The mobile app industry, it’s the new gold rush, we hear that all the time. Developers can’t create apps fast enough to keep up with user demands. They’re quitting their day jobs to focus on publishing multi-million-dollar generating apps, and you can do it to! All you need is a “somewhat” good idea and BAM! Start counting the moolah pouring into your account.

If only any part of this last paragraph was true, we’d all be in a much better situation.

While the success of mobile apps is undeniable, the cold hard truth is that as a developer, you’re probably going to have to develop a ton of apps before you start seeing any success whatsoever for your hours of hard work. To put things in perspective, here are a few challenges you might be faced with along your journey. Think of this as a wake-up call.

1 – Distribution Woes

iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Each of these OS’s has their individual advantages and market shares – The real question is, how easy will it be to get your app directly into your potential users’ devices in the shortest timeframe possible. Ask most developers and they’ll likely tell you the same thing; development, that’s usually the easy part. Issues such as marketing budgets, ad networks, social media outreach, connections to journalists or shouting off rooftops are among the factors that need to be taken into consideration early on.

2 -Originality Goes a Long Way

Before even writing your first line of code or setting budget aside for marketing purposes, you’ll need to have an app idea that stands out. Sure, you can always copycat one of the successful apps and give it your own spin, but with the huge opportunities to get creative and show the world something new, who really needs another “me too” app?

3 -Beyond the Front End

Even though the functional and development scope of mobile applications looks fairly simple, the need for back-end development and integration, support for multiple platforms, security standards and optimized UX could potentially drag projects into a black hole and miss both the time and cost windows of a large number of potentially great applications.

4 – But Wait, There’s More!

You’ve done the heavy lifting, developed the app and your marketing strategy is all set. At this point, you’re probably starting to feel a little surge of excitement, right? Well hold on there… Are you sure your app will be approved? If you published to the Android Market, you won’t be facing that problem, but if you developed for iOS, you better be sure you know the guidelines.

5 – Sales are Slow?

“My app has been on the App Store for a few months now and sales are slow!” We get a lot of emails from that guy. You don’t want to be that guy, do you? Others have tried everything but cannot break into the Top 100. Many developers said how frustrated they are that their hard work is not being rewarded as they expected it would. The best preparation for this type of challenge is to carefully estimate the success of your app in the first place.

Now let’s flip the vibe here for a moment and focus on a few positive notes.

• Smartphones will grow by about one third to 43% of mobile users by 2015 according to eMarketer.
•  A recent survey by Nielsen shows just how many people are willing to pay for apps, split down by category. Gaming comes out on top, with 93% of users who have downloaded a gaming app stating they would be willing to pay for it.
• Total global mobile applications market is projected to be worth $25 billion by 2015 – currently it’s exploded to $38B, predicted now to grow to $58B in the next 12-18 months.

In Conclusion – After you’ve carefully read all of the above, it’s only fair to remind you that, where there’s challenge there’s usually big opportunities. The most important advice I can give you is, don’t be afraid to take chances, you might end up proving us all wrong!

Share your app marketing challenges, secrets and tips in the comments below or reach out to us on Twitter @W3i and @OrenTodoros.

The inverse relationship between image quality and file size is something that every web designer must deal with when creating images for their sites. While this still remains true, there is another step that many people do not even know exists that can shave precious file size off of every image they create for the web.

ImageOptim (for Mac OS X), The Jpeg Reducer (for Windows) and PNGGauntlet  all have similar functionality. All hree programs work by processing images that are dragged into the application and then removes unnecessary data from those images. In a few simple, quick steps you are able to save anywhere from 5% – 30% or more from your web images. And the best part? The  compression methods these  applications use cause no image quality loss. Oh, and it should also be mentioned that all three of these programs are completely FREE.

Three FREE Programs to Reduce File Size

(Mac OS X) JPG + PNG –  ImageOptim

(Windows) JPG – The Jpeg Reducer

(Windows) PNG – PNGGauntlet

Shrinking the file size of your images reduces load times,  saves you bandwidth and makes for happy users across all devices!

