iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [154]
Be careful about changing your applications from being free to paid and vice versa when it comes to In App Purchases. Currently it appears that if you change a free app into a paid one you will enable In App Purchases, and you will disable In App Purchases if you do the reverse. The concern has been that developers might make free apps and build up large user bases and then change the app to a paid app and enable In App Purchases. Once users get the latest version, their free app might no longer be free. This could lead to community backlash or direct action from Apple to prevent this scenario.
Blogs
In most cases it makes sense for either you or your company to have a blog, like ours shown in Figure 10.28. It may even be useful for you to create an application-specific blog. In this case there should be a lot of activity going on around the given iPhone application. Most blogs should be updated every two or three days, and certainly at least once a week. Any less and the blog will atrophy and lose its followers over time.
FIGURE 10.28
Apps Amuck's blog
Lite version
Many of the most popular applications on the App Store have a free version, usually known as a lite version. This is because Apple does not allow applications to have built-in trial capabilities. These lite versions usually only contain one level from the paid version of the application. This allows users to try out applications, like Trism-Lite shown in Figure 10.29. This is very important, since the App Store refund policy is “All sales are final.” These lite versions of applications are the only way people interested in your products can test them out to be sure they will like them.
FIGURE 10.29
Trism-Lite
App updates
It's a good idea to update your applications from time to time (Figure 10.30). There are several reasons why you should do this. For one reason, it helps keep your applications visible on the App Store. Updating your applications frequently also keeps your application fresh in the mind of your users.
FIGURE 10.30
Facebook iPhone application update
Mind share is an important part of an app's ultimate success in the marketplace. Consider if a user has two applications on his device. One of them is yours, and the other is your competitor's. You've been busy lately and have not been good about updating your application. But your competitor has been. This user really liked your application better at first, but when he saw all the new updates coming down for your competitor's application, he couldn't resist giving it another try. And he noticed that with every version the other app was getting better and better, until finally, it was better than your application.
Eventually, he even decided to uninstall your application to make room for something else that caught his eye. Then, as a final loss, later someone asked him for a recommendation for a new application to try, but instead of recommending your app, he recommended the other app. It is almost like a digital war where every device is a small piece of land that your application has to battle for, and every battle counts.
If your application has in-app advertising, you should be sure to update your application frequently as well. Updating your application often tends to encourage users to return to your application regularly to see what is new. The same way you want to water plants and flowers, you want to update your application with new features and improvements.
Consider also that frequent application updates can be a feature of your application that you can market to help propel your application's growth. This is called creating serial content for your application. You can let users know in your application's description that every week you will add new capabilities or content to your application. This could take many forms:
New levels
New weapons
New characters
Bug fixes
User-suggested ideas
New application themes and skins
New features
New music
New languages
New Easter eggs
Ad Hoc beta testing
Apple created Ad Hoc distribution