New App on App Store

[Alexander MacLeod]

Good afternoon all,

I have recently released my new train journey planner app, ByTrain, on the App Store. I would like to say thank you to all those who have helped me out on this forum whilst it has been in development.

I thought some may be interested in what I was able to create with the feeds and rail data we use together on this forum. The app is free to download here; I would be hugely grateful for any feedback you may have.

All the best,

Alexander

[Lee Fortnam]

Hi Alexander,

Just downloaded, looks great. Happy to feed back if i think of stuff. 

Thanks,

Lee

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openraildata-t...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to openrail...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Linus Norton]

Looks great, I'll have to wait for the Android version :D

[Adrian Bradshaw]

Same here. I'm allergic to Apple Inc, so will have to wait for the Android version (hopefully?) :)

 

---

Adrian Bradshaw – Administrator (volunteer)

Railcam UK Limited

@: adr...@railcam.uk

Railcam.uk – Bringing The Lineside To Your Armchair

Railcam UK Limited | A company limited by guarantee | registration number 10167844

3rd Floor | 207 Regent Street | London W1B 3HH

Railcam UK Ltd is operated on a not-for-profit basis entirely by volunteers

--

[Allan Blundell]

Really well designed designed app. so far nothings broken for me so that's great work.

On Sunday, 5 February 2017 17:03:19 UTC, Alexander MacLeod wrote:

[Mike Andrews]

Aargh IOS 10+ only. Guess I should upgrade really...

Thanks Alexander. Are you likely to blog about the architecture and how you implemented the backend? Just curious, I'm in early stages of visualisation web app and using the Darwin feed, timetable flat files plus an ElasticSearch backend in Azure...

[Alexander MacLeod]

Thanks for all your kind words. I haven't thought about developing an Android version yet, but if ByTrain does well then there may be a possibility.

I am really struggling to get my application some attention. At the moment, ByTrain will not appear as a search result if 'train times' is queried on the App Store search. The potential audience is therefore extremely limited as they will never find my app unless they are directly told of the name.

I feel like I have developed something with real potential but I am really struggling to grow its user base. Does anyone have any ideas on how I would increase the publicity of my application based on their past experiences?

Thanks,

Alexander

[Mike Flynn]

Hi Alelxander,

I've little experience of developing apps, never mind marketing them (and like the others don't use Apple so haven't been able to assess your particular app) but do, as regards websites, and believe the processes and techniques to be similar.

(First of all, I've been pulled up this forum before (wrongly, in my opinion) on this subject as it's (apparently) not particularly relevant to UK rail open data.)

Now, having got that out the way, I'll say that the subject is massive.  It's fundamental to the web, how do I get my app or website or blog, etc., 'out there'?  I won't even begin to suggest what measures you might want to try other than a good start would be to google!

Breaking it right down though I'd say there's 2 main fundamentals; quality (the most improtant) and technical (essential).  

Quality: How good is?  Does it work?  Do people want to use it again and again, etc?  Obvious, really.

Technical: Google "SEO apps" and follow the rules.  Avoid the hype and the 'black hat' techniques.

My experience comes from developing various sites and recently UK railway information websites.  At one point I was receiving well over a million hits a month.  Unfortunately, this has recently fallen, almost off a cliff!  I like to think I know the reasons though, I'e been unable to keep my sites fresh (still to implement lots of functionality: journey planner, disruptions, fares, etc) because I've felt the need to spend time on developing my infrastructure (cloud and office network capability, scalable hosting, etc).  As a result though the relative 'quality' of my sites have slipped and technical upgrades are required.

Good luck and please keep us informed with how you get on.  We're mostly all competing here but in a collaborative kind of way, I like to think.  And improving, hopefully, the lot of the British  public :)

Mike

[Geoff Lowe]

Hi Alexander,

 

How about advertising it in the Rialway press (Railway Magazine,Modern Railways etc. I am a member of the Railway Performance Society and I will be pleased to advertise it on our Forum. Unfortunately I cannot use it myself as I am an Android user.

 

At least it is a start

 

Regards

 

Geoff Lowe

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A gathering place for the Open Rail Data community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to openraildata-t...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to openrail...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

[Tom Thorpe]

Hi Alexander,

Looks like a nice app for sure. But just wanted to ask, do you have any relation to the user on the App Store who has gone around leaving bad reviews on 8 train times apps (including my own) with a similar reviews in the style of "this app is poor, try ByTrain instead"?

Hopefully it's just a fan of your app :-) 

Tom

[Nick Lamb]

Looks very impresssive!, I will give it a good testing over the working week but I can see it could be my app of choice as it is much slicker than the ‘official’ network rail app,
One thing I used to get on one app which you could try an add is the ability to click on a future station on a route you are on and view connecting services,
i.e. I am on a train from shoreham by sea to victoria with the option to change at East Croydon to go to London Bridge, on route I could click on ECR and see what options there are at that station, I used to have it on one of the apps I had but it seems to have gone after an update

[Alexander MacLeod]

Hi Tom,

First of all, I am horrified to hear that one of my users would be deliberately writing bad reviews in order to promote my own. I have no knowledge of someone writing such reviews and will have a look on the App Store now for more information.

As I have received several one star reviews (with and without comments) in the past few weeks, I know how detrimental this is to the publicity of an application on the App Store.

Kind regards,

Alexander

[Alexander MacLeod]

Hi Tom,

Further to my previous post, I managed to track down the reviewer of your app as they had emailed me before about a feature request. Having followed up with them, it seems the young son of the account holder had made the mistake. The account holder has emailed back apologising profusely and has removed all their negative reviews.

Kind regards,

Alexander

[Tom Thorpe]

Glad to hear it, thanks for the update :-)

Good luck with your app! It’s a great implementation of the feeds and data!

Tom

[Simon Lee]

Hey,
Love your app.
Anyway you could add Siri integration?
Especially via HomePod?!