Mike Albers, Senior Web Designer, W3i

With more than eight years of webmaster experience, Mike focuses on creating quality websites and landing pages for W3i and its partners.

Analytics were the talk of GDC Online last week.  Apps are getting much more competitive.  You can no longer just build a great app and hope to get discovered and retain your users.  You need to not only market your game but do predictive analysis to improve engagement.

Nick Lim of Sonamine pointed out the following in his session, “Predicting Player Behaviors.”  There are three stages in life cycle  management for games:  1.  Welcome/educate, 2.  Upsell/referrals, and 3. Seek renewal/retention.

Stage 1,  Welcome/educate.  Make your game easy to play with simple tutorials.  Predictive analytics can help you determine where the drop off is in your tutorial (see case study at end of article). The more engaged the user is the higher retention, less churn.  More  engaged users are also easier to upsell.

Stage 2,  Upsell/referrals.  Limit your messaging.  Your game should message the user at the right time with the right message. If you try to upsell too soon, you will overwhelm the user.  The user is only receptive during a brief window.  Predictive analytics can determine the optimum number and timing of messages.  “Spamming” the user causes the following:  numbness, annoyance—user can only do one thing and is trying to focus on the game, waste of money, hurts your reputation and degrades trust.

Stage 3, Seek renewal/retention – Again use predictive analytics to communicate with the user at the right time.

What is the difference between Metrics and Predictive Analytics?

Metrics measure and report the past with 100% certainty.  When using metrics, you can only view correlations between a few variables.  Predictives estimate and predict the future; certainty is impossible.  You can do predictive analysis with 50-100  variables.  Predictive modeling will give you a competitive advantage.

When using predictive analysis you are looking for the users that are “on the fence” as it will be easier to get them to cross the conversion line.

Case study of analytics at work at W3i

Speaking of tutorials. One of Recharge Studios games, My Pet Zombie, had an abnormally high churn rate during the game tutorial.  By optimizing the tutorial and improving the user interface MPZ reduced the churn from a 41% completion rate to a 81% completion rate—a 98% improvement.

My Pet Zombie - Conversions Prior to Test

Through testing churn rate reduced from 41% completion rate to 81% completion rate--a 98% improvement.

Improving just one particular image in the tutorial, shown below, saw the churn rate go from 25% to 4%.   The developer focused on the elements circled in pink.

The churn rate went from 25% to 4% by focusing on the elements circled in pink.

Predictive analytics will give you the information you need to grow your game business or just contact Recharge Studios, and we can help you improve your game marketing.  Have you run any tests that increased performance considerably?  If so, feel free to comment.

Debby Manthei, Director of Marketing Communications, W3i, LLC

Debby’s focus is on app marketing—strategies for increasing user acquisition and monetization for mobile and desktop apps.

With Google  putting more weight on landing page relevance, it is now more important than  ever for you to optimize your landing pages for improved AdWords Quality Scores.   If getting lower CPC, improving ROI, and gaining greater visibility are  important to you, here are a few things to consider when revamping your landing pages:

Get them to your page!

Tip 1: Make sure your load times are  fast.

According to Google, “Users value ads that bring them to the information they want as efficiently as possible…users are less likely to abandon a site that loads quickly.”[1]

Keep them on your page!

Tip 2: Reduce bounce rates by making  sure the user stays engaged.

There are several techniques you can  employ to keep a user engaged once they hit your landing page.

1. Make it user friendly – provide easy  and obvious navigation so the user can quickly find the information they are looking for. If they can’t easily find it, they are likely to navigate off your page.
2. Have a transparent message – make it  clear to the user exactly what your product or service is about.  Lack of clarity reates doubt in the users  mind and when users doubt, they abandon.  Let them know exactly what you are offering through a clear and easy to  understand message.
3. Provide unique and relevant content –  add value to your landing page by including content that will help the user find the information they want, get your transparent message across, and call  the user to action.  This content can include items such as videos, images, ad copy, comparisons, testimonials, reviews  and more.

Make your page relevant!

Tip 3: Stay true to the ads you are serving.

