AppStore problems

[Spencer Pieters]

Hi all,

There has been some back and forth conversation on Twitter about the ins and outs of the AppStore, about stuff that's lacking and so on. Points are hard to make in 140 chars, hence this topic. We can talk about in-app purchases, subscriptions, paid upgrades, trials and so on. I'm sure the topic will be discussed at the next CocoaHeadsBe meeting as well.

I haven't been in the AppStore that long myself, so my input will be limited. 

What I *have* done is submit an app to the Windows Phone 8 store that supports trial mode. It's a concept I really like.

Technically it's very easy to do: you check a box "Supports trials" when you submit your binary and inside your code there is an .IsTrial method that you can implement wherever you want. The way I used it for the Knooppunten app (shameless plug here to sell more, as you do) is by limiting the amount of nodes that can be selected when planning a new route. I think I allowed 5 nodes. It gives the user the possibility to experience how the app works, what it can do and what it feels like. The good thing is you can implement it any way you want. I also could have allowed full planning mode, but limit planning to just one route. It's been a while and I can't remember if trials limited in time are allowed as well. I'd have to look that up.

I think this is great because I feel it you can set a higher price when you have a trial. It gives people the opportunity to try for free and I feel it weeds out the (let's call them) cheap customers who complain about *everything*. You know them right? On the other hand, the customers who are *really* interested in cycling are easier to convert to a sale at a higher price. They know they're getting quality because they've tried it.

Finally I appreciate apps more that cost me once, at purchase. I'm not a big fan of doing apps for "free" and then hide every single functionality behind an in-app purchase. I always feel a bit cheated when it's like that. I was just in a hospital that had a network named "Wifi guest public". When I connected to it, it said I had to login. If I didn't login I could only access the hospital website. For me, that's not a public wifi, so I was disappointed. I feel the same with free apps that require in-app purchases to do anything. Not saying that it's not a thing to do, on the contrary: it's a model that seems to work well for some apps.

Those were my .02 cents.

Looking forward to some of your thoughts.

Best,

Spencer

[junkiesxl]

Hi all,

Long time reader, first time caller.

I agree with In-App purchases feeling as you've been cheated, however,

based on hard scientific experiments[0]: regular people don't care.

They stay away from an app because it has a purchase price (a trial

version could help in this regard), I think that's why Apple keeps

pushing lower prices/free apps, more people buy apps, their ecosystem

grows.

As a developer I'm rooting against this, 'if you pay peanuts you'll

get monkeys' isn't entirely true on the AppStore (because you can make

it up in bulk, if you're lucky) but it still has some truth behind it.

[0] I asked some people and have bought an In App purchase for the

game my cat plays)

· Piet

Op donderdag 26 september 2013 11:08:58 UTC+2 schreef Spencer Pieters:

[Spencer Pieters]

Hi Piet,

Maybe "cheated" is a harsh word when it comes to IAP. What bothers me most is not knowing what (or in this case: how much) is coming.

I spoke to Tom Maes about Real Racing 3, which I downloaded some weeks ago. I remember buying Real Racing 2 some years ago and it was 8€ or so. Which is fine, you know? It's a great game and you can tell people put a real effort in.

Real Racing 3 was free. However it turned out that it uses some sort of credits or tokens so speed up your pitstops as you upgrade your car. You've got about 30 to begin with and they decrease as you modify the car. You win some back, but of course you earn less than you spend. You don't have to buy them. If you don't, the games lets you wait 2 minutes or so for the pitstop.

It wasn't a very nice experience. I guess I'm one of those people who prefers a fixed price and then wants to be left alone. I really dislike being interrupted and I really dislike having to pay for those interruptions to go away. Who knows, maybe Real Racing 3 would have been cheaper than 8€. I'll never know, because I deleted the game when I found out how it worked.

That said, I have nothing against IAP. I offer them in some of my apps and I like them to offer extra functionality. I've also spent money on IAP's and loved them.

Spencer

 

 

[Torsten Louland]

(similar take to comments already…)

I found this — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dash/id458034879 — refreshing: a free download to try before you buy, then one IAP to get the full version — it was honest about this. (In contrast to all the devs that use IAP to grab more and more, often by deceptive practices.)

The price perception barrier is a cause of real pain. I feel so angry at Apple for contributing to the race to the bottom with their focus on top ten rankings and lack of app visibility & navigability in the store — we are permanently stuck with that perception now, cant reach people to challenge it, FA we can do.

A friend reluctantly tried my app out on holiday and said when he first started, that he would never ever pay that price for an app, only doingit for me as a friend. When he came back, he said he would happily stick an extra zero on the price (before the decimal point).

