week. I received my backordered iPad 3G (yes, I waited for a few weeks, I wasn’t completely sold on the iPad initially) and my backordered Droid Incredible (I tossed my Blackberry after ten plus years with RIM) within a couple of days of each other.

After I played with each device for a couple of days, I started to form some entrepreneurial opinions in terms of how I might think about the iOS versus Android as an app developer and app marketer.

1) Both Android and the iPad need more apps! After scanning through the games which were available in the Android Market, and I was pretty disappointed. Most of the titles and genres I was familiar with using my iTouch for the past couple years had no viable alternative in the Android Market. As for the iPad, there were very few apps available in the utility categories I count on. For example, I was only able to quickly locate one free Twitter app specifically built for the iPad versus on the iPhone/iTouch, where there are many free Twitter apps.

2) Android makes me think about the user interface to navigate, the iOS makes me feel stupid. In Android, I have encountered several different user interface challenges which would cause me to not want to hand the device over to my four year old daughter to play with. With the iPad, as with other iOS devices, my four year old has no trouble. The result? The iOS makes me feel stupid after awhile. I like a technology that is a little rough around the edges and makes me think.At times, the iOS is too simple for me. With that said, the iOS is the best mobile operating system for the mass market right now. This week on MediaPost, Jeff Litvack, GM of global product development at The Associated Press, said he’s not seeing the same level of engagement on Android devices as he is on Apple devices. I think this is directly related to the UI not being completely dummy proof, and the lack of apps on Android.

3) The Android OS is lacking a robust ecosystem of tool providers for app developers when compared against the iOS- Whether it is leader board functionality, in-app cross promotion networks like W3i, etc, Android fundamentally does not seem to have as many robust tool providers bringing functionality to the app developers. This is very apparent when you engage with apps in Android. This will likely change as Android’s market share grows, as I know many top tool providers on the iOS are planning to enter the Android market soon. Apple’s unpredictable policies are causing a lot of tool providers to look for other viable options. Microsoft and RIM should take note.

Facebook’s Free App the Only App Ranked in Top Ten on Both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market

Written by Robert J Weber on 02 June 2010

Distimo’s May report just came out covering November 2009 to April 2010.

TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters summarized that on the Apple App Store, paid apps stay in the top 100 rankings much longer on average than free apps, which was a key finding by Distimo as well.

In looking at the report, I found something else that was not cited by Distimo in their key findings or by TechCrunch, and that was that Facebook’s free app was the only app to rank in the top ten for paid or free apps in both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. I’m a little surprised given the iPhone and Android support I see from top mobile app developers like Pandora, The Weather Channel, etc.

Marketer’s Guide to Mobile App Development

Written by Robert J Weber on 28 May 2010

[Originally posted on ClickZ on May 18^th 2010]

So, you know you need to have a mobile app for your next campaign, but you don’t know where you should start. I asked Aleksey Cherfas, our top mobile app developer, to tell me what he thinks digital marketers need to know about app development, and he distilled his guidance around how to choose a platform, how to choose what type of technology to use, how do you determine what features to include in your mobile app, and how to drive continuous engagement.

One of the most important decisions in preparation for mobile app development is to decide which platforms you will target. Do you go for the iPhone OS, because everybody seems to be so hyped about the iPhone and iPad; Android, because you heard it is a promising open source platform; or the BlackBerry, just because this is what your boss uses? Regardless of whether you decide to cover multiple platforms right away or focus on just one from the beginning, you should start with analyzing your prospective users and the marketplace. Determine if you plan your app to have a global reach or focus on local markets and seek out device usage in those markets before committing to any particular device. A safe bet would be to single out one device to start with and then gradually expand to others, focusing on those that are more relevant to your domain.

Once you decide on the platform, you have at least three choices in terms of the type of applications you can develop. You can go for developing a native app, which takes advantage of platform specific functionality and design, arguably making it easier to operate for your users, though condemning your development effort to be very complex and technologically involved.

On the other end of the difficulty spectrum in the world of mobile app development are Web apps. These applications are Web pages that are rendered inside a mobile browser and capitalize on the browser’s multitouch technology for navigational interaction. Some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is usually sufficient to build a simple and effective application. There are even frameworks that allow you to harness the power of JavaScript in mobile browsers without much effort. JQTouch, a jQuery plug-in for mobile app development, is one such framework.

