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).
