Ready for Apple approval

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Well it’s taken about 4 months longer than initially anticipated, but we have finally finished the app. It’s inevitable that further changes will be made once it’s been launched on the AppStore, but we’re happy with this first release.

The developers have been informed and are gearing up to submit the app to Apple within the next few days. The app will give users the ability to create customised dock’s for their own wallpapers to brighten up the somewhat dull standard dock. It’ll be priced at 69p to start off with and the price may fluctuate depending on consumer demand.

We’re all very excited to get this into the marketplace and see how it goes. The first issue is to create an awareness of the product and this will pick up over the next few days.

Wish us luck and thanks for your support x

Almost there…

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Sorry for the radio silence, but I am pleased to bring a development update!

After long discussions and some issues with our developer over fees, we have now agreed to resolve some of the app teething problems – such as app stability, reloading and more. Thankfully I am pleased to report that many of these issues either have or are in the process of being overcome, and the ball is now largely in our court to develop the graphics. This might cause a problem as none of us are particularly artistically gifted – perhaps with the exception of Philip, so this is set to be a challenging period.

Once a design for the app splash screen and background has been designed, we plan to submit the app to Apple for approval and … submission ot the app store!!!

As a sneak peak, this app isn’t a game and nor is it strictly a utility. It will provide your home screen with a bit more colour and customisation. Fingers crosed that tthis is a success (or at least not a total failure).

Further update soon.

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App development update: Frustrating

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After being buoyed with the (relative) success of Tess’s video, we’ve been brought back down to earth with the development of our app.

The first issue we have is that the developer is based in India and whilst there are many advantages, such as being cheaper, more efficient and arguably technically better, there are also some downsides. On a practical level the timing just doesn’t make it easy to communicate. We have sent many requests and received an equal amount for a Skype meeting, unfortunately with the time zone difference and with existing job commitments, this is proving almost impossible. This is resulting in the app being developed completely wrongly:

  • The app isn’t being developed exactly as we wanted – this is partly due to the original brief not being detailed enough, but more communication could solve this.
  • There is a definite language barrier and some of our requests are being interpreted incorrectly, despite further explanation
  • Costs seem to be racking up far quicker than we had anticipated or budgeted for.

    • All of this is resulting in a great amount of doubt over whether we can be successful with our app. What started out as a bit of fun between friends is rapidly turning into a substantial investment. This and further doubt of whether our app idea will even be successful – assuming we can generate enough market interest – is proving quite worrying.

    Nevertheless we are still upbeat as the second week of development is commencing and to be honest, there is little point being anything other than positive.

    We look forward to providing another update later in the week, where hopefully some of these “teething” problems have been overcome!

    Tess Video: Our first attempt at marketing

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    Step 1: Marketing

    Coming up with an app idea is a great start, but we wanted to see whether we could generate enough interest. So after trawling through past family videos, we found one of our dog when we were playing table tennis in the summer, which we thought might be suitable. After 2 days since being posted on YouTube, Tess has generated 70,000+ views, been posted on many blogs (not to mention trending on Twitter!) and we have received many approaches to include our video on international news websites. A good start and it certainly went FAR FAR better than we had ever imagined…

    Tess is a lovable labrador, although she actually looks quite ginger compared to most. She’s a bit crazy and we plan to upload quite a few more videos on the back of the (potentially short-lived) success of her first video. This also could be a potential way to promote our app through the video and we are devising a strategy at the moment:

    1. Try and keep momentum going with the first Tess video.
    2. Upload others in the coming days and promote those through the first video.
    3. Through the interest generated, redirect viewers to this blog.
    None of us are internet marketers, nor do we have any experience in social media beyond social Facebook use, so this is all new to us. We have only just started working out what hash tags actually do on Twitter. Anyway, the initial signs are positive and we want to keep the momentum whilst it lasts.
    In the meantime we have just commissioned our first app to be developed and have so far incurred 10 hours worth of costs – with apparently very little evidence of what we have paid for(!). Again, I should just clarify that we do not have any app development experience so this is our first venture into market.
    Please subscribe to our blog and if nothing else, enjoy the video posts from Tess! :)

    First app under development…

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    At long last I have finally hired a developer and our app is being developed as I write this – or at least I am being billed for it anyway!