Your third option is a combination; kind of a half-native, half-Web app where you would create a native app that uses a browser engine for rendering your content as Web pages but requires you to develop your own navigation instead of using built-in mobile browser navigation controls. This option is a little more technologically involved than a simple Web app. Because you are using a browser engine for displaying your content, the effort is not quite as involved as with the native app.

At this point, it should be mentioned that there are several services that try to solve the multiplatform conundrum and complexity of native development, making your entrance to mobile app development a lot easier. These services will allow you to write your code once, in many cases using JavaScript and HTML, and they will take care of compiling applications into the native code for different devices. Some of the more prominent of them are Rhomobile, PhoneGap, and Titanium. If you plan to develop an app by yourself, do give high consideration to these services.

As you think about the design of your mobile apps, consider these options. You can either make your design very specific to the standards and conventions of each platform, or use your design from other domains (website, desktop software) and transplant it onto the mobile app. Even with the array of platforms out there, it’s possible to use blueprints that will nicely fit into different platforms without violating too many conventions for each platform. There’s no right answer when it comes to design. If you deviate from the standards, you should still stay within familiar metaphors so that the users don’t have to work too hard to learn how to use your mobile app.

The main difference of mobile apps from your other domains is limited display area, so keep it very simple and to the point. Don’t try to incorporate every single feature into the first version of your app. Start with a simple feature of essential functionality and let the user feedback drive your future functionality and application design. One way to keep functionality to the minimum is a product requirements document (PRD). In its simplest form, PRD is a list of application requirements (features) with a brief explanation and some weights attached to each feature. The commonly used weights are “must have,” “good to have,” and “may have.” Keeping these weights in mind makes it easier to set development priorities and move unessential application features into the next releases. Again, keep it simple – think in terms of “must have” requirements for the first release.

Even after users install your app, you are still only one of many that occupy their home screen and will constantly need to compete for their attention. Updating your app often is one approach to keep users engaged and interested. Many successful apps release updates at least once a month. With each update they address bugs and performance issues, but most importantly they try to come up with a small new feature that will keep users interested and prompt them to re-download and open your app.

With so many options to choose from when developing for mobile platforms, your decision should be based on your requirements and resources. If you are to remember one takeaway from above, it’s: keep it simple.

How Can Minnesota Tech Be Better?

Written by Robert J Weber on 28 May 2010

While attending Minnebar 2010, I spoke on a panel of tech entrepreneurs and investors to an audience of about 200 to 250 to discuss how Minnesota is doing in its quest to grow tech businesses.

Check out the video of the panel discussion courtesy of TECHdotMN.

Some of you app developers may recognize Dan Grigsby on the panel from the recently shut down iPhone developer blog Mobile Orchard.

It was pretty clear in my discussions while at Minnebar 2010 that most of the Minnesota tech companies have job openings and are hiring, like W3i.

How Pay Per Download Programs Lower Costs for App Developers

Written by admin on 14 May 2010

Every market leading platform, including iPhone, Facebook, Windows, and even browser toolbars, has at least one vendor who will sell a consumer app developer installs on a pay per download or pay per install basis.

Most of the pay per download networks utilize some method of cross promotion to drive additional installs while users are installing or interacting with another app.

So, how do these pay per download programs, like W3i’s Application Network for Windows apps and browser add-ons, compare in cost to other channels for app distribution such as search, display, affiliate, and OEM?

To answer this question, I had W3i’s Media Buyers examine past campaign performance across these difference channels and tallied up our effective cost per download by channel. The following bar graph is based upon the actual campaign performance which was achieved.

As you can see from W3i’s campaign results, pay per download programs can create a meaningful distribution channel while lowering an app developers costs by often as much as one third the cost of other alternatives!

Many app developers have tried search and affiliate programs to promote their app because they are more widely recognized tactics, but have failed to launch and optimize their apps for low cost pay per download networks.

Make sure you ask your pay per download program how they adhere to industry best practices, and what care they take in establishing a valued user experience. The engine that powers W3i’s Application Network, InstallIQ, has received the Truste Trusted Download certification and is white listed by Truste.

Whether you have an iPhone app, a Facebook game, a Windows application, or a browser toolbar, contact W3i to learn how you can launch and optimize your app using W3i’s pay per download program.

This article was written for app developers seeking downloads, however, if you have a website and would like to promote W3i’s applications, go to W3i’s affiliate sign-up form.

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