Your landing page should be relevant  to the ad the user clicked to get there.   The keywords in the ad are what got the users attention and that is the  information they are looking for when they land on your page.  Add relevancy for the user by including those  exact and broad match keywords on your landing pages.  Areas of the page where you could place these  keywords include ad copy, metadata such as title tags and meta description  tags, headers, image tags, link anchor text, and even the URL if possible.  The keywords should not be randomly placed to make it appear that your page is relevant, but rather be placed where they make  sense and actually add value to the user.

If you optimize with these three tips  in mind, not only will you increase your Google Quality Score, but you will  also improve the user experience and increase the likelihood a user will take  the desired action for which your page was designed.

Never fear, help is here!

If you are unsure about your landing  page performance or relevance, Google provides a multitude of information to give you a guiding hand.  Here are a few  resources for reference:

Web Speed Tutorials – a treasure trove of articles with tips on performance best  practices for improved load speed.

Google Keyword Diagnosis – a tool provided in your AdWords  account that will show details about your Quality Score.

Use Google Keyword Diagnosis to understand your quality score.

Page Speed Testing Tools – Google recommended free tools for evaluating the speed of your site.

Google AdWords Tips – general tips for overall AdWords  campaign success including tips for keyword selection and placement.

Relevancy Checks and Balances – Do you have any idea what Google  thinks your page is about?  The Google  Keyword Tool allows you to enter your URL and get insight into how Google interprets  your page theme.  This tool will produce  a list of keywords that Google feels are relevant to the content on your  site.

Little changes can mean big results!

We use these tools often at W3i to determine if our landing pages match up to the ads we are serving.  In one test, we used the data from the Google Keyword Tool to make a few quick  changes to the keywords on our landing page resulting in a quality score jump  from 3 to 7. By doing a quick analysis, determining what Google felt was  relevant, and making some keyword alterations, we were able to drop our minimum  CPC from $.20 to $.05 on highly competitive brand terms.

Keeping up with Google can be challenging,  but if you evaluate your keywords and landing pages regularly, utilize the many tips and tools at your disposal, and implement changes for Quality Score  improvement, you can have much success with your Google Adwords campaigns.

Randi Kucala, Account Development Manager, W3i,  LLC

A proponent for business partner and user satisfaction, Randi endeavors to make  every interaction with W3i a positive one. She specializes in copy writing and  on-page SEO.

The app industry is proving to be a rapidly expanding playground for app developers and end-users alike. With new development tools constantly on the rise and no lack of innovation in sight, I thought it would be a good time to look a short distance ahead at what the next wave of app trends may actually be.

1 – New Categories

Due to the highly sophisticated awareness capacity of mobile devices, we’re bound to see advances in categories such as augmented reality, user generated content and location based apps. App users are already adapting to these new features by utilizing them for anything from receiving coupons to finding out more about attendees at events. Now it’s just a matter of time until the app stores create categories for these evolving niches.

2 – Monetization Apps

Not surprisingly younger users are much more receptive to ads in mobile apps. According to a recent Nielsen report, 58 percent said that they “always” or “sometimes look at ads.” Men are much more receptive to mobile ads than women. In addition, mobile users prefer to view mobile ads within an app rather than via search results. However, those who viewed a mobile ad most often use a search engine to find out more information. Only eight-percent purchased the advertised product/service immediately. One important note to keep in mind is that as our consumption of mobile content grows, ad-based apps may become more transparent. Developers will ultimately have to resort to more creative ways to monetize their apps.

3 – Mobile Web Apps

Web apps are making a big impact. In fact, many of them can be just as good as native apps. Content publishers such as FT.com have recently gone the route creating an HTML5 app. The two main reasons for publishers to prefer HTML5 is due to eliminating the sometimes lengthy review process and rolling out on to multiple platforms at once. HTML5 ensures that end-users are always on the latest version of the web-app. Web-app stores such as OpenAppMkt.com are already setting up shop and paving the way for more web-apps to come.

