The Morning After (Submitting The App)

I only wish Lis could have been here to share the moment

Just look at the joy, the unmitigated elation, captured in this freeze frame from yesterday afternoon.

This is the moment we submitted Drive About: Number Neighborhood to Apple for review.

It is the pinnacle of months of work and a roller coaster ride of emotions.

The road to the App Store isn’t all fun and games.

There were days of uncertainty and doubt on this journey and lets just say our first foray into localizing for languages beyond English has been...educational.

But now that we’re at the end of the road, and we know that we’ve made an app we can be proud of - it really does feel good.

We can’t wait to share it with you.

Stay tuned for a release date (and coming soon for Android!)...

driveaboutnumbers.com

The App Video Teaser (Drive About: Number Neighborhood)

We're getting very close to launching our new kids app, Drive About: Number Neighborhood, and I'm pleased to share the app video teaser with you.

The app video is a key piece in your marketing plan and should be prominently displayed on your website - especially if you're developing paid apps for Apple's App Store. Currently, there is no way for users to preview your app in the App Store so the video becomes the only way to give potential users a look at your app in action. If you're publishing to Amazon and Google Play, you can include your video right in the app listing (just make sure you're not flashing iPhones and iPads in the video).

We've created teaser videos for each of our apps and made them available on our YouTube channel for your viewing pleasure.

There are lots of tools available for making the app video. We typically use Reflector for app screen capture and we use Flash for compositing because it fits our workflow. 

We almost used an outside production service for the Drive About video because we've been so busy working on the app, but fortunately the stars aligned and this video came together really quickly over a weekend.

We like to use the app music to drive the picture (no pun intended) and we key off the natural hit points for emphasis, and I think this is especially effective in our Drive About video in a sequence about midway through at 0:40 where we swap the backgrounds to show the "world."

But the best advice I can give you is to plan ahead and use the tools and strategy that get the job done.

If we did our job, the video should leave you wanting more.

And check out our tips on how to Make Your YouTube App Video a Marketing Machine - it's easily our most popular post.

Stay tuned for Drive About: Number Neighborhood!

A Winning App Icon

A big and beautiful Drive About: Number Neighborhood app icon

You voted and we listened.

It is with great pleasure that I now introduce the winner of the Drive About: Number Neighborhood app icon challenge.

You also told us we absolutely had to find a way to get some numbers into the art so we made some adjustments.

Drive icon at standard viewing sizes

We really like icon and we're grateful for your help.

Today, we're making some last minute tweaks before shipping the game for beta testing.

If all goes well, we'll release the app in about a month.

You can sign up for our newsletter and we'll keep you informed as we get closer to launch.

Making Kids Apps (And Setting a Launch Date) Is Hard Work

Kid testing can take your app in new and exciting directions

You may think that making “toddler” apps is easy. I mean, really how hard can it be to to whip up some shiny things to catch the eye and sprinkle some ABC’s and 123’s into the app so you can slap an educational label on it? And that’s exactly why the App Store Kids category is so crowded with apps for ages 5 and under. For some developers, the illusion of a low cost entry point to the educational market is a big draw. But quality is not something that is easily achieved and kids are smarter than you think. The competition for your toddlers attention is fierce and that is exactly why it is takes lots of effort to make an app that stands out from the pack.

We toil, we toss, we turn, we sweat, we fret, we struggle, we test, we test some more, we change things (important things that we love), we analyze and we test some more - in short, we work really, really hard on every app we make so that kids will get something they want to play and adults get something they don’t mind paying for. This takes lots of time.

We spent the last year developing Mystery Math Town and Mystery Math Museum (grades 1-3) and client apps like World’s Worst Pet and Door 24 (grades 4-8) but for our next app we wanted to get back to our Alien Buddies roots and create something for preschoolers. Jim and I both have little kids at home (3 and 4 years old) and we wanted to make something for them. We also wanted to develop an app that could be localized for play in different parts of the world... and we wanted kids to be able to play it on tablets and phones for iOS and Android. We settled on a driving game where the child can explore a variety of landscapes in different vehicles and encounter early learning math activities along their journey. We started making Drive About: Number Neighborhood in December 2013.

There were lots of Skype meetings with each of us working from home during our winter snow days to decide on the app specifications and Lis went to work on look and feel. We set a target launch date of late April.

Our testing process begins with a pretty close internal circle until we approve the concept and then we work on things until we feel it’s in a good position to share with family and friends. We observe play and  record feedback and we go back to the drawing board to make improvements before the next round of testing. When we feel the app is ready to share with folks on the “outside”, we distribute it to our wider network of parents, teachers and kids. This Beta app review is a big moment in the development process and the user feedback we collect can shape the app in ways we never might have guessed. From this point we formulate a revised development plan to add the finishing touches for a final round of development.

(Cough) Remember our original April target date?

We just finished our internal family testing and it turns out kids don’t think like we do, so we’ve got work to do to make the game right for them. Today we’re aiming for an early June Drive About launch but who knows what direction the Beta observations will take us...

The only sure thing I can tell you is we’ll keep working until we get it right.