I'm wondering if single IAP for try before you buy is part of the way to go. Give me hope. It will never be a silver bullet though, and we can't avoid having to step out of our domain to give purpose, brand and message our deepest thought.

Cheers,

Torsten

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[Spencer Pieters]

Torsten,

When Apple made Pages, Numbers, etc free it was a nice stab towards Redmond but at the same time it makes all our apps - even the ones prices at 79 cents - look expensive.

At iOSDevUK there were people talking about removing their Mac apps from the AppStore and selling them from their own website again. There was a time when the 30% deal was acceptable because Apple did all the "hard" work, provided a distribution platform, the hosting etc. These days the value of that platform is decreasing as your app drowns amongst hundreds of thousands of others and even basic search often doesn't work. Of course this only works for OSX apps and it'll only work as long as OSX allows installation of non-AppStore apps. (if Apple will get away with that is another question altogether)

The Dash app is interesting. Judging from the description it doesn't look like it's lacking in functionality. It just nags you every now and then to buy the full version. Similar to ad-driven apps on Android, with nags instead of ads. Easy enough to implement and definitely something I would settle for as a customer and would consider as a developer. You could offer a screen with an explanation the first time the app runs, so customers know what's going on.

Interesting!

Spencer

[Raphael Sebbe]

Hi guys,

about the "free + IAP” versus “paid” app, sure the trend is going to the former. Is that good? I don’t think so.

I feel like Spencer about IAP, like someone trying to sell me a carpet. Sometimes it makes sense, often it is abused to maximise profits and feels wrong. To give an example, the very good Papers app is free but requires you to buy different kinds of pens / brushes / etc. It’s been well received overall, Apple liked it very much, but I feel bad about that. Like, if a new great pen is made, I’ll have to pay again. I don’t know in advance the value of the app. What is even worse in my opinion, and this makes the bridge with the upgrade pricing, is that what is being sold becomes less and less related to its real value (effort needed to make). If making the Papers app is a 100% effort, making a pen would be 2% probably, yet it’s what is being sold. Incremental update for *LARGER APP* are about the same thing, v1.0 could represent a 100%, v2.0 an additional 30% effort. Hence it creates frustration both for developers *and* users when it’s time to update to v2.0 if you don’t have upgrade pricing. Having a model that has a more tangible correlation between the effort and the price is preferable IMO. Like in real life, you know. Like the trust/confidence/honesty values Apple is pushing so hard. The current App Store model fits relatively well the *SMALLER APP* and *GAMES*, because the don’t have that notion of incremental efforts, just like *BOOKS*, *MUSIC*, and *MOVIES*.

*LARGER APP* are a different beast.

I’m pretty convinced that even Apple's examples of such *LARGER APPS* like Aperture, Logic, Garage Band, iWork (iOS), , etc. wouldn’t be profitable if made by third parties. Yet such apps bring real value to users and to the platform. There should be a business for them. It was there before.

Also, another drawback, that is not (yet) very much discussed so far, is that having a new bundleid (v2.0 is an entirely new app) will bring you back to the bottom of the ladder. So, using push notification on v1.0 to let the user know? I think we’ll be discussing that again when some good apps realize that their v2.0 gets barely noticed on the store, especially if competition keeps its (now) higher ranking during that time.

Raphael

[Herman Van Durme]

I do agree with Spencer that IAP is evil, usually it leads to a bad consumer experience. For example , I have touring mobilis, its adverted as 'free' but in reality to be usefull you need to pay 9euro per year.

Same thing for some games, they are free, but you need to pay to unlock sometimes even basic things.

IAP is good if used with moderation

2013/9/27 Raphael Sebbe <raphae...@gmail.com>

[Torsten Louland]

Some topical links in case you haven't already seen them...

http://www.marco.org/2013/09/28/underscore-price-dynamics and HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462430

http://developingperspective.com/2013/09/27/app-store-pricing/

[Herman Van Durme]

Now in one of the articles I found the following: make something and get people to pay for it" business is much harder to pull off 

Euh yes??? So? Everyone can open a bar and give all drinks for free ( and go bankrupt after a few months). I don't see the difference with the app business.

In the appstore I see 5 types of apps

1 . The marketing apps and the apps that are an extension of the service offering of an enterprise ( for example homebanking apps, coca cola apps etc)

2. Apps supported by large VC capital, where the motto is to have market share and the profitable question is for later ( very dotcom alike), these are apps like foursquare, foodspotting etc

3. Crap apps a la fart apps, mirror aps etc, these were fun in 2008, but are now just boring ( did you know there 1500 fart apps on the app store and more than 1000 flashlight apps)

4. Freemium apps with inapp purchase

5. Pay-upfront-apps

The first type of apps will remain free, because they are paied by a marketing budget, or are included in the price of the service offering ( homebanking for example is clearly included in the price of your account)

In the second type of apps I'll see a big shakeout coming up, foursquare was almost broke this year, and foodspotting already burned 50 million dollar without any penny of profit.

