Big Head Games – an overview of iPhone development and publishing (Part Four)

Feb 24th 2009 at 09:00 by Dave Vout

Be first to comment

The one invaluable lesson we have learnt is nothing in this world sells without awareness, and boy, have we tried to get our titles noticed! From press releases to reviews to self promoting in forums... anything and everything.

When we launched Snooker it was timed with the Masters so the UK was on high alert for all things snooker. We immediately got it onto the key websites as a press release and that was enough to get it started. Of course, all apps appear in the various ‘new’ sections of charts and many websites have RSS and tickers for new releases and price drops, but nothing compares to getting it top 50 (the first time it shows up on the handset itself) and getting it featured by Apple.

Snooker to date hasn’t been featured but had enough early momentum to get it top 50 and then 25 and finally number 6 on the day of the Master’s final – job done!

Retro was another story. When it first went live we got it on most of the key websites as a press release and not long after as reviews and previews, but with no effect. We dropped the price and again no movement.

We tried a new tack and started work on a free 3 level version and released that. The ‘lite’ version had a small impact on the sales, but not enough. At this point we’d started to get reviews and comments and they were very good – 4 and 5 stars with great comments, but still the sales were below expectations.

We looked at other games, we looked at the process people go through in finding and buying a game (our mobile experiences came to good use). As with mobile most people when browsing for games only get to see a very small icon and the name – that’s all. And at that point they have to decide to click on it before they get any sales blurb.

Given the 15,000 apps out there the chances of that are very small so you have to do the most you can. We decided our icon didn’t say enough about the game so we tried two new icons – one was a very retro inspired vector line image, the second a very glossy 3D rendered bright in your face icon.

We also decided that maybe the name ‘Retro’ didn’t mean anything to anyone so we changed the name to ‘Retro – Cave Flyer’ in the hope that now it ‘did what it says on the can’.

Again no noticeable difference in sales, so we bit the bullet and dropped the price to the lowest price point and immediately there was a spike in sales around the world. It was just about enough to make the drop worthwhile given the difference in amount we were now getting per sale.

Finally we decide to drop the free version – why have a free one when the actual app is 99c/59p? We looked at all the other low price apps and most didn’t have one so we pulled it and yes again a small spike in sales.

All this effort meant nothing compared to the day we got the call from Apple – we were to be featured in two weeks. The gods were looking down on us that day.

The game became featured as one of the large lozenge shaped banners I the middle of the page. The very next day sales had an extra zero on the end and the game was climbing up the charts anywhere it was featured. This got the game in top 100 and it’s still going.

The next boost came in the US when it moved from the lozenge to the ‘Staff Picks’ section and this has really had a big impact on sales and chart position, significantly more than the lozenge banner.

Check back tomorrow for the fifth and final part of the Big Head Games iPhone overview