4 – Better Camera Apps

Instagram, Hipstamatic and PicPlz are just a few of the apps that have set the pace for how taking mobile images impact our everyday lives. Going forward, there’s no doubt that the way we capture and share precious moments will radically change. An interesting observation is that the iPhone 4 camera is one of the top 5 preferred cameras in the Flickr community.

The funny thing is that as this trend progresses, we’re seeing more and more of a backwards effect, where retro and vintage filters are coming into play.  Go figure.

5 – Apps as Work Tools

The lifestyle impact of the iPad 2 is unquestionable. End-users are just now starting to understand how to work productively with tablet devices. There is still plenty of room to dominate the tablet industry with productivity tools.

From essential accessories such as external keyboards and video adapters, to better presentation apps and cloud document sharing, we’re sure to see the tablet based productivity niche go way up.

Turning it back to you – What are your app predictions for the near future? And what would you most like to see become a reality? Share your thoughts in the comments below or reach out to us on Twitter @W3i

Oren Todoros, CEO of AppsMarketing.mobi
Oren  is an advisor in the mobile app industry, working with W3i as well as the CEO of AppsMarketing.mobi which works with independent developers and large scale development firms.

Ever wonder how a blockbuster app developer thinks? Recently, I caught up with Mike Lee, co-founder of Tapulous, to get his inside perspective on what the recipe is for a developer to create a blockbuster app. As virtually everyone knows, Tapulous is the developer that brought us the hit game Tap Tap Revenge, a series that has seen more than 25 million installations at the start of the year. In fact, Tapulous was so successful Disney came calling and acquired them for what is rumored to be $35 million according to TechCrunch. Nice job by the guys at Montgomery in working on the transaction. Many app developers have recently heard Mike’s keynotes at 360iDev and iPhone/iPad Dev Con. The following post represents my perspective on Mike, and what other developers can learn from Mike to increase their chances of creating a blockbuster. Some of my thoughts are based on direct quotes, some are my interpretations based on the discussion I had, and watching him present twice.

The Making of a Risk Taker

It is harder to create a hit without a cowboy mentality surrounding you.

Mike grew up in Hawaii before finding his way to Silicon Valley. Mike told me a story about one of his first entrepreneurial endeavors growing up as a kid in Hawaii. He got the supplies together to create a Macadamia nut jewelry business. To his dismay, his mother tossed out his supplies when she discovered his intentions. To this day, Hawaii’s culture of risk aversion hasn’t changed. Mike said a friend of his with a small business in Hawaii says the government there won’t help unless you have at least $5 million in investment. From my perspective, creating a tech company in Minnesota seems a lot like Hawaii. I’m part of a grass roots movement in the Midwest to try to change that.

Fail upwards.

As Mike puts it- “My life was a series of failures, but I always try to fail upwards.” After Mike decided to leave Tapulous prior to their successful sale to Disney, Mike took a job at Apple in developer relations. The Apple gig was much better than the options Mike had prior to Tapulous.

Don’t create a bigger footprint and get trapped in your own wealth.

Once you’ve made your millions on your first blockbuster, resist the temptation to change your lifestyle. You need to continue to focus on creating a company to change the world. You’ll get rich by doing this, not by creating a company to get rich.

Inside the Mind of a Hit Maker

It helps to be a little crazy,  a little delusional.

Don’t be afraid to pivot.

The original plan for Tapulous was to create a social network. As I have observed with the majority of top tech entrepreneurs, you need to adjust your ideas based on the markets response to your initial ideas.

Start with a lot of concepts, then start cutting.

This is actually a pattern I’ve observed with other hit makers. Rather than start building out the first concept for an app that comes to mind, it is best to define some upfront parameters, and then brainstorm a variety of concepts that meet those parameters. Tapulous actually had a portfolio of 34 apps, from which they initially selected 10 to work on, then they cut it down to 3 apps to launch with. Those three were Tap Tap Revenge, Twinkle, Friendbook.

Understand the human side of business.

Mike talked about how Tapulous couldn’t get their apps approved the day of the App Store launch. When he learned the app review team was extremely overwhelmed with submissions during the launch of the App Store, and working without sleep, he backed off. Personally, he said he was not pissed off once he understood the situation. Rather than calling to harass them, Mike dropped breakfast and coffee off for them.