I hope apple will clean out the crap apps a bit, so that the decent apps are finally found

Freemium apps will survive if they can find the proper balance between a decent consumer experience and a rip-off experience. for example everynote or dropbox are ok, freenote is free with 60 MB storage above that you have to pay.samething for dropbox

Pay-up-front apps will survive if they have a unique value proposition, that is not easily copyable.

Anyway I see a big shakeout coming the next years on app stores, I did some research and I see a lot of apps on the apple store that haven't been updated since 2012 and earlier. Appe should wipe them, but of course than the marketing statistics are not so impressive anymore

Op zondag 29 september 2013 schreef Torsten Louland (torsten...@gmail.com):

Some topical links in case you haven't already seen them...

http://www.marco.org/2013/09/28/underscore-price-dynamics and HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462430

http://developingperspective.com/2013/09/27/app-store-pricing/

On 28 Sep 2013, at 18:35, Herman Van Durme <hvd...@gmail.com> wrote:

I do agree with Spencer that IAP is evil, usually it leads to a bad consumer experience. For example , I have touring mobilis, its adverted as 'free' but in reality to be usefull you need to pay 9euro per year.

Same thing for some games, they are free, but you need to pay to unlock sometimes even basic things.

IAP is good if used with moderation

2013/9/27 Raphael Sebbe <raphae...@gmail.com>

Hi guys,

about the "free + IAP” versus “paid” app, sure the trend is going to the former. Is that good? I don’t think so.

I feel like Spencer about IAP, like someone trying to sell me a carpet. Sometimes it makes sense, often it is abused to maximise profits and feels wrong. To give an example, the very good Papers app is free but requires you to buy different kinds of pens / brushes / etc. It’s been well received overall, Apple liked it very much, but I feel bad about that. Like, if a new great pen is made, I’ll have to pay again. I don’t know in advance the value of the app. What is even worse in my opinion, and this makes the bridge with the upgrade pricing, is that what is being sold becomes less and less related to its real value (effort needed to make). If making the Papers app is a 100% effort, making a pen would be 2% probably, yet it’s what is being sold. Incremental update for *LARGER APP* are about the same thing, v1.0 could represent a 100%, v2.0 an additional 30% effort. Hence it creates frustration both for developers *and* users when it’s time to update to v2.0 if you don’t have upgrade pricing. Having a model that has a more tangible correlation between the effort and the price is preferable IMO. Like in real life, you know. Like the trust/confidence/honesty values Apple is pushing so hard. The current App Store model fits relatively well the *SMALLER APP* and *GAMES*, because the don’t have that notion of incremental efforts, just like *BOOKS*, *MUSIC*, and *MOVIES*.

*LARGER APP* are a different beast.

I’m pretty convinced that even Apple's examples of such *LARGER APPS* like Aperture, Logic, Garage Band, iWork (iOS), , etc. wouldn’t be profitable if made by third parties. Yet such apps bring real value to users and to the platform. There should be a business for them. It was there before.

Also, another drawback, that is not (yet) very much discussed so far, is that having a new bundleid (v2.0 is an entirely new app) will bring you back to the bottom of the ladder. So, using push notification on v1.0 to let the user know? I think we’ll be discussing that again when some good apps realize that their v2.0 gets barely noticed on the store, especially if competition keeps its (now) higher ranking during that time.

Raphael

On 26 Sep 2013, at 21:02, Spencer Pieters <spencer...@pandora.be> wrote:

Torsten,

When Apple made Pages, Numbers, etc free it was a nice stab towards Redmond but at the same time it makes all our apps - even the ones prices at 79 cents - look expensive.

At iOSDevUK there were people talking about removing their Mac apps from the AppStore and selling them from their own website again. There was a time when the 30% deal was acceptable because Apple did all the "hard" work, provided a distribution platform, the hosting etc. These days the value of that platform is decreasing as your app drowns amongst hundreds of thousands of others and even basic search often doesn't work. Of course this only works for OSX apps and it'll only work as long as OSX allows installation of non-AppStore apps. (if Apple will get away with that is another question altogether)

The Dash app is interesting. Judging from the description it doesn't look like it's lacking in functionality. It just nags you every now and then to buy the full version. Similar to ad-driven apps on Android, with nags instead of ads. Easy enough to implement and definitely something I would settle for as a customer and would consider as a developer. You could offer a screen with an explanation the first time the app runs, so customers know what's going on.

Interesting!