Two months of mistakes
Disorganized (it’s a note taking app) has been out for two months now and that’s plenty of time for me to make a mistake or two. Launching an app without experience is like being a teenager all over again - people have clearly made these mistakes before but for some reason I had to go do them all by myself anyway.
Paid only
Initially, Disorganized had a month long trial and then a monthly subscription and that was it.
This way, there was no messing with ads and the related privacy questions. No messing with investors, and the skewed incentives that comes with.
I love the simplicity and transparency of a monthly fee - users instantly understand how you make money, and the users are the only ones you’re accountable for.
But users weren’t convinced. All users left, and the primary feedback was that they didn’t like paying. Since then I’ve introduced a free tier that shows ads. It’s a headache, but the users stick around.
No push for ratings
Another starry-eyed idea I had initially was not to ask for reviews & ratings in the app. That is definitely the best user experience, but it’s not the best for the app.
Apple publishes reviews & ratings instantly, but Google is more picky and requires a certain number of ratings per region. The 4.5 Google Play rating is still not visible in large parts of the world.
I appreciate that localization is important, but it’s a pretty tall order to get a handful of ratings per region when you get 1-2 ratings total per week.
Maybe there could be a global and a regional rating, and if you have enough regional ratings to show then they take priority.
Google Ads
Got too trigger happy with Google Ads.
GA users don’t give feedback
I have many feedback channels set up, but none of the thousands of users I got through Google Ads gave any feedback.
This is completely different than the users I’ve gotten through other means, like reddit or forum posts. That’s on the scale of hundreds of users but they give way more feedback, stick around to use the app, and even give a review or rating every once in a while.
AdMob stopped showing ads
AdMob entered the picture when I added the free tier.
This is apparently common knowledge in app dev circles but it was news to me (as are most things) - AdMob does not like when you acquire too many users through advertising. It will simply not show ads anymore. This is supposed to get better with time if you turn off advertising, which I did. But it seems like it’ll take some time before AdMob starts to trust me again.
Google Ads Lessons
If I could start all over, I would have started Google Ads with a more defensive budget, aiming for 10 users per day rather than 100. Start early so that you can start optimizing your advertising straight away, but do so slowly so that you have time to react. And as you do, you collect feedback from users acquired through other channels and make your product better.
Elevator pitch too long
I knew this was a trap and still I fell into it: Too many details when explaining the app, a defensive measure from being scared of not properly explaining what makes Disorganized special. Still one of my big areas of improvement, I believe.
Google can help out here - both Google Ads and Play Console gives you information about which texts work and which don’t. Just Google Ads is paused right now for aforementioned reasons, and I don’t have enough traffic to run proper tests on Google Play store.
No promo codes
I don’t remember ever using a promo code in my own life, but apparently users expect it when you market your app on social media. Now I have promo codes set up.
The good things
Two good things:
Talking to my users
Using the app daily myself
Both invaluable! But less fun to talk about.
Stay tuned for more mistakes!
Update ~1 month later: Another good thing!
Previously, the first thing that users saw when opening the app was a sign in screen. Changing it so that a firebase anonymous user is created instead so that users can try out the app immediately instead increased week 1 retention by over 50%!
If you made it this far
Click here for one month premium
Google play store, use code ONEMONTH at checkout for one month premium