How to Market and Promote your Games and Apps, Part 1/4

5) Integrating Push Notifications and/or a News Feed

iOS includes built in support for Apple’s Push Notifications service. As a matter of fact we have a tutorial right here. In versions of iOS previous to 5.0, notifications were very annoying and tended to interrupt the user in the middle of an activity.

Thankfully with iOS 5 that’s no longer the case, so including notifications is even better than before from a user standpoint.

Push Notifications can be incorporated into your app with very little work (specially if using a third party service) and the benefits far outweigh the effort. What this will enable you to do is have a doorway open to communicate with each and every user of your game or app (as long as they haven’t turned off notifications for your app in the device’s settings).

You can then notify them about anything you want (though don’t go sending random notifications just for fun, hehe). When you are about to release a new app, want to announce something, preview new features, etc. All of this can be done with Push Notifications.

There are great third party Push Notification providers such as Urban Airship. They have great plans, some even free, and easy to use APIs and web interfaces for handling devices and notifications.

I’ve used Urban Airship before and incorporating it into your apps is literally done in a matter of minutes. Give it a try :)

Alternatively, if you want to save a bit of money or have more control over the process, you can set up your own APNS server. We have a tutorial on how to to that here.

Another good way to get more communication to your users is adding a custom newsfeed into your application. Several developers responded to having created a simple XML or JSON file on their server to check for news or updates at launch. It’s a different approach with similar results.

The main difference between using a news feed and using notifications is that a notification can be received even when the app is not in use, but a user can dismiss it, or check it, and never see the info again.

A newsfeed, on the other hand, requires that the app be open, but what’s cool is that you can display the same info for a few days or weeks without worrying about it being dismissed by the user.

“All my apps have a news feed. This is HUGE to notify your current users when you launch a new game. This is the single biggest thing for me when I launch a new game. I can instantly notify anyone that plays one of my games using a popup upon launch.” – Anonymous

Of course no one says it’s not possible or recommended to use both at once. It will help give you the best of both worlds while making available to users all the information you need for them to receive.

Here are the stats regarding the usage of a newsfeed and notifications in apps (Green is “Yes” and Red is “No”):

As you can see, the majority of respondents don’t currently use push notifications or news feeds in their apps. However, it’s still a good idea that many respondents have seen some success with, so you should still consider using this technique in your own apps! :]

6) Adding High-Value Features

Another thing you can do in the development stage to set your app up for success is to add some high-value features into your app. Here are the top tips we received from our survey respondents:

• Usability and Beta Testing
• Fast and responsive apps, specially when ported from a desktop version
• Game Center features for games
• Good UI design and customization
• Outstanding User Experience (UX)
• or games, striking a good balance between challenge and fun
• Focusing on doing the basic things your app must do
• Support for sending feedback emails from within the app
• Multiplayer features in games
• Good use of touch and interactivity in your app
• Updating your apps and adding new features
• Connectivity with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• If necessary, cloud syncing between iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc. (tremendously easy now with iCloud)

These are many ways in which you can add that extra bit of polish to your app. In my view the two most important things you can do to enhance your app and improve customer satisfaction is deliver a reliable app and create a stylish and intuitive interface.

“Reliability is number one – that it doesn’t crash. This is my top priority – analyzing memory leaks, allocations, etc. If the app crashes – it is typically discarded. Next comes ease of use. I spend a lot of time reducing the number of ‘decisions’ a user has to make – the more ‘obvious’ and ‘intuitive’ – the higher the adoption.” – Sal Lucido

Your users will not see all the extra work you put into performance optimization, fixing memory leaks and profiling your app, but they will certainly expect it to function as quickly and flawlessly as possible.

A good UI is no longer an “extra” feature of your app but something that’s required. By good UI I don’t meant you have to go all out and create the next Flipboard or Pulse apps. That level of customization is good for their purpose but it’s also very time consuming and can require a lot of resources.

Look at Apple’s own Reminders, Mail, Messages and Photos apps. They all serve their purpose very well without going heads over heels in custom code and graphics. They focus on the task at hand and create a simple and elegant UI/UX.

“Appearance is very important. Every time we’ve improved app and icon appearance we’ve seen a marked increase in sales.” – Justine Pratt

Alternatively, there are affordable services that allow you to buy custom templates for your apps like, for example, App Design Vault.

My favorite iOS app of all time as far as UI and UX goes is Road Inc.. It is simply the most beautiful, exquisite and well crafted application I have ever used. Currently available for iPad I suggest you download it (if you don’t mind paying) and giving it a go, or just check out some videos and screenshots (which in all honesty don’t do it justice).

Road Inc. is the epitome of what good design is all about, and though you don’t have to go as far as that to make your app look good, it’s a great eye opener on how little features can add a lot of polish.

Besides a responsive, well built app with good design you can always add little things to help make your product more robust and enjoyable. Social networks are easy to integrate now a days, specially Twitter in iOS 5 (read our tutorial here).

If you are making a game, add Game Center (our tutorial can be found here) to it. I tend to purchase more games with it than those without it (I hope someone at EA is reading this). Leaderboards are a great way to let users share and interact with others while Achievements will keep them returning for more.

iCloud is here and it’s here to stay (our tutorial can be found here), with over 100 million registered users and improved support in the upcoming version of OS X, Mountain Lion, you can definitely make your customers happy by adding iCloud.

This is something fantastic from a user standpoint because I no longer have to worry about my Real Racing 2 saves being different on my iPhone or iPad, or having to worry about my documents and spreadsheets being outdated on either device.

Handy Tip: As a suggestion you can create custom frameworks and boilerplate code for much of this. If you want to incorporate Twitter, iCloud, Facebook or Game Center then why not create reusable classes for all your projects? You could save over 50% of work on future projects.

The rest of the items on the list are excellent suggestions that can certainly be applied if possible. The features, design and interactivity you create for a game is completely different than that of an app, but you can still apply the general concepts to both.

Development Phase Conclusion

So there you have it, six things to consider doing while you’re still in the development phase:

1. Generating Buzz Early
2. Creating a Teaser Trailer
3. Releasing an App Preview
4. Integrating Analytics APIs
5. Integrating Push Notifications and/or a News Feed
6. Adding High-Value Features

It’s worth mentioning that none of this is an obligation nor does it guarantee instant success. You should take the best of each item suggested and apply it to your app only when appropriate.

Also, there are no hard and fast rules in marketing or app development, so don’t be afraid to experiment and to think outside the box from time to time. Being spontaneous can greatly improve your app!