Relentless focus on quality and creating apps that don’t suck.

As Mike puts it- “The crap market is saturated.” With over 300,000+ apps in the App Store, only the bold are going to stand out. What are some tactical things you can do to stand out? Focus on creating apps that don’t suck. Stop doing things that piss users off. A few examples-

• -          Hurry up and wait- Eliminate splash screens
• -          Surprise and delight- Add those little things that impress people.
• -          Implementation detail- Never let them see how you made it
• -          Design for everyone- Bejeweled versus Grand Theft Auto
• -          Don’t be a jerk- spam

If you focus on creating quality hits, you will have a more defensible business. It is much harder to copy something that is of high quality without a lot of effort.

Get Out There and Start Creating Blockbusters

Mike says- “There is money in ripples, but immortality in hits.” and that “Life is finite. Use your time to do something worth remembering.” I couldn’t agree more. The vast majority of all app developers are focusing on creating niche apps because they feel it is a safer bet to ensure they get a positive return on their efforts. I’ve heard this referred to as the “niche buster” strategy. Death to the niche busters. Get out there and start creating blockbusters.

Recently W3i released a new service, Apperang.com, for incentivizing users to download mobile apps for their iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch® devices

W3i was able to create this service in a couple of months because of some great industry leading tools. Apperang.com was built using Microsoft’s .NET framework and ASP.NET web application framework. ASP.NET provides many out of the box features that make creating sites quick and simple. Things like Site Membership and Forms Authentication, Session State management, Master Pages and customizable controls provide the fundamental pieces needed to build a robust web application.

Site Membership

ASP.NET provides an out of the box solution to provide membership to your site. With a few simple configuration settings and the use of the Web Site Administration Tool you can setup users and roles for your site. There are also a series of controls that ship with ASP.NET that allow you to provide login, registration, and password recover functionality to your own site with no extra coding. Even if you don’t use the built in ASP.Net Membership, Forms Authentication provides a quick way to manage users throughout the page life cycle and most authorization can be handled by setting up configuration settings in the Web.config file. If a page needs to display content differently based on whether or not a user is logged in or based on a role, the LoginView control can handle this declaratively, meaning no extra code needs to be written. All of this out of the box functionality is extendable. So even if you need more control over certain behaviors you can write you own custom code using defined extension points.

Session State

ASP.NET has a built in session management system. It’s part of the page life cycle and handles the loading and persisting of session data. You can store just about any kind of Object in session making it very easy to store and retrieve data. You can choose from five different modes Off, InProc, StateServer, SQLServer, and Custom. Each one has an advantage and disadvantage, mostly dealing with a balance between performance and the durability of the data after the applications and servers are no longer running. The Custom mode allows you to build your own Data Provider if you have specific needs on where and how your session data is stored.

WCF

In the near future W3i will be releasing the Apperang Mobile App into the App Store. Another great advantage to using the .NET Framework is access to the Windows Communication Foundation or WCF. WCF provides the ability to expose functionality in a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) type fashion without being locked into a specific protocol for communication between systems. W3i has taken advantage of WCF by utilizing the RESTful services feature in order to expose key functionality to the Apperang Mobile App. In a matter of a few weeks we were able to expose a set of services with the same functionality that was built into the website by utilizing WCF. WCF also allows us to add or change protocols with simple configuration changes. So if at some point in the future we need to expose the service using SOAP we can do this by adding a new endpoint configuration. The other great advantage of WCF is that it is fully extendable and can be customized at about every point in the pipeline, though you probably won’t need to as it is full featured out of the box.

Expect to see W3i release some new sites and services in the upcoming months utilizing more of Microsoft’s .NET framework and ASP.NET.

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, New England scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the New Englanders, in the weeks that followed, a California archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story in the San Francisco Chronicle read: ‘California archaeologists, finding traces of 200 year old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the Bostonians.’

One week later, The Pioneer Press, a local newspaper in Minnesota, reported the following: After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Embarass, Minnesota, Ole Olson, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Ole has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Minnesota had already gone wireless.

