The Art of the App Store: The Business of Apple Development

MAKING DECISIONS BASED ON RESEARCH

If you're going to take the time and money to develop an app, you may as well make informed decisions to allow it the best chance to succeed. This section examines how to find key metrics that are available both in the App Store and via online resources, and then collecting and interpreting the data.

Although the statistics quoted earlier in this chapter provide a good overview, they are not anywhere close to being all-inclusive. Some meanings can be derived, however. So, before you get started with your research, here is a bit of analysis for the statistics presented earlier, as well as general things you can learn from them. Take these as rough guidelines, and feel free to be the exception to any of them:

• If you're doing a game, you will likely be charging the consumer less than any other type of app (free to $0.99 is the norm).
• iPad apps have a different price point, with users paying roughly 250 percent more per app than a paid iPhone app. Considering the ease with which a developer can port an app to iPad, it is usually worth the cost to deliver to both platforms.
• Price points of $3.99, $6.99, and $8.99 encompass a lower percentage of apps. So, if your app (after competitive research) can fit into one of these price points, it might help it stand out slightly easier. (“Archetype” was initially priced at $2.99.)
• Being in the top 100 to 200 apps gets an app on many more web lists, so aim for that.
• When doing competitive research on successful ...