Did you try to "smorify" your app lately?

Just found out about this web site: www.smore.com/for-apps. In a few words: you enter the iTunes URL into the provided field and hit the button to create an instant splash page for your application. It takes less than 30 seconds to try.

I tried with Ultimate Password Manager and got a web page that is very professionnal looking. Each part of the page can be edited and new sections can be added. Very well done.

AppifyWP little brother: AppifyWP LaunchPad

Looking to create a promotional web site for your soon to be released iOS application? There something new from the maker of the excellent WordPress Theme: AppifyWP and it is rightly called AppifyWP LaunchPad. There is a demo of the WordPress theme available here: http://lpdemo.appifywp.com/. The theme allows you to put screen shots and let people sign for a newsletter once this app is launched (using a builtin MailChimp widget). Once your application is on the App Store, you'll be able to buy the AppifyWP theme and upgrade keeping all relelated informations in place. This is cool, really. The best thing, this WordPress theme is free. Cool.

I'm personnaly using the paid version to promote Ultimate Password Manager. Have a look.

Building your iOS application web presence - options compared

AppifyWP is a very popular WordPress theme that you can buy and install on any web hosting company offering a WordPress environment. You can read my review of AppifyWP here.

Another player in the field of application promotional web theme is Tapptics.

Today, I want to share my comments about a new service to help you build your application web presence in a snap, without resorting to a web design. The service is called ooomf.com. While the web service is still in its infacy, I think it fills the need for many indie iOS developers.

First, the service is very simple to setup: no need to know about things like web hosting or Wordpress basics. You register with the web service, create a web page for your application and upload artworks for the application screen, the application icon and the like. For now, the service main focus is to get potential application buyers to fill a form so they can be informed when the application become available on the App Store.

There is some features missing that I would like to be included in a 1.0 release:

• Social Network buttons on the main page should be included
• More theme styles
• More than one screen shots (with transitions choices)
• iPad applications support and more than one orientation
• A direct link to the App Store when the application becomes available

You can create as many application landing pages as required. Custom domain are supported as well as Google Analytics are supported and more features are planned in the near future. So, keep an eye on www.ooomf.com.

Pitching your application for a review - a sample pitch

So you've got an iOS application ready for release and you want to submit your application to a review site but you don't know what to include in your request? Go ahead and download this template from App Design Vault. This tip sheet was built from an interview of Erica Sadun by App Design Vault. She's an iOS developer and a writer for www.tuaw.com.

Another WordPress Theme to promote your apps

Remember about AppifyWP? I wrote a blog post about this really cool and nice WordPress theme to promote a single iOS application. For those without web design experience, I still think this is a really good kick start kit.

But today, I've got an email from Tapptics, a well known web resource for its iOS app design started kit. To time, she offering a really nice and functional WordPress theme for promoting your iPhone apps. This theme offers a lot of flexibility and is could with how-to videos to help you install the theme, customize it, etc. Pricing? Free. Go get it now. I'm seriously considering this free theme in order to move my MobileMe hosted web site at http://www.tinysofty.com to a place like FatCow while using this free theme. Thank you Jen, you made my day.

The only downside of these themes is that they only showcase one application. Many small developers would love to be able to showcase all of there apps. Maybe in a future version of the theme!

How to influence your presence on the App Store

This week, UPM 3.1.2 came out and I noticed something interesting. According to www.appannie.com, my application was being featured in 122 countries on the App Store in the Productivity category.

I did a little search in order to find an explanation for this. Before the update, my app wasn't featured at all in the App Store all over the world. Meh. By having a mere 175 updates downloaded by users on the first day and nearly 600 hundreds the following day, this seems to generate enough traffic on the Apple servers to trigger something. Could this traffic be influencing Apple algorithm for select which apps to feature on each App Store category? If yes, maybe I should plan smaller but more frequent updates for my application! What is your experience on this matter?

Innovative way to reward indie iOS developers

Message to all my readers

You know as a developer how much hard work it is to build iOS applications

You may also know that maintaining a blog like this one is hard work too

If you like this blog, you can contribute in two simple ways, whichever you choose

Buy my application "Ultimate Password Manager"
(only 2.99$ this weekend)

Click picture to get to the App Store

or

Share this blog URL with your peer

Thank you.

Disclaimer: 30% of your donation will go to Apple, 70% will go directly to me as pure rewards. If lots of you buy the application, which sells for the same price of a Starbuck coffee by the way, my application may find its way up in iTunes top 100!

Get your iOS applications noticed on the market

There are many ways to promote your apps on the App Store. You can buy ads (for indie, forget that, very bad investment). Or, you can try to send pulses on the market. Here is how I did it.

In the past few weeks, I made an experiment: every friday, I set the price of one of my app (Password Validator) to become free. The promotion lasts all weekend.

Playing with application pricing is one of the way to send a "pulse" on the market as many web sites hooked on iTunes Store data feeds know about new apps, apps that becomes free, price increases, decrease, etc. Think of this as a network where the App Store (under the iTunes umbrella) is the centre. 

Satellite sites monitors iTunes feeds and build part of their content for changes. Their user community who follow them will notice and may download the app.This will in turn drive attention to your apps and maybe convert into downloads. 

The following is a graphic showing the promotion effects on ranking for two weeks. 

Then, the unit downloaded graphs shows something interesting, the effect is diminishing over time. So, doing price changes every week is kind of too much, maybe every month would keep the unit downloaded at the same level each time.

