Being Amazon's Free App of the Day: The Results

On Monday, August 27th, 2012, Word Crank Elite was the Free App of the Day in the Amazon App Store.  We were very excited about being given the opportunity and promised to share the results (find out how this opportunity came about, here).  So overall, we feel that the promotion was a success.  We were able to increase our game's visibility in the App Store and received some valuable feedback.

 

Here are a few statistics from the past week which help highlight the impact on our traffic:

Aug. 27 - Sep. 2 Visits: 50,677 Unique Visitors: 14,201 Pageviews: 38,010 Pages / Visit: 0.75 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:11:17

Aug. 19 - Aug. 26 Visits: 1,508 Unique Visitors: 251 Pageviews: 1,169 Pages / Visit: 0.78 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:15:16

Based on the above table you can see that we had a huge influx of traffic; an increase of over 33x. We also saw an increase in the number of downloads of the free version of Word Crank, in the other app stores, Google Play and iOS.

What was unexpected to us was the number of negative comments related to the use of OpenFeint in the game.  On Google Play we have 4.4 stars, but on Amazon with so many people complaining about the use of OpenFeint we have only 2 stars.  That is unfortunate as we thought that OpenFeint was allowing users the ability to compete with friends and gain achievements.  From what we have been able to find online, there really is no basis for such negativity.  However, as OpenFeint was recently bought by GREE we were already considering alternative scoring solutions.

So what were our major takeaways?

• we should allow users the ability to choose which game level they wanted to start with, 3, 4, or 5 letter words (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should start the difficulty level at "Bonkers" (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should move away from use of OpenFeint (TBD)

We will share some additional statistics within the next few weeks, as the impact of these types of promotions can have lasting effects.

Becoming Amazon's Free App of the Day

Word Crank Elite is Amazon's Free App of the Day for Monday, August 27th, 2012! So how did this come about?  First, we made an awesome game;-), next we received an email from Amazon:

"We noticed your app Word Crank Elite v 1.3.0 and think it is an interesting candidate for our Free App of the Day promotion."

Ok great, so what happens next?  We agreed to the terms as stated in the email and then we waited. We eventually heard from someone on the Free App of the Day (FAOTD) Team, and were notified that our application had passed all testing; however, they wanted us to reconsider how we were integrated with OpenFeint.

Apparently, other apps had received 1-star ratings by having the OpenFeint pop-up as soon as the application was loaded.  In order to work around, this we removed the default configuration and allowed users to choose if they wanted to use OpenFeint when they click the "SCORES" button.  Once that was done, we resubmitted the new version of the application and waited again.

This past Friday we received notice that our game would be featured on Monday, August 27th.  After which I personally ran through my house and kissed everyone!  We are very excited to have been given this opportunity and will report on the results in another week. So stay tuned!

Adding GameFeed to your OpenFeint Enabled Cocos2d App

In order for us to add the new GameFeed feature of OpenFeint to our Word Crank app on iOS we needed to upgrade to the latest version of OpenFeint, version 2.12.5.  After a few issues with linking errors we were finally running with the latest and greatest that OpenFeint has to offer. Complete instructions for upgrading are included here.

Next we wanted to include the GameFeed component, but only on the home screen.  We used a similar approach to how we included AdMob in the free version.  Some code snippets are included below to help others.

 

[sourcecode language="objc"]
-(id) init
{
if ( (self=[super init]) ) {

CGSize s = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize];

controller = [[RootViewController alloc] init];
controller.view.frame = CGRectMake(0,0,s.width,s.height);

gameFeed = [OFGameFeedView gameFeedView];

[controller.view addSubview:gameFeed];
[[[CCDirector sharedDirector] openGLView]addSubview : controller.view];
}

return self;
}

- (void) dealloc
{
[controller.view removeFromSuperview];
[controller release];

[super dealloc];
}
[/sourcecode]

Do you know a different way to do it? Leave a comment below.

Sneak Peek: Word Crank 1.3 Upcoming Release

Our upcoming release of Word Crank has a slick new home screen and logo.  It also includes the new Game Feed from OpenFeint which allows users to stay up-to-date with what other Word Crank players are doing in the game!

Check out the images below:

[gallery]

 

This Week @Sivart Tech: November 18, 2011

So this week we have been busy working on our December release of Word Crank.  This release will include some exciting new features.

First, we are implementing the Game Feed feature that is new to OpenFeint, which will allow users to find out more about what the other users of the game are doing.  This will include changing their profile pictures to conquering one of the many levels.  We hope that this will be a fun way to become more engaged with our game.

Next, we have several graphics changes that we hope will give the game more appeal and make it more polished.  And with any new build that we work on, performance improvements and bug fixes are the standard.

Also we are excited that our Android downloads are continuing at a steady rate, adding more than 1,000 new downloads over the past week!

Mobile Game Marketing: The Power of Word-of-Mouth

When marketing your mobile game don't underestimate the power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing.  Well, what is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?  It has been described this way by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association:

"The act of consumers providing information to other consumers...It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications."

What can that mean for you and your business?  Well, basically you need to make a great product and provide tools to make it easier for your customers to share how wonderful your game/application is with others.  You may think that this form of marketing is free, but that is not necessarily the case.  You need to provide infrastructure that makes this type of consumer-to-consumer marketing successful and it does require lots of time to keep up with the different front-facing tools that you choose to implement.

In marketing our first game, Word Crank, we have used the following tools to facilitate the Word-of-Mouth process.

Tools

• Facebook Fan Page


• Twitter Account


• Blog with sharing abilities


• YouTube Channel


• Reddit Account


• OpenFeint integration in the game


• Email

Making use of these various tools takes time, as you have to constantly make posts and send updates.  But more importantly you allow your customers the opportunity to provide feedback and then easily share the information that they have received with others.  So far we are happy with this area of our Marketing endeavors.  However, it's challenging to say for sure quantitatively what the impact has been up to this point.