Shake-a-Phrase free on Amazon for the Holidays

Cozy up with your favorite Android this holiday and Shake-a-Phrase...

Download Shake-a-Phrase for free (normally $1.99) on Amazon

Back to School Stress Reliever (App Sale)!

Back to School.

If you're a teacher or parent and the very mention of these three words causes you to break out in a cold sweat, we're here to help.

This Friday, 8/23 we are giving away our featured App Store writing app, Shake-a-Phrase (normally $1.99), to promote giggle inducing grammar fun.

Ahhhh - don't you feel better already?

The silly sentence maker shakes up wacky scenarios and writing prompts in 5 different themes and includes a quiz mode for playful parts of speech practice.

Check out this teacher's review of the Android version of the app to see how Shake-a-Phrase can be used in your CCLS classroom.

Sure, you could probably use a nice weekend at a spa but what do you expect for free?

Download Shake-a-Phrase for FREE on the App Store - Friday, 8/23

The Case of the Mystery App Store Sales (With Exciting Pictures and Charts)

A funny thing happened amidst all the hoopla surrounding the big debut of our New & Noteworthy Mystery Math Town app.

One of our other math apps, Marble Math Junior, made a stealthy run up the Education charts, and is currently jostling for position in the Top 75 (up from 250).

We actually noticed the increased sales in late March just before we released Mystery Math Town on April 3rd, but couldn't see a direct reason for it, and well, I suppose we can also be accused of showering the new 'baby' with all of our attention, and neglecting poor Junior, so we didn't exactly launch a full investigation.

Marble Math Jr Rank Trending 3/24 to 4/16

Normally, when sales jump over 60%, we can see a big Education purchase, or we can point to a promotion or feature, but the only event I could see as a launching pad for Marble Math Junior was the Common Sense Media ON for Learning Award, which would make sense IF the 'older' Marble Math also saw a sales increase, since they both received the Award on the same day. We did see a Marble Math spike at the same time Junior took off, but Marble Math immediately dropped, while Junior just kept climbing.

The mystery of your app sales in the App Store can be tough to solve. Apple only provides aggregate buckets of information - we can see daily totals for downloads, gifts, promo codes used, returns, and educational purchases. That's it.

We use tools like appFigures and App Annie to collect our sales and ranking data from Apple and report back to us with colorful graphs and charts. They also report when apps are Featured in the App Store...sometimes. Unfortunately, the Featured app reporting seems to be somewhat sketchy. Mystery Math Town, which has been a Featured New and Noteworthy selection since April 4th, and has a giant banner in the Education store right now, is not showing up in any of the reports as Featured. So it often takes a bit of good old fashioned detective work to discover why people are suddenly downloading your app.

So, I packed my pipe and put on my best sleuthing cap and set out to discover what favorable forces had propelled Marble Math Junior to its lofty position on the charts.

This is what I found:

Evidence suggests that on Thursday, March 28th, Apple added a new "Entertain Your Kids" banner to the showcase carousel on the home page of the App Store.

I present Exhibit A:

A deeper analysis reveals you'd likely discover Marble Math Junior as a featured Game if you were inclined to tap into the banner:

It appears that one week prior to the Mystery Math Town release, Apple did feature Marble Math Junior in a rotating feature, AND that our reporting tools did NOT report this fact.

Since the release of Mystery Math Town, Apple has added two more of these rotating Education banners, Apps for Preschool & Kindergarten and Apps for Elementary School, that expand into various categories and also feature, quite prominently I might add, you guessed it...Marble Math Junior.

So, what does this tell us?

A.)  Apple has a big heart.

B.)  Apple is trying to curate apps to offset the daunting prospect of searching the App Store.

C.)  Given the current App Store design and limited availability of real estate, the only decent display option for pop-up curated app collections is to put them in big splashy banners that rotate, so your potential customers have to be looking at the banners at the precise moment your collection is visible if you're to realize a single additional sale.

D.) Being an app developer requires the wearing of many hats if you hope to understand your business.

If it sounds like I'm complaining about Apple, I'm not - see A. and B.

Also see the mystery of our nonexistent Shake-a-Phrase sales on Android and Windows - that's a case to crack another time.

I'll be back with a report on Mystery Math Town when the dust settles.

Shake-a-Phrase Now Available On Android!

Tired of searching the universe to find quality educational apps for your Galaxy?

We're pleased to announce our hit iPhone/iPad app, Shake-a-Phrase, is now available on Android:

"This handy little app is perfect for writers, party games and quizzing kids"

– AppAdvice

Shake-a-Phrase offers multiple themes and 3 fun-filled ways to shake up language learning at home or in the classroom:

• SHAKE IT: creates a new silly sentence every time you shake - just tap for definitions. 
• STORY STARTER: shake up the beginning of a story and let your imagination take over. 
• QUIZ ME: test your skills with adjectives, verbs, nouns, prepositions and conjunctions.

So what are you waiting for?
Get shakin'!

Get Shake-a-Phrase on Google Play

Get Shake-a-Phrase on Amazon