The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

There have been some stories floating around the web that Apple offered to buy Loewe, a manufacturer of high-end televisions based in Berlin, Germany. Loewe said it hadn’t received an offer, but that doesn’t mean anything, so I did some research.

Browsing around on Loewe’s website, which is mostly in German, and incomprehensibly to my single language mind, I did discover some interesting facts that lend some credit to the rumors: (1) Loewe is already working to integrate its televisions with the iPad, check out the Loewe Assist Media App in the AppStore – think of it like an awesome remote control; (2) Loewe TV’s are similarly sexy to the Apple designed products we’ve come to love; and (3) Loewe’s financial difficulties make it an attractive target for Apple.

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My name is Peter Yoder and I’m a COO.

That’s Chief Operating Officer if you’re not familiar with business jargon. My job at Rocksauce Studios can be summed up rather succinctly: I make everything run.

Naturally, there are qualifiers to that statement. I have to make everything run smoothly. I have to make everything run on time. Most importantly, I have to keep everything running smoothly and on time while making sure that our apps are the absolute best in the market (but I’m biased). That may sound like an obvious statement, but it’s not always easy when you’re trying to manage a team of designers and creative types!

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Whether you’re a giant like Facebook and Google, or a smaller company flying under the radar, online privacy is a big deal.

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with Julie Brill, commissioner of the FTC, to discuss upcoming issues regarding online privacy. The main topic of our conversation was the Commission’s recent report on best practices for online privacy protection (tracking, collecting, disseminating personally identifiable information). If you’d like to read the report for yourself, you can find a copy here. It’s quite interesting, albeit a big lengthy.

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I am always amazed at how many people want to create a piece of software with absolutely no clue how software development works. Luckily, there are great people out there who can educate them along the way. We call it “software” for a reason. Software is intangible, unknowable, and incredibly subjective…something some people perpetually fail to understand. Software is art. You must approach software development as if you are commissioning a work of art.

The best developer I know used to be a pianist. I asked him how difficult it was to make the transition between playing the piano and writing code. His response was, “There was no transition. It’s exactly the same thing.” Let that statement enlighten you.

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The best app idea on the planet is little more than just that: an idea, a drawing on some paper and some neural connections in your brain, without a good software developer to manifest your vision. Likewise, that finished app, polished to a spit-shine, may appear pretty lackluster without effective marketing efforts.

Rule #129: Don’t overlook the importance (especially in your budget) of marketing!

Marketing is often what separates the and gold from the dirt (and often the discovered gold from the undiscovered gold) in the mobile app world. Print, online, word-of-mouth, and the ever-elusive viral marketing campaigns all work together to help your app rise to the top. However, they need not work independently. The most effective campaigns employ a call-to-action for getting users to sign up across all channels.
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(Every Monday, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry. Submit your questions here!)

What is a whiteboarding session? What happens during one?

A whiteboarding session rarely includes a white board here at Rocksauce, although it certainly used to! It’s a meeting we have two times a week where we get the team together and the sales people bring in all of the ideas that we’ve gotten from clients and present them to the marketing, design and UI/UX guys, as well as our development engineer and our project manager. We look over these potential projects, discuss any other potential ideas that come to us, talk about if we’ve seen this idea in the store and how much competition is out there, whether the client’s approach is the best approach and whether there’s a clever way to help them succeed in the market.
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When your app is in its infancy, you should be doing everything you can to validate your idea before you plunk down the big bucks to have it brought to life in development. One way to get some feedback on your idea is through primary research.

Primary research is a fancy way of describing anything you go out into the world and collect yourself. Surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, and specimen samples are all examples of primary research. However, the type of research I’m considering here is primarily surveys.

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One of the unavoidable perils of the Internet are spammers. Spammers have an uncanny way of finding their way into every facet of our online lives: Facebook, Email, Discussion Boards, and, yes, Twitter. Not only are spammers annoying to deal with (anyone who runs a website certainly has to deal with scammy pingbacks and spam comments), but they also erode the integrity of established websites. Like a virus, spammers infect the host, replicate and repeat until the host is all but dead. Then, they move on to the next one; like Internet zombies.

Indeed, spammers have the potential to shut down an entire social network. When legitimate contributors find that meaningful comments have been overrun and lost in the spam, they begin to look for other communities to spend their time. When this exodus gains momentum, once vibrant communities are quickly transformed into ghost towns full of cheap advertisements.

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I am a big fan of the freemium business model. If for no other reason, I like trying out new apps without having to take the risk of spending money on something I discover I don’t like or don’t need. I’ve even discussed this approach briefly in two previous posts: A Look at Dropbox’s Business Model and Monetizing Your App (Or How to Make Money Off Your App).

Both of the above articles, in addition to representing literary brilliance, discuss successful strategies that companies employ to first get you hooked on their app, and second, and perhaps the most important to developers, get you to spend money on their app. Basically, the two approaches discussed in these articles look at giving away a limited version of your product in order to get the customer to later spend money on the “premium” or full-featured release.

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One of the people I follow on twitter recently posted a link to an article discussing the freemium business model, titled Give Away the Diagnostic, Sell the Remedy. In his article, Nathan Kaiser discusses a fresh perspective on the freemium model. That is, what exactly should you be giving away in order to secure future sales? His answer: give away the diagnostic to a problem. The more I think about this approach, the more I’m digging it, with two shovels!

Granted, this approach is easier said than done. In order to give away a useful diagnostic, you need to identify a real problem. Not just any problem, though, you need a problem that has your target market aching for a solution. In his article, Mr. Kaiser gives the apt example of anti-viral software: you get a free virus scan, discover your computer is infected, and are now in need of an inoculation. The solution? Pay for their software and kill those buggers.

Many of today’s most successful mobile apps take the same approach, though maybe not as through such apparent fear mongering. The logic I see goes something like this:

1. The problem – an insatiable need to fill every second of downtown with entertainment. DrawSomething, Angry Birds, and Plumber’s Crack are all representative apps that help solve this problem.
2. The diagnostic – download a free version of the app and discover how much fun you’ve been missing out on. Granted, the free version will be an ad-supported app (watching ads are not the kind of fun you’re looking for), or it will come with limited features. For example, DrawSomething only gives you a couple colors to start out with and only a handful of bombs to help you guess poorly drawn pictures.
3. The solution – more cowbell. The free version helped subside your itch. It’s great, but you need more. My pictures would look so much better with green!!! In comes the premium (paid) solution.

So, when you’re panning out your app, think about how you can give the customers a taste that makes them thirsty for more.

For some time now, we’ve watched Facebook and Instagram stare each other down, bitter enemies in the making. In one corner, the most powerful and profitable social network in the world, a company that’s become so vital to so many lives that it’s difficult to imagine a time before it existed. In the other corner, a small start-up with a unique take on photo-sharing…a take so wildly popular that it threatened the entire industry that is Facebook’s photo and image capabilities.

But instead of blood, we’ve got ink…and by ink, I mean a few important signatures and the transferral of one billion dollars from Facebook’s account into Instagram’s. Yep, it’s official: Facebook bought Instagram and it only cost them $1,000,000,000.

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