Can a free version boost sales of a paid iPhone Applications in AppStore?

Many iPhone publishers found that a dual release of a free lite version and a paid pro version of an iPhone app pays off.

Our own experiment...

We wanted to see if the free/pro approach works and have released a location sharing utility called Pinpoint for the iPhone. The Pro version of Pinpoint was released 3 weeks ago with expected download figures. The app was prices at US$2.99 and had reached approximately 150 downloads in 3 weeks.

Our experiment was constructed to see whether a free Lite version of Pinpoint could increase the sales figure of the paid Pro version. We also wanted to see whether we could boost the downloads of the paid app to get it into one of the Apple top lists. So we lined up three things

1. new free lite version

2. drop the price one tier (from US$2.99 to US$1.99)

3. Show messages on our existing apps to our existing user base

As @quamen pointed out it would be not trivial to see the impact of the free app because we have changed 3 variables at the same time. So, to isolate the the impact of the free app we have experimented with prices drop (2) and promotion messages (3) before and know what the impact of each of those changes is. So we should be fine to filter out the impact of the free app release (1).

after 5 hours...

Pinpoint Lite was approved by Apple on the 11th of August and reached 100 downloads within the first 5 hours. For tracking and user notification about the newly released app we are using shoutmob.com.

after 12 hours...

Over the last 12 hrs people have downloaded Pinpoint Lite more than 300 times.

Downloads in Pinpoint Pro have more than doubled. Knowing the impact of the price drop and promotion messages we can say that the impact of the free app alone was approximately 100% increase in paid app downloads.

So far we can confirm the boost and the effectiveness of shoutmob user notifications.

after 2 days...

I did not expect that the Lite version would be so popular. It made it in less than two day in the AppStore to #30 in Australia under Free Navigation apps and #46 in the US. That's a nice side effect but was not goal of the experiment.

The Lite version was downloaded 630 times so far.

So, how is the Pro version going after 2 day?

The conversion rate is lower than we thought. We are converting less then 10

% of the Lite users to upgrade to the Pro version. The price drop should start wearing off by now and all the downloads from now onwards come from Lite to Pro upgraders.

For the Pro version we can see the same download figures as in the first 3 days in the AppStore. The graph shows the downloads in the last week for the paid app. The impact of the price -drop and Lite version release are quite obvious.

[UPDATE]

after 3 days...

The Lite version is still on the "new Releases" page in the AppStore. Downloads decreased slightly compared to yesterday. I would expect that once we get on page 2 that downloads will decrease by 50% - lets see.

Pinpoint Lite ranks #42 in US and #28 in Australian free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was downloaded 1000 times within three days with approx 340 new users a day.

The Pro version is almost unchanged. Even the price-drop should have worn off by now we see similar download numbers as in the previous two days.

The paid app is still going OK and I suspect that most downloads come from people

upgrading from Lite to Pro. Here are some graphs based on

shoutmob realtime analytics.

The total usage per day which trends upwards.

[UPDATE 2]

after 4 days...

The Lite version is no longer on the "new Releases" page in the AppStore. As expected, the number of new has decreased.

Pinpoint Lite ranks #43 in US (-1) and #27 in Australian (+1) free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was installed 1300 times within four days. With 280 new users on day 4 which is 80% compared to the day before .

The Pro version the same user rate as the day before.

From here it will be really hard to stay in the top 100 with the free version.

More downloads than installs

One interesting fact is that the Apple reports show higher numbers than shoutmob. Where Apple reports showed 480 downloads shoutmob showed 350 users. So some 130 users have downloaded the free app but never used it. While Apple's report shows download numbers shoutmob shows the number of app that have been used. So there seem to be people who download free apps but do not use it. Looking at my own app download behaviour I sometimes download in iTunes but may take another day before I synchronise with the iPhone. Maybe that is what other people do too.

[UPDATE 3]

after 5 days...

Pinpoint Lite ranks #44 in US (-1) and #32 in Australian (-5) free navigation apps.

Pinpoint Lite was installed approx 1500 times within five days. With 260 new users on day 5 which is 92% compared to the day before .

The Pro version has now increased the number of users by 33% compared to the previous day.

Shoutmob goes ahead!

In March the management team at jTribe was away to plan our future activities. The session was pretty much 3 guys away and drinking wine in the country side.

One of the things we decided at jTribe was that we want to progress with shoutmob. Shoutmob is our offering for developers to support any mobile app with service-side building blocks and services like high-score persistence, push-messages to the app and app error submission back to the developer.

jTribe is currenly beta testing heavily and we use shoutmob in all our apps for iPhone and Android. I love it and cannot wait to open it up to the public soon.

Tools for iPhone Campaigns

This week I really, really appreciated some of the tools we developed in the last 2 month to support our iPhone apps. These server-side tools helped me so much with this week's mission:

This Week's Mission:

The bushfires in Victoria / Australia made me think what we could do to help. We decided to donated all money made with the sales of our iPhone apps to charity. 

This was a great non-commercial driver to convince people to buy our apps . I have to say I am much more motivated to use marketing tactics when it is for a good cause.

What I wanted 

We have in average 500 daily users using our paid app GeoUpdater for iPhone and 1000 daily users using our free app Firepin Trip Tracker. It would be great to tell all these users about our mission.

Here are some key functions I used for marketing of the iPhone app

1. Sending push messages to users via our paid apps to let them know that they can donate money to the red cross in Australia.
   
2. Sending messages to user via our free apps to ask them to buy our paid app.
3. Tracking in realtime how many people have actually bought the app so I can donate every night the right amount.
4. Tracking in realtime how many people are actually using the app.

How can I get what I want?

Unfortunately, Apple does not provide realtime download data or even usage analytics, not to mention push messages. The trend reports are 10 hrs delayed. Not very useful for a short-term campaign. 

Fortunately, jTribe did build a server-side infrastructure that we already use for all our iPhone and Android apps. These services can send information from the apps to a central server and vice versa. All these tools and services will soon be available to other iPhone, Android and S60 developers via ShoutMob 

So, how did the Campaign go?

Actually, the campaign is still going and it is going OK.  So far we raised around $400 in 4 days from one app.

The Tools I used

They key tool was our push message tool. 

The Firepin and GeoUpdater iPhone apps display a message to the users each time they are using the app. The message comes directly from our server and is displayed in a very subtle and non-intrusive manner. The push message mechanism gives us all analytical information about number of unique users and usage. This is similar to what the ad networks like admob are doing but with the difference that we are in complete control of what gets displayed to the users.

The push messages can be controlled from a web page and each app can have a different message. Actually, we can send different messages based on device type, app version or language. 

So I have configured a message for the Firepin app (our free GPS tracker) to tell users about our campaign and our other iPhone app (Latitude) that raises money for charity.

Then I configured a message for Latitude (paid app that raises money) to tell people that