The net effect is your app is downloaded more often and may get notified by one of these satellite sites. Also, if your promoted application is a downscaled version of a paid one, up sale can happen here as some users may want to pay for the big ticket. So far, the net result is that more people get to know my apps as they visit www.tinysofty.com but sales are still lagging behind for Password Validator's brother, Ultimate Password Manager. But remember, it doesn't cost a lot of money to get these small pulse of exposure on the web.

Build a simple yet beautiful web presence with AppifyWP

Having an application for sale on the App Store is nice but let's face it: the iTunes page that comes for every application is very limited and uninspired. If you want to promote your app, you must build a better web presence for it. There a many ways to achieve this: create one yourself, hired a web designer or do a little bit of both. This is what AppifyWP is all about. This blog post will guide you in building a well designed web presence for your application in a very cost effective way and with a professional look.

What is needed

1. Select a hosting service. 
2. Register the domain name for you app.
3. Install WordPress
4. Buy and install AppifyWP
5. Customize AppifyWP with your application's promotional material. 
6. Update iTunes Connect

Selecting a hosting company
There are hundreds of web hosting services and some a more popular than others. I selected www.fatcow.com because the reviews were great and they supported the following: they offer domain registration and support WordPress. I've been using the service for a while and had to ask technical support a question regarding domain name registration. Support was done over a web-based chat session and in less than 24 hours my issue was fixed. I'm a satisfied customer.

Register a domain name
You have to register a domain name to host the web presence of your application. Mine was www.ultpassmgr.com. Many are adding a "app" ending but I felt it didn't fit well so I left it over. A domain name is valid for one year and have to be renewed accordingly. FatCow offers one free domain name with their hosting package which is nice so I don't have to rely on another service (like www.godaddy.com) to host the domain name. Up two three days may be required to the domain name to register on the internet. Be patient.

Install WordPress
Once setup on FatCow the next step was to install WordPress. This was quite easy. A simple button on FatCow's control panel calls an external service. On FatCow, they refer to https://www.simplescripts.com/ which makes the installation process as simple as clicking an Install button. Once done, you can manage your WordPress web site by visiting the /wp-admin page on your registered domain name.

Buy and install AppifyWP
So I'm not a web designer and I don't have enough money to hire one. I suspect this is the same for many iOS developers. Here comes AppifyWP. You can get a peek of what AppifyWP is all about by visiting http://appifywp.com/. Once purchased, you upload the AppifyWP theme (the .zip file that you get after purchasing it), then activate it with the WordPress with the following steps.

Customize the content

Once the theme is installed you have to add your promotional content to personalize it to your app. You'll need the promotional material for your apps. This include screen shots and description text.  This is done by visiting the theme management page at a similar URL: http://yourSiteURL/wp-admin/themes.php?page=appify_controlpanel.php

 

 

As you can see there is a lot of things that you can customize with AppifyWP and this is what hooked me on the package. You can select the type of application so the template adjusts the main page accordingly. You can upload up to eight screenshots of your app that will be played as a slide show when the user enters the website. AppifyWP is social networks aware as you can define the application's Twitter account and FaceBook pages link. Finally, you will have to define the theme pages ordering that make up the left part of the WordPress theme, the navigation menu.

AppifyWP is very well done and allows you to build a web site for your application without knowing the underlying details of building WordPress web sites. You'll save a lot of money because this package is yours for only 39$. That's a steal if you ask me. Not convinced? Ask a web designer to build a similar WordPress theme. Oh and the guy who wrote this was very responsive to my support requests.

Update iTunes Connect
Finally, the next step is to update the application's metadata on iTunes Connect to set the application's URL page and the support URL. Once done, after a few hours of replication on iTunes server side, all the world will be able to see the application's own web site.

How to create perfect looking promo videos

In this blog post, I want to share how I created perfect looking promotion video to be viewed from any iOS devices. The goal was to create a video where the potential user would feel the actual application on his or her device like if it was actually installed and running. 

To achieve my goal, I'm using Telestream's ScreenFlow 2.1.5. This is one of the best screen recorder on the market. The price is kind of steep but it is worth it. 

Start the iPhone simulator and the application to be promoted.

Using the iPhone simulator, the original one, not the retina display version, I start my application and position the user interface where I want to start the next recording session.

Create short video sequences

Using the Record feature of ScreenFlow, I've recorded a simulated user interaction with the application. During the recording, I tried to gently and smoothly move the mouse so the movements looked great to the eyes. 

Save sequences into a ScreenFlow project. 

When saving the first sequence, I need to create a new project. I make sure to crop the video to get only  the screen at 320 x 480 pixels. I record each new sequences and save them in the newly created project so they are all together. Each video sequence must be cropped individually. 

Put sequences on the story line

Using the recorded videos, I put each short sequence in the desired order on the story line. Then I add starting and closing dissolve effect to make transition from one sequence to the other. This is nice and better looking in general.

Then I add text overlay with smooth transitions at appropriate places to introduce each sequence and let the user know what he or she is looking at.

Export the video

I export the whole video sequence using the following settings.

I make sure to select iPhone as the preset, and to leave the original video size as is, at 320 x 480 pixels, this is the key part in order to produce good looking videos for display on the device.

The final result
A user wanting to know more about the app, will visit www.tinysofty.com. From the iPhone, the potential buyers are facing this initial page and they can click on the video to play it. The nice thing is that the video will start to play right away. The video you'll see is about 14 mb in size.

To see the the actual video, play it from your iPhone or iPod touch to get the real thing by visiting www.tinysofty.com web site. Now, the next thing that I'd like to do but don't know how is to create a Retina Display version, all in the same video file.