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Reflections and musings of folks @ 955 Dreams Inc.

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This post was derived from an email written by me on September 16th 2011 a few days after the initial version of Band of the Day was published into the appStore.

It has helped me understand the importance of quality in apps as they scale to millions of users, I hope it inspires others to think the same way too…

All,

I’ve been reflecting on the past few days as I fly back across this country (Airborne Toxic Event playing on my iPod) and I wanted to relay something I learnt over the past 2 days about this company. I know it’s been tough on a lot of you. I’ve definitely not made it easier on anyone.

We’ve released our biggest product to date into the market and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Most of the feedback from customers and the TechCrunch article and Scoble’s praises are extremely rare. The tone with which they speak about our company and the effect it has on them is real and not made up. Just so we’re clear about this - we were not introduced to them by Mitch or Dave or any other valley bigwig.

Our products have made an impact on them. There is no invisible hand effecting their decisions. In other words…

You did this.

When we spoke on Thursday afternoon about customer support being a critical portion of this business, I was not kidding. People have it backwards when it comes to mobile products because most people do not understand this business or the personal connection people have with mobile devices. We live and die by our customers pulse. Their sentiment is the only trend line TJ and I wish to track, everything else is noise.

It makes no business sense to support a 99c (chewing gum price) or a 9.99c purchase, but, we do it. This is in our DNA. There are no compromises. We will call the customers who have issues, do skype video calls (I’ve done many of these before - they’re fun), anything it takes to ensure that their frustrations, if any, are alleviated. When we talk to these customers - the disgruntled ones - we learn an immense amount. These are the customers that prepare us for bigger things.

I was so proud of TJ responding to the guy who thought the entire app sucked. It’s tough for us all to hear and read any criticism of this product or anything that 955 Dreams’ makes, I’m learning how to deal with these emotions and growing. But, step one is to be open to the conversation with an unknown angry person on the other end of your keyboard.

One thing I want to make clear: if there is a bug that is effecting the user and their experience of the app is being compromised in a significant way - this takes precedence over anything else in the queue. We do not always make the right decisions, and, you do have a voice thats louder than mine if you really speak from the customers point of view. No one can argue with this position.

Our interactions with our “special” customers over the past two days have really helped cement this 955 Dreams DNA - the fact that we go above and beyond and we’re the only company to do so in the mobile space is why the scobles, mg’s and om’s of the world care to cover every product we put out. It is the reason why Apple supports us the way they do. Being app of the week involves a level of sophistication that most people cannot comprehend let alone support. We’ve done this 5 times.

I don’t like to compare us to Zappos or Apple or any other company in terms of the relentless focus on the customer, because what we’re doing is unprecedented.

We’re providing customer support for chewing gum. It’s crazy.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making as they enter the appStore is a lack of understanding of how the appStore ecosystem behaves. Most developers assume that it is only a hit-based eco-system - that a couple of Angry Birds and Flipboards define the worlds largest software product marketplace. For most developers entering the appStore with visions that your product will become the next Angry Birds or generate engagement like any of the Zynga games on iOS is an exercise in tagging yourself “stupid”.

I was chatting with Enrique Allen and an applicant at 500Startups the other day and we were discussing the enterpreneur’s vision for mass market adoption on the iPad for his app/product. A major hurdle in his (the enterpreneur’s) understanding of the appStore was that customer adoption would be “easy” given the scale of the appStore and the product-market fit given the demographic of users that make up the iPad today. Assume for a moment that the app has a great launch - what next? What about 2 months after launch or 3 or 6? You do not need to have all the answers ready, but, in my opinion you need to ask yourself some of these questions today.

As a Product Manager I care about the lifecycle of the product and not just the launch mania. I have learnt from the launch of many apps into the appStore and I see a pattern in all of them - it is that of a left-heavy bell-curve (see image below). The height of the bell-curve will vary depending on how good your app is but the way it settles is a truth you cannot escape. It will settle, and you need to plan for the way the apps settle.

In explaining the appStore product cycle to anyone I have begun to use the terms: “settling fat” vs. “settling thin”.

Settling Thin: After the initial euphoria of your app having been released and you getting some decent coverage in the press and through bloggers you will see a steady decline in the number of downloads per day. This is normal. Be sure to measure downloads and updates using services like AppAnnie or appFigures. I personally recommend appFigures - they have great pricing and good customer support for their paid plans.

Settling Fat: This is the baseline of what I want of all our apps at 955 Dreams. We wouldn’t begin to consider expending energy on any app unless we knew it could settle fat. After the initial round of coverage from press and hopefully good coverage through the appStore the daily app sales will start to slow. Sales settle at a predictable and healthy pace daily. This is what you want. Any additional marketing or ad-spend results in measurable improvements in daily sales volume.

Fat and Thin is relative: To figure out what these curves mean for your startup/business, invest some time prior to launch to set some projected daily downloads for your apps. Think long and hard about projected downloads the first month of launch and then use the fat vs. thin curves to figure out what you could be looking at in terms of downloads 3 months into launch. This might seem like mind-numbing number crunching today but believe me it serves as a great tool to figure out the validity of your business or app/s. If your apps settle very thin - you need to rethink your product from the ground up. Spending good money on ads when apps settle thin is a bad idea (more on this in a follow-up post).

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