Just got accepted onto App Store! Next steps?
I know its not a huge deal, but this is my first app i've built solo and full stack. Would love to get some feedback on it! Specifically, if the use case is clear to understand based on the app store page.
Why i built Plan.it - me & my GF always sent screenshots & links back & forth for date & trip ideas (same deal within my close group of friends). That process is so manual !!
Thank you to all !
P.S (feel free to leave your own landing pages/app downloads for review as well)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plan-it-plans-in-your-hands/id1418716199#?platform=iphone
Hello Nonso,
First of all Congratulations !
My own experience - I have built 5 apps so far in past 3 years using freelancers and development partners. All 5 where a flop for the simple reason, I did not have a GO TO market plan. Honestly, I would say the app building is just 10% of the business and we still have 90% to be done.
I would strongly recommend you having solid Marketing plan if you are interested in growing this.
Good luck.
Hari
Thank you Hari for your feedback,
I agree that the Go to market strategy is the most pivotal thing. Building a good product means nothing if you cannot distribute it. Im currently working on a few marketing strategies.
Question for you - when using these freelancers - did you have them to revise the app for you after testing your initial product and finding out it did not take off? Or did you always stick with the first product.
Nonso
Hello Nonso, Typically, I create a MVP with basic features using freelancers. Depending on the UI and the app scalability, I hire a better team to create the app that is good enough for the real market. But honestly, the challenges of the product taking off doesn't change with the app look and feel or architecture, at least with my experience. Being a technical guy, I realized that the marketing is the critical piece we need to master before even thinking on an idea IMHO.Thanks.
First of all, congrats! Nothing quite the rush of releasing an app on your own :)
I built an app with a similar goal (to coordinate shopping lists with my girlfriend) so I personally love the story behind it. That will help you stay motivated to keep updating and maintaining the app as it grows.
A few thoughts as I go here:
Related self-promotion: I am working on an automatic website creator for app developers like us that helps solve this problem with a text-to-phone option. It's still pre-release, but thought you might be interested and I'd love your feedback :)
I used it to generate a site for you here.
Back to the app... I entered my location (West Chester, PA) and hit 'plan it for me' but nothing happened, so I went in and added my own plan and got a little date night set up.
The horizontal scroll for the second stop in our plan wasn't immediately obvious. The background images with white text are really great for the visual, I think you can make the height shorter and have all the stops 'stacked' vertically.
When I went to invite my GF, I couldn't -- maybe it's loading friends that are already in the app? The invite areas were blank. It would be good for your growth to be able to send an invite via sms or something.
The idea of chat and who's in are awesome. Would be super helpful to coordinate a group.
Overall, it's a great idea, but I couldn't do much with it yet. At this stage, you may feel like you need to keep adding features and building new stuff, but I would spend some time solidifying your current version. I think another update or two to smooth out the flows will get you right on track :)
Good luck! I'll look forward to some updates!
& one last thought. I feel like today, sooo many developers are going mobile first. And websites are pretty much an, "if this app works out, we'll eventually figure out our web strategy". So I feel like that mindset leaves a void for some type of product that would handle that automatic website creation factor. I feel like any 'user generated content' app, could benefit from this. Hope everything i stated made sense
Hey Chris! First off- thanks for taking the time to reply and lend a helping mind.. Its very much appreciated!
For the download part, that is a really good point - ill have to figure out some way to get to the top of the list. I hope in part it has to do with Apple literally approving the app today. Hopefully with some good rating & reviews it moves up.
I think your feedback is just what i needed! I've been building it for about 4 months and at this point i was just ready to get something out. But thank you for noticing all of those UX flaws. I will definitely smoothen a few things up for the next update. For the invite part - right now the only way to add somebody is by having them download the app, but im working on a shareable link that you'll be able to share via text, and it will open your itinerary in a weblink (which ill address on my feedback of your site creator)
Last point - Although i am not sure why it didn't plan anything for you when you tapped the button. It detects your location automatically, and if you have Yelp in your area, then it should pull things from it.. Ill surely look into this!
NOW - in regards to your website creator - Dude! i like it a lot! & i'll tell you why i believe you could be on track to solve an actual problem that i would pay you for. ill point out my problem below-
So, im a self taught iOS developer. Swift is the only language i currently know. Which is fine because i only work on iPhone apps. BUT i ran into a problem recently.
I need for a user to be able to create a plan within my app, and then generate a sharable link that will open that same plan, in a webpage (i hope that makes sense). That way- the user can share their itinerary with another person & the other person won't have to download the app just to view it, they can view it in their web browser (just how i can view the link you made for me on my web browser).
Now - my only current solution to this is for me to learn a bit of javascript and then create a website that reads from the same database as my app does (Firebase). Which isn't the hardest thing do but its time consuming & a small learning curve.
But quite honestly - if there were some type of API where i could connect to, and then input a few lines of code into my app - and the API automatically generated this URL when a users taps a button in my app and it opens to a link that you host on your site.. I would literally pay for it!! No joke.. Because this way- i don't have to waste time building a web page when it may not even be worth it!
Im not 100% sure if this is where you're headed towards. But i feel like it may be adjacent enough for me to at least share with you!
I would be totally comfortable signing up on a model where its like $4.99 a month for unlimited clicks, or whatever price tier you decide on (but i hope you get the point). Please if you have any more questions about this or need more feedback feel free to contact me! I definitely like where you're headed - a lot of newbies to tech totally skipped web dev and went straight to mobile (like me). I feel like i'm not the only one who is facing this predicament.
Hi,
Just wanted to say that plan.it comes off as a website link.
Except that www.plan.it is something completely different.
Thanks for noticing that !