A Summer App Celebration!

Schools out for the summer!

Now how can we entice you to download our apps?

As makers of educational games, we've come to expect slower overall app sales and fewer spikes resulting from schools who take advantage of Apple's volume purchase program.

Typically, the app dog days languish well into July, like a long summer's nap.

But the arrival of August breathes new life into the educational category as the Back to School buzz rises, reaching a crescendo louder than the song of the 17 year cicadas, in a September app downloading frenzy.

Ahhhhh - summer.

Let's celebrate now.

We've got something special planned for you next week...

See you Friday, June 28th.

WARNING - App Marketing Misstep

We've been feeling good about our educational app, Mystery Math Town, since we launched the game in April.

The app debuted as our best yet, easily eclipsing the previous successes of our Marble Math and Alien Buddies apps. Mystery Math Town was picked by Apple as a featured iPad Education New and Noteworthy selection and it even spent some time on the front page of the iPad App Store. We also received an outpouring of critical praise and user feedback, telling us how much people enjoy playing the game. But amongst the positive buzz and back-patting, there was a small but very vocal group of iPhone users who felt slighted - because we'd released Mystery Math Town for iPad only.

When we next gathered around our developers round table to plot our app updates, we quickly decided to fast track development of an iPhone version of Mystery Math Town. It seemed like a no-brainer to create a separate iPhone app for a number of reasons:

1. It would satisfy a clear market need - we knew users wanted the app for iPhone.
2. It would allow us to test the performance of an iPhone app in the App Store. To this point, our apps have all been universal (iPad and iPhone) or iPad-only. Apple only gives you combined sales in reports so there is no clear way to separate iPad and iPhone sales for universal apps.
3. We already had a successful marketing campaign in place for the iPad launch and we could repurpose some of those materials for iPhone.
4. People already love the iPad game!

It was an easy decision. We immediately defined the work we needed to do, which mainly required a re-thinking of the UI to take advantage of the phone screen real estate at different sizes. Once we settled on the adjustments to ensure a good user experience on the phone, it took about 70 hours in total design and programming time to make the changes.

We released Mystery Math Town for iPhone last week on Wednesday June 3rd for $1.99.

To date it has been downloaded 38 times, selling an average of 5 apps/day and earning a whopping $40.89 in total sales. That doesn't even cover a single hour of our development time.

Let me be clear, we never expected to repeat the success of releasing a brand new app. We also know that iPhone sales are significantly lower than iPad sales in the education space.

Sure, the timing isn't great. It's the end of the school year and there isn't exactly a frenzy of educational app purchases in June...or July for that matter.

We've worked hard to cultivate our Artgig Apps brand and we have a pretty loyal following of educators, parents and app reviewers who know we produce quality games. Our family of apps consistently rank in the Top 5% of all iPad apps in the App Store Education category.

I would think on the strength of the family alone, we'd be selling more than 5 apps a day.

But in order for the concept of App Store cross promotion to work, people have to see that your apps are related.

And, in the case of Mystery Math Town for iPhone, we've learned a very hard lesson.

Apple does NOT consider Mystery Math Town for iPhone to be related to any of our family of apps, because we have not produced any other iPhone-only apps. Actually, that's not entirely true. If you're looking at Mystery Math Town for iPhone in the App Store, and you search under "Related," you'll find exactly what you'd expect - more apps, like Marble Math, that you can play on your iPhone by the same developer (us!).

But our primary challenge with a new release isn't helping users to find other apps we've produced. The big challenge is helping users to find the new release (i.e. Mystery Math Town for iPhone).

In the App Store ecosystem not all family members are so sunny when speaking of their relatives. In fact, some of them flat out refuse to say a single word about the family.

If you're looking at the Marble Math App Store listing on your phone, and you say to yourself, "let me see what else these brilliant developers have produced" and you naturally select "Related" to peruse the other apps you might consider purchasing, Apple has apparently made the decision to exclude Mystery Math Town for iPhone, because it is an iPhone-only app, and you were looking at a universal app, so that must be all you are interested in.

Ouch.

That's where we stumbled and sprained our app marketing muscles.

It's pretty incredible to me that in the vast sea of the App Store, Apple is actively squashing the idea of cross promotion.

But there you have it.
The screenshots do not lie.

If you're considering developing an iPhone-only app - you might want to think twice.
Unless you're prepared to produce iPhone-only versions of your other apps, you'll miss out on one of the few opportunities available for app cross promotion.

This PSA is brought to you by Artgig Apps.

Mystery Math Town for iPhone is Available Today!

iPhone users spoke and we listened!

We’re pleased to announce the release of our hit educational app, Mystery Math Town, as a separate version designed for iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can download Mystery Math Town for iPhone today on the App Store at an introductory price of only $1.99.

It’s the perfect game to avoid the dreaded summer brain drain!

Mystery Math Town for iPhone

Mystery Math Town for iPhone Arrives Next Week!

Yes, all you iPhone and iPod Touch users - we heard you.

Mystery Math for iPhone Available June 5th

Mystery Math Town for iPhone Spotted!

Don't worry, the numbers are not reversed in the game!

I know, we've been unusually quiet since launching our Mystery Math Town app over a month ago. Let me just say, the overwhelming response from thousands of iPad users all over the world has been fantastic. And we thank you for downloading the game.

There is however a segment of the iOS market who is feeling somewhat neglected - iPhone users we've heard your cries and for that, we apologize.

Today, I'm breaking the silence to offer you a sneak peek at something we made just for you. This picture was snapped last week at Artgig headquarters.

To all the iPhone and iPod touch users asking us when Mystery Math Town will be available for you, we finally have an answer...

Real soon.

Building a House in Mystery Math Town [video]

We are absolutely thrilled by the fantastic response to our New and Noteworthy Mystery Math Town app, and we’d like to take this moment to thank you for your support.

As a small token of gratitude, we thought you might appreciate this exclusive behind the scenes developer video, demonstrating our custom house editor.

We built the editor to make it easy for our designers to construct houses and arrange rooms, in Mystery Math Town. The simple drag and drop interface allows for quick and easy testing of configurations using art we created for doors, windows and passages, and objects like firefly jars, numbers and other goodies.

As one reviewer put it, "no sane architect would actually design a floor plan that appears in any of these houses, but that's part of the fun!"

Indeed.

Thanks for playing Mystery Math Town.

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.