5 Tips for Launching your App
Seeing as my book (the App Launch Blueprint) will finally be converted to the appropriate amazon format tomorrow, I may as well write a little bit about some of the things you can expect to find if you read it. Let’s take this time to talk about 5 things you can do to turn negatives into positives in the pre-launch stage of launching your app, but also some other things.
1. Get Feedback and Use it
It doesn’t really matter whether it’s your family, friends, roommate, taxi driver, what have you. They can all serve as great beta testers. The main thing you want to keep in mind is to not tell them the app is yours. You certainly don’t want any biased opinions, as that will do you no good.
Wherever the place, make sure you’re testing based on the demographics you actually plan to serve with your app. I.E. if you’re making a game for kids, it probably wouldn’t make sense to go to an elderly home to ask them to try out what you have.
2. Know Your Users
In an article I wrote a while back, I talked about understanding your KPI’s, however it’s equally important to understand who is actually going to use your app (as mentioned above).
If you’re taking criticism from multiple user groups, think about profiling users for your reporting with the purpose of identifying patterns based on the demographics.
Things such as: age, sex and location are great places to start. You could even go one step further as to ask the users if they play games and if so, which games they are playing (this will help build user profiles for later analysis).
3. Listen
Often times you an derive a wealth of information from some of the most inexperienced users. You will not get any of this however, if you decide to let them go through the app on their own and instead guide them through it. Doing so completely negates the value of the testing to begin with.
Think about it, most users who download your app will not have someone to walk them through each aspect of the app. By having them identify their own issues (while with you) you’re getting the same feedback from those who wouldn’t be physically present as well.
4. Test All Around
While getting face-face feedback is paramount, it’s certainly not as convenient as testing online. To do so there are many tools available, one of which is PreApps. PreApps allows you to submit your application to be reviewed by tens of thousands of highly engaged users who are interested in learning more about apps that have yet to launch.
This allows you to easily commission them to provide feedback on everything from your level design to your app icon.
5. There’s More to it than the App
While product is important, I can never say enough times how equally (if not more) important marketing is. One common mistake is forgetting to get feedback on your actual marketing materials, such as: Name of game, icon, description, screenshots, promotional media (including videos and images).
Below you can read the 1st chapter of my book, and if you like it – send me an email, should be up on Amazon tomorrow, however I plan to do an actual launch for iOS/Android.
1st Chapter of – the App Launch Blueprint.
Talk soon.
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
