Screenshot Designer for App Developers
I have a few few apps on the iOS App Store (all doing ok, not that successful, but not terrible either). Anyway, for each app I had to design screenshots when I first published the apps on the app store, and then each time when I released bigger updates...).
I mostly used online services for this, which were kind of ok but not amazing (bit clunky, limited customisation, etc). So I wonder if there's scope for a better screenshot design / mgmt tool?
Just curious what other app developers think.
Would love to hear your thoughts before putting a lot of time and effort into it. If you think there's scope, are there any particular features that are missing from services that you've used in the past?
Thanks a lot!
@richardchu is creating a screen shot creator.
There is also an open source code to create your own https://www.producthunt.com/posts/launchkit-open-source
@ShimonMazor Thanks for the mention!
@mn1 I do indeed have a service like this called Screenshot Creator. Feel free to check it out if you'd like, and let me know what you think.
From my experience in running it, however, I would probably advise you to choose a different market. Screenshot generation is very competitive and there are a lot of these services out there (many of them free or have a free tier). Also, app developers tend to have a low tolerance for paying for stuff (from my experience), so you'd be unlikely to make very much money from it.
Hi. Thanks. I tend to agree from what I've seen so far, although it's a bit weird. I recently launched my screenshot generator (https://app9.io) and started a tiny adwords campaign. Literally the first person to click through to the landing page signed up, created a few screenshots and purchased an annual plan... so i was pretty excited that day and thought that was a good piece of validation, although it's been a lot slower since then...
I've since come across more competitors, so you're right it's quite a competitive space, although most products are quite limited (both free & paid). I'm sort of almost done releasing a new version which is a lot more flexible (rotations, multiple devices per screenshot, background images spanning multiple screens, templates, etc), so let's see how that goes.
But you're probably right and it's going to be tough to monetize sufficiently...
Btw, I like your gallery (https://screenshotcreator.com/inspire)... those kind of designs you can't do with yours though, can you?
txs
Nice product! You have a very professional-looking landing page.
I think in this market it's tempting to try to build your way to success, but it probably won't work like that. If you think about it, who is actually your ideal customer? Big companies are likely to have their own designers and enough resources not to depend on you. And small indie developers won't have the money and are likely reluctant to pay for such a product -- they'll just make the screenshots themselves. It's possible there's a middle ground... or maybe most companies would fall in one of these two buckets.
It's also hard to sell a subscription business on top of this. I noticed pretty high churn for my Pro plan -- I think most people want a product like this just for a few screenshots for an app they're making and don't necessarily want to be paying a continuous monthly fee, unless maybe they're an agency that just churns out mobile apps all the time.
And yeah, you're right that some of the designs in my Screenshot Inspiration gallery can't be created solely in Screenshot Creator without some editing afterwards (e.g. the zoom in on certain components). It's a pretty deep rabbit hole for the amount of features you can build so that people can make screenshots like those :)
Anyway, just want to give you my 2 cents so you can analyze your options and (possibly) not spend as much time as I did on something that might not work out. But if you're committed, you'll need to have a well-defined strategy, and I think some of the points above might help you in nailing a good target customer + solid pricing and distribution strategies.
I tend to use the combo of Figma + Placeit for my app mockups for the app store. Its not the most optimized (cropping can be an issue sometimes) but it works for the most part and I'm honestly too lazy to change it.