Lots of SaaS advice on IH, anyone have thoughts/tips/stories about consumer facing products?
Hey all, I've been a lurker in this community for a few months now. Recently, I decided to go in on developing a consumer facing mobile app, a passion project of mine. While it's not quite ready for feedback just yet, I look forward to posting an MVP version soon.
My question is a bit more general. I've noticed most of the products on IH are SaaS/B2B. Anyone out there working on consumer focused products? I'd love to connect, and share tips/thoughts about building for this audience.
Cheers!
We have released a consumer-facing iOS (only) app. It's been on the Appstore for more than a year.
We haven't done any marketing, and we actually don't have a landing page (website) so current user acquisition is only via AppStore search. Numbers are alright, surprisingly people do search for apps on the Appstore.
As @humidnights mentioned, we're also trying to rank higher on the listings. Unfortunately, Apple does not share keywords for Appstore searches, so it's a bit of a guessing game.
I'll give you this tip: Split your time between app development and marketing. Like 50/50 of your time. Getting users and promoting the app is as difficult, if not more difficult, than developing an app.
Fyi: The app is written in Swift and uses Cloudkit as a backend.
Have a look: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-social/id1186696582?ls=1&mt=8
Our next step is to implement a subscription model and start with promoting the app to a wider audience. Good luck to you!
Love the design of the app! Can you explain some of your marketing strategies you've tried so far? Is it just wrestling with ASO?
Since the app is free and there is no subscription yet, we haven't invested any money or time into marketing. As I said in my previous response, this is a mistake and the time split should be 50/50.
We haven't done anything for ASO. And for our experience the results vary from device to device, sometimes we rank near the top, other times much lower.
Previously we had a simple landing page in the style of carrds, and used a few aggregator sites to link to that.
As soon as we have implemented a subscription model, we want to focus more time on our landing page, content marketing in the form of medium blogs, and posting on startup communities such as IH, producthunt, HN, etc. However, it seems that most people in a similar position are doing the same, so it would be interesting to try something else.
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B2C app here that currently sells copies, not subscriptions.
Yeah, IH seems to be very SaaS, MRR centered. Little love for folks like us :)
We have built a B2C SaaS platform BearTax - Traders can consolidate trades and calculate gain/loss for tax purposes.
Though ours is not a Mobile app, it's a cloud-based web application - most of the stuff could be similar.
Drift helped us do this on the website and application - where it sourced leads on website and enabled us to help user right on that screen.
3. Reach out and connect with targeted audience/users right from the beginning - not when you launch but from today (collect their emails, engage(not spam), create value for them) and then they will all be excited to try your app on it's launch day
Tell us more about BearTax? How did you market the product?
Thanks for your interest.
Most of our leads come from the content we've produced. We are still working on it every day to see a way to create value for the users (crypto traders here) and let them know about BearTax and how we can make it easy for them.
Given that it's a genuine need for every trader to consolidate and calculate their gains - they get to the website and become our customer - this is done with the help of Drift by providing 24x7 customer support and quick turn around
These are a couple of things that are working out for us. We are yet to hit that spot where we see tons of new users every day - but the growth has been consistent and satisfactory in terms of revenue and users. Long way to go!
This is great! I'm focusing on core principles at the moment, so the first two points are very relevant.
I'm building a consumer app with React Native - there are lots of gotchas using the tech. Happy to share my story. Feel free to connect!
One thing I would recommend is to get your product out there. Run through the release cycle. You'll learn a tonne about all the little things that actually take time e.g. getting screenshots and images ready for the App Store.
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I use fastlane but I never tried the screenshots. I had added text and all that on mine so I have sketch templates. I assume fastlane just does regular screenshots and that i'd still have to import them to sketch. So I haven't tried that feature yet.
But in terms of environments and painless deployment it's awesome.
My project is part SaaS, part mobile app. I'm building out the mobile app first, as it will help drive the SaaS.
@Davey just checked out your product. Awesome progress. I see that it's a podcasting mobile app, what is the SaaS side of it going to look like?
Will let podcast hosts create Easy Actions out of their episodes’ Call to Actions. Will also show podcast hosts full stats of each episode, a timeline of user reactions and $ tips, individual episode ratings, transcription. Will let them email or segment their listeners (opt-in from the app when subscribe), as well as see the super important engagement events like Episode bookmarked, Easy Action clicked/saved
Sounds powerful! Looking forward to seeing updates.
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Nice, I'm also using React Native! Is your app live? Do you mind sharing it so I can check it out? Currently I'm mid-MVP development. Hoping to have something for alpha testers by end of month.
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ASO/marketing seems to be a common theme to focus on. Keep us updated on what you learn!