Designing Quality Apps

Let me start that I in no way claim to make quality apps with respect to famous games like Angry Birds. I do however consider my apps to be successful and growing in success.

Let's go into a little background story.

In September of 2012, I decided that I wanted to use my computer programming experience to make an app for my students to use that would both educate and engage. I proceeded to use an app called Codea, which allows the user to write apps from your iPad. I went through a general designing phase of about 3 months. At the end of December I thought I was ready to develop the app and put it out on the market. I learned very quickly that I had to do a lot more to make the app be successful, including testing nearly everything a person would try to do. The app was officially published near the end of January. By the end of the school year, my app had over 2000 downloads.

I spent the summer moving, working, and developing my next math app (still in production). I then decided that my main market for my app would be schools, so I spent a lot of time getting the app's name out in mainstream flow as best as I could. In August I was around 2,500 downloads. It is now October and I have doubled that number, surpassing an unexpected 5,000 downloads.

What changed?

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1: Schools started looking for new apps to use, which would help in getting the app noticed.

2: I spent hours finding websites that review apps and requested that my app be reviewed. Since that time, I have had 2 new app reviews and was told of another that will be posted in November.

3: I worked on reimaging the app. Now I don't think this has had a big influence yet, but I am predicting this will help a lot. My apps, now have a classy looking logo brand, looks professional, so people will be more likely to take it seriously.

4: I will be attending a conference to promote the app in which I have new business cards to pass out that you can scan through a QR scanner and it will take you immediately to the apple store where my app is located.

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5: An exciting portion was that New York City Department of Education listed my app as an app available for schools to use for math.

It is sort of funny to think about the fact that I spent so much time making this app for my students and for others to use. This app features a lot of things that students can practice and since it was designed by a teacher, it contains some features that teachers would appreciate having. Among the countless hours of the app, I thought that this app would naturally get found, noticed, and used, but it took many additional hours of time to market the app and get the name out there.


In short, if you are a one person team designing an app, be aware the production of the app doesn't stop at the publishing, you must also take a lot of time to market your app and get it noticed. When I first searched WileD Math, only my facebook page would show up. Now days,  my app is referenced on the first 3 pages of google at least 10 different times, whether from reviews, facebook, twitter or other sites.

Stay Effective!