Bigger and Better

It's been a little while since my last post because it has been a very busy past few weeks.  ScoreApp has limped along to very mediocre sales, but it was a great learning experience.  I've had some very high-level discussions with the board of directors (which consists of me and my wife) about the direction of CloudApp IT, LLC.  We laid out goals and a business plan that will help us achieve those goals.  Despite our dud on the first app, we're going to continue to focus on the App Store and it's potential.  Our ultimate goal is to make this business sustain itself and be able to adequately support my family.  We've got a long way to go before we get there, but here is one of the things we're going to do to start.

Our Next App

We're obviously not going to be able to buy a value meal let alone support ourselves with ScoreApp.  But we are going to identify some things that we did wrong as well as things we did right with ScoreApp and go to our next endeavor.  Here are some key areas that we want to improve:

• Genre - When you program an app, you spend a lot of time with it.  When you market it, you have to spend even more time with it and really be excited about the content of it.  ScoreApp was a good, fun little utility.  However, it was not something that I wanted to spend all of my free time on and tell all my friends about.  It was simply a learning experience.  To make our next app succeed we're hoping to pick a genre and idea that will be a lot more exciting for us.  We've decided to take a stab at a slightly new, slightly re-invented social networking idea that I personally think will be pretty neat.
• Artwork - Of all the pointers that people gave us about our last app, artwork was by far the most universal negative point.  Everyone who looked at our app had design pointers.  And to be honest, I designed everything from a programmers point of view instead of a users point of view.  I took cool little graphics which I ripped off and stuck them in my app with no thought of how they meshed with the rest of the app.  I updated the app graphics a little bit with version 1.1.  It gave the app a completely different look, but it still isn't going to be winning any awards.  Our next app will feature some more well-thought layouts and graphics.  They will probably be subtle graphics and nothing amazing, but I'll spend a little more time in UI quality assurance before releasing the next app.
• Pre-Launch - The most important days of an app are probably the days right after launch.  When you're a lowly app developer trying to break on to the scene, these first days are when your app has the most visibility on the App Store.  You'll be featured in the new section of your chosen genres.  You'll likely get a few looks from customers that you wouldn't get on keywords alone.  So, if you generated a little bit of monmentum for you app prior to that launch day, you'll give yourself an even better chance to succeed and stay featured on the store.  Before launching, we're going to have the entire infrastructure in place.  Facebook page, support materials, website, contact info, etc.  We hope to have all of this up and try to get at least a little bit of traffic there prior to launch.  We've also made friends with a few reviewers out there and we'll try to get them on board with our app launch and see if we can leverage those relationships as well.
• Updates - As mentioned a little above, a lot of time goes into making an app.  You have to love the app if you really hope to do it right.  I'm excited for this app and have a road map of where it will go in the future.  I'm excited enough about the app that I will probably update the app even if the user base never comes.  I want to do it just to prove that I can and so I can use it for my own entertainment.  Updates put subconcious thoughts into people's minds that the app is alive and evolving.  They respond to that.  They share those apps with their friends.  If nothing else, they see your icon to remind them about your app when the go to perform updates.
• Pricing - pricing models are a mystery to many people.  The way you price your app could mean success or failure.  I'm going to have to look at this aspect a little more thoroughly before releasing the next big thing to make sure I get it right.

Well, those are a few points that I am going to consider and improve on for our next app adventure.  Stay tuned for more as we begin development on our next big thing.  Until then, reach for the clouds!