From Miserable Launch to Decent Success in 3 Months, Thanks to Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

From Miserable Launch to Decent Success in 3 Months, Thanks to Hacker News

stangeek.com

120 pointsstangeek40 comments

I might be the only one, but design quality is a signal of development quality for me (even though, as a developer I know well that it's not). But when I see badly designed software or application, I say "If the developer didn't care, why should I?".

Another thing, these are things that I won't die without. I enjoy well crafted products (and will pay few $$ instead of using an ugly product that does the same thing).

Mobile Applications is not my expertise, so I'll give you a few suggestions on the landing page

- A contrast. For the moment, the logo is lost in the white. The iPhone video (and the iPhone device itself) is filled with white.

- A better font. You already know about font-face. Now try to pick a nicer one. TypeKit is free to start.

- A logo. Costs $25 to buy from Graphic River. Stock Templates/Scripts are a good quality/cost solution when you are bootstrapping with empty pockets.

- The social icons are buried. Also why is the Facebook button in French?

In your source code

- Don't put your scripts tag at the header, make it loads fast. Also don't use in-line JavaScript. Your CSS and JS condensed in one file

- It seems like non HTML5 users will not watch your video.

In your video, instead of the mouse cursor, use a 0.7 opacity rounded circle. It looks nicer and feel like your fingertip is moving there.

Nice work.

Thank you very much, we still have a lot to learn on web design. We'll rework the website based on your very constructive feedback.

Congratulations!

You only seem to have 9 ratings in the App Store globally (7 in the French Store, 2 in US) so far for 57523 downloads as you say. I used the iTunes Search API to obtain this info for your app id (I'm contemplating a move from iOS programmer-for-hire to full-time indie and this Python script is part of my market research).

That suggests only about 1 in 6391 users bother to give you a rating on the App Store, which is very low from what I hear: the usual figure quoted is 1 in 100 to 1 in 1500 for free apps. If this is right, it might be worthwhile to ask users in-app to give you a rating on the App Store if they like the app.

Yes, on the next update we will add a rating widget to encourage feedback. What is the usual approach to this? Shall we wait for the user to have used our app 5 times, 10 times, 20 times...? Any ideas are welcome.

About 3 times seems reasonable to me. All the best!

Make sure to time your widget popup carefully. You don't want it to trigger after - say, a failed connection. Instead, perhaps try to figure out when the "end" of a conversation is maybe, and trigger it after 3-5 of those? You're far more likely to get better votes if you don't ask people immediately after they experience internet latency or the like.

Ok. Rating widgets usually annoy me, which is why we didn't put one. But the downside is that we didn't get a lot of feedback, so we'll follow your advice and try to time it as best as we can.

Awesome, very well done! I'd consider reworking a couple of your comparison table headings, maybe something like this:

"iPhone only" -> "Supports all smartphones"

"Participants need the app?" -> "Participate without [installing / the app]"

"Max participants" -> "Unlimited Participants"

This purely subjective on my part, simple because I think it's easier to read a list of "YES" answers, and compare against the competitors's "NO" answers :-)

Many thanks. You are the second commenter to provide this feedback, I'm going to change the table right now :)

Looks like you forgot the t in without for "Participate withou the app?"

This is what your website looks like to me http://cl.ly/3B0V2u0x3g3M3d0l242N

(It's down)

Might need to get that fixed to take advantage of current Hacker News traffic.

Congrats! Some feedback concerning the UI: * The speech bubble contrast should be higher. * The "tick" and "close" rounded buttons are aliased?! The icons are too sharp. * The button to start a chat and the title "illico" do not seem to be aligned. * Somehow, the title "illico" alone is not strictly centered :/

PS: how to write a decent-looking list on Hacker News comments? :/

Thank you, this will go into our next iteration :)

Just a nitpick on you comparison table, iMessage can do group chat and shows when someone is typing.

With iMessage, you can't do group chat with non-iPhone users, can you?

You can, but you lose the ability to see when the other person is typing when they don't have an iPhone.

If the non iPhone person has MMS disabled on their account, then they won't see the message at all.

You reference good feedback from HN last time around, but there's no link to the discussion.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3517863 probably.

`iPhone only?': `No'

What else is there? You only have an App Store link on the site.

What we mean by this is that recipients do not need to have an iPhone (or even the app) to be able to participate.

How is that different than iMessage, which also seamlessly falls back to SMS for anybody that doesn't have iMessage support?

With iMessage, those on SMS (who don't have an iPhone) won't see everyone else's replies. You can't do group chat over SMS.

Congrats! Is there a premium version you can charge for?

Thanks! No premium version is planned. We have another little idea to monetize, but need a bit more traction first... ;)

If I may be a bit provocative: why spend all that energy and time if you're not sure you can make money with it?

Hello David this is a good question - we are absolutely positive we can make money with illico, but as I wrote above we need more traction (like x10 more).

x10 sounds absolutely doable when looking at what you already have! Keep it up!

Thank you!

It could well be due to aging, and growing more conservative about these things, but my current thinking is that leaving the most important part of a business - the part about making money - until fairly late in the game is not a good idea. There are certainly counter examples to this (Google, Facebook), but those companies are also outliers. Good luck, in any event, though!

The monetization plan is already there (in details), it's just that we don't want to spend time coding it if we don't have the required traction. Hope this makes more sense?

They're not talking about the details of the plan, though. They're encouraging you to empirically test your belief that people will behave the way your business plan is expecting them to (paying you for whatever the service is, sticking around when you monetize them with ads, or whatever it is.)

Hi Stan,

We did a group chat product at groupflier.com and got great traction on the free version but the SMS costs killed us and we had to switch to a paid model. Happy to trade PM on our experiences if you are interested and have a blog about it at:

http://gcrawshaw.posterous.com/group-texting-is-a-telco-game

I think it's just your battle-scarred self talking from painful experience!

@stangeek - can you not at least test part of your business model at the current level of traffic? Really worth getting those uncertainties out of the way... if only so you can start pivoting towards something workable right away instead of waiting a few more months.

"Draw Something" is one of the highest grossing apps on the UK appstore right now. They have a free and paid version. You could take some clues from them.

The great thing about getting money is that you can buy traction with it.

Interesting, will look into this, thanks!

The great thing about getting money is that you can buy traction with it.

That's one of the best lines I've read on HN in a while. I think it ought to be a mantra for app store developers.

Draw Something (like Pictionary) is in a sweet spot. To begin with it's a game and people play with their friends. They leverage Facebook to find your friends that have the app already. You can still invite people that don't have it yet, but knowing someone already has the app makes it a lot easier to start a game.

They limited some features so they can charge for them. You only get a few colors but can buy more. You get "bombs" that act as hints and can buy more.

One thing they don't do yet is have a way to share your drawing (or animated replay) on Facebook. That would be a big help. I read about a "paint for cats" iPad app (I think the one below) that added a "Share this painting on Facebook" button and it blew up his traffic. Not sure it really applies to illico but it could to a more visual app. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paint-for-cats/id427702410?mt...

So you're thinking of a button to share the chat transcript on Facebook? That's interesting...

Not sure it would work well for this app, but I'm always looking for anything visual or easily shared, especially if your audience are likely heavy Facebook users.

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