    Choosing a developer took a bit longer than anticipated as I wanted to make sure he completely understood the brief and there were many iterations and sketches before committing. The process so far has been quite straight forward, almost a bit too straight forward actually, so I’m just waiting for something to go wrong!

    There were also some points I wanted clarified from the developer upfront and although some of these might seem cautious or unnecessary, I would advise anybody thinking of going down this route to do the same:

    1. Estimated time for completion – Most developers prefer an hourly rate to a fixed price and when we choose the latter initially, the responses to our application were much weaker. Changing to an hourly rate got a much more positive response but our main concern was time over-run and the costs ending up much higher than we had budgeted for. Our developer was very helpful in this regard and even produced a pro-forma which detailed how many estimated hours it would take to complete each stage of the app.

    2. Ownership of the code – Again, it is reasonable to assume that you as the financier own the code by default however, this is often not the case. In the event that the app is hugely successful (highly unlikely in our case, but we are assigning a bit of hope value!), we wanted to ensure that we are the sole code owners. Thankfully our developer was more than happy to confirm this is the case and if you come across a develop who isn’t as open, I would recommend staying well clear.

    3. Submitting the app – Through watching various YouTube videos, looking at other blog websites and coupled with our lack of technical knowledge, the process of actually uploading the app to the AppStore appears quite confusing. Thankfully we got our developer to include this in his bid and at no extra cost (although that could easily be absorbed with a few extra hours work…!).

    I’ll upload a more detailed post in a couple of days and include some of the initial sketches and email exchanges, but for now we need to figure out the best way of marketing this app!

    Stay tuned for more info over the next week and please feel free to leave comments or suggestions below…

    Phil: Introduction

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    Hi!
    Welcome to Phil’s first post on my part of the Big App Challenge. Over the next few weeks, i’ll be updating you on our progress to research, develop, launch and market a new iPhone App. Hopefully it’ll provide a bit of an insight and advice for anyone else who’s thinking of doing the same thing, or anyone who’s just interested in finding out if we succeed or fail miserably! Any comments or info that anyone reading can give on the matter would be a great help too!

    On that note, i’ll give you a bit of a background about me…
    I DON’T have any experience in making iPhone Apps. I DON’T know anyone who’s ever made an iPhone App. I DO have a little bit of marketing experience and hopefully and understanding of what sort of Apps are successful… and some idea of how to market them! I AM very interested/curious to see if this whole App business really is as easy as everyone seems to say it is… (I’m hoping so..!)

    My initial plan:

    1. I already have a couple of really cool ideas for Apps that I want to make (you’ll have to keep tuned-in to find out what they are!) The next step is to find a developer to turn that idea into a working App that fits in to my (fairly basic) budget.
    2. We’ll be using this site, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and targeting relevant App review websites to start building some hype before the release of the App.
    3. Release the App and watch the download figures flow in…

    Sounds simple? Please keep checking back in to see how we’re getting on and of course share your opinons by commenting on my blog!

    Thanks
    Phil

    Adam: App Update #1

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    After a week of attempting to draw/sketch my idea, I am now at a point where I can look to appoint a developer for my app. I am currently interviewing a few developers – will detail the website in a few weeks – and looking to make an instruction once I have been through all the applicants.

    Quite excited to get something off the ground and I’ll share my thoughts with how I came to this app idea shortly. I can disclose that this will not be in the “game” category of the app store, although I hope it will be quite fun to use!

    Adam

    Anita: Introduction

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    So when we started talking about the challenge, I knew it was pretty app-arent that this would be tough as none of us have any idea of how to make an app!

    I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of having a bit of fun with Philip and Adam so please stay tuned to our blog and hopefully you’ll share our journey. We’ll start updating this on a more regular basis once we have a better idea about the app and we’ll also be creating a YouTube page soon.

    Anita :)

    Adam: Introduction

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    Ok so I want to point out that none of us have any previous progamming experience and have never developed a piece of software in my life – this is a big learning curve.

    The idea is simple: design, launch, market and promote my app with Anita and Philip. We’re not looking to make a fortune (although that would be nice!) but we have often spoken about developing an app without doing anything about it. This should be a bit of fun and I look forward to sharing our ideas and progress with you all over the coming weeks.

    I hope to make this blog interesting to read, lighthearted and informative for anybody looking to starting out in the app game. With 500,000+ apps in the store, I think we’ll be grateful to break-even.

    Stay tuned…

    Adam