Gui’s top 5 things app developers should know

Until recently, Guilherme Schvartsman was an investment banker with a successful career in the financial market.  At the same time, he was keenly interested in the exponential growth in high-end mobile devices and apps, especially in his native country, Brazil.  In 2009, Guilherme started developing iPhone applications in 2009 in his free time.  Soon after, he founded Best, Cool & Fun Games to focus on developing mobile games full-time. The company is currently one of the top mobile gaming companies in Latin America, with a portfolio of more than 30 casual games played by 10 million users around the world.  We are excited to have Guilherme as a guest author to share his top five things that every app developer should know.

#1 - Use advertising to grow traffic and get discovered
Many apps are discovered when users are searching or browsing on their mobile device, often browsing top ranked applications lists in the Android Market and App Store.  With over hundreds of thousands of apps available for download, how do you get your app to stand out in the crowded marketplace?  Be sure to promote your app because I’ve seen so many good apps go unnoticed. There are many options for promoting your mobile app, but one of the easiest is mobile advertising.  Mobile advertising helps with getting your app discovered and installed, which in turn helps you stand out in the crowded app marketplace.  With AdMob mobile advertising, I was able to get front and center across a network of over 50,000 apps and sites to promote Ant Smasher.  Promoting my app was really easy and I was instantly able to see the impact of my advertising campaigns through real-time reporting in AdMob.  This allowed me to optimize my ad spend accordingly.  Using mobile advertising, I was able to drive significant download volumes for Ant Smasher (close to 50% of all downloads), which was key for getting ranked in the top app store lists.

#2 - You can make money by giving away your product for free
Keep in mind that many users won’t spend a nickle for a game, so offering your app for free and serving ads is a great way to let everyone play your game.  It may seem counter intuitive but you can earn sustainable revenues by giving away your product for free.   We were getting downloads and earning money when we initially launched the paid version of Ant Smasher for $0.99.  However, when we started offering a limited version of the app for free and using AdMob to serve ads, we quickly discovered that the bulk of revenues were coming from ads displayed in the app.  As a result, we quickly re-evaluated our business strategy offering the full version of Ant Smasher for free while relying on ads for monetization.  Today, most of the apps in our portfolio are offered to users at no cost, and we rely on an ad-supported business model.  Ant Smasher currently garners $2 million annualized revenues, with 80% coming from ads, primarily via AdMob.

#3 - It’s all in the little details
Ant Smasher started off as a fun idea where the user squishes ants on a tabletop.  I wanted to build a simple game that would be easy to learn, yet a challenge for users to master.  Beyond just having a fun idea, I tested it with various users who found it endlessly fun to play before starting to build the app.  We also knew that smartphone users are a tough crowd to please.  They want instant satisfaction, no bugs or glitches, and flawless performance.  So we spent a lot of time on the little details that make Ant Smasher delight users.  We kept the game simple, and focused on gameplay and graphics, hiring a UI designer.  The end result was an addictive app with realistic looking ants and squishing sound effects that keep users engaged and coming back.

#4 - Ride the social wave
Remember, for an app to “go viral” it needs to offer something valuable to the user.  Be it a useful utility or endless hours of fun, it also has to be easy for users to share.  By offering your product for free, you essentially lower the barrier for users to download and try your app.  When we released the free version of Ant Smasher, it went viral because it was easy for players to recommend the game to their friends through social media sites and word of mouth.

 #5 - Leverage house ads
House ads are a great advertising tool that often goes underutilized.  It enables app developers to cross-promote their own apps using their own mobile inventory. Conversion rates also tend to be higher and house ads can be used to fill excess inventory.  We used house ads with AdMob to cross-promote the paid version of Ant Smasher in the free version and inside other apps within our portfolio.  On average, Ant Smasher click-through rate is 6.5% with one in six clickthroughs resulting in an app purchase.  Additionally, we used our house ads performance to benchmark our paid advertising at no cost.  It helped us know where to invest budget and how to better optimize our paid advertising campaigns.

Mobile is such an exciting industry, and it’s different from anything else I’ve ever done.  With smartphone adoption taking off globally and the rapid growth of mobile apps, it’s an exciting time to be an app developer.  The possibilities to build a business on mobile are endless and the barriers to entry are low. I hope app developers of all sizes find these tips useful -- I sure wish I had these before I quit my day job!

 Editor’s note: You can try Ant Smasher for yourself by downloading the latest version for iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) or Android.  For more information about AdMob, please visit www.admob.com.  For Latin American based developers interested in AdMob, please visit http://goo.gl/HjMe7.

Posted by Guilherme Schvartsman, Founder & CEO, Best, Cool & Fun Games

Gui’s top 5 things app developers should know
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