Thank Heavens for Ole

Happy Halloween from the Land of 10,000 Lakes!

The legal notice that users now see when they go to the LimeWire website sends a pretty strong message: “Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.” After a four year long battle, a New York judge finally put the kibosh on LimeWire’s lackadaisical methods for policing its peer-to-peer free music service. The industry has been in an uproar over the under-the-counter music that’s making its way into users’ headphones at the hands of LimeWire.  High profile labels are left to sit back and say, “Show me the money!” with multi-millions in damage claims. In the meantime, millions of users are left searching for a new source for free music.

The recent federal court order requiring LimeWire to cease distribution of its software is a boon to those who own the rights to many of the shared files.  While they did not receive a big check as back payment, they did get the satisfaction of seeing that their collective voices are being heard. Chalk up a small victory for copyright law.

The social media world is buzzing with news of the shut down as LimeWire users gradually become aware they no longer have access to their free music source. It has been suggested in numerous circles that people will discover a new means of getting the music they want for free. But, with this new crack down on piracy, it is wise to avoid sources that are less than reputable and dabble in the copyright infringement game.

The solution to LimeWire users’ dilemma is to utilize an alternative that takes a lawful approach to free music downloads. One legit player in the market is Music Oasis, owned and operated by W3i, who works directly with the artists and labels. These partnerships are legally defined through license agreement, thus making Music Oasis an exciting white hat option for discovering new artists and titles.  As the Music Oasis inventory of fresh, new music continues to grow, more users are finding it a refreshing change.  Moreover, Music Oasis is spyware and virus free since the download is done through InstallIQ, which is certified in the TRUSTe Trusted download program  which generates a level of security that file sharing companies like LimeWire have struggled to provide.

Is the free legal music download the wave of the future now that peer to peer file sharing has taken a mighty swat to the hand? Or, will we see more artists raising their collective fists in frustration as new players move in to take LimeWire’s place in the dark alley of infringement?

Randi Kucala, Marketing Specialist, W3i, LLC
A proponent for Internet users, Randi endeavors to make every interaction with W3i’s sites a positive one. She specializes in copy writing and on-page SEO.

This is part two of a three part series unpacking data from inside the W3i network, offering insights on browser use, browsing habits and engagement factors. In Part one, we identified state by state browser usage between Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Default Browser Use

Internet Explorer has the default browser world pretty locked up. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering IE is the default on Windows machines. W3i data shows that of Firefox browser users, 81.60% have Firefox set as their default browsers and Chrome retains about 75.84% as default compared to Internet Explorer active users where about 65.62% maintain IE as a default

Locking in the default browser setting is key to winning and retaining the crown in the browser war.

Changing Tide?

While it may seem intuitive that IE would hold the title of Default Browser King, Firefox continues to show its viability. In mid-summer 2010, IBM mandated it’s nearly 400,000 employees have Firefox as their default browser. Bob Sutor, Vice President of Open Source and Linux at IBM’s Software group said in a blog post about the mandate that “While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be.” It would follow, that there is an indication that Firefox continues to gain ground. The IBM announcement came around the time that IE reversed a year-long slide in usage also indicating the fickleness of the market.

Meanwhile, in the world of tech

There is one market segment that seems to be a black sheep in the browser family. Business Insider released numbers that indicate in the tech set, Google Chrome has surpassed Firefox now owning 34% market share of a tech savvy niche market(note* this is active use, not default browser settings). That eclipse happened this fall and also serves as an indicator that consumers’ browsing habits are a rich world of variation.

Final Thoughts

What the data shows is a rich world of browser preference based on market segment. For broad use, Internet Explorer still reigns supreme. However, both Firefox and Chrome are proving their ability to move the needle and that they are worth a review when developing add-ons, applications and toolbars. Both Firefox and Chrome retain high default usage among their active browser users.

In our final installment of The Browser Wars series we’ll take a look at user retention and engagement through add-ons, toolbars and applications based on browser use and identify which browser has highly engaged users when it comes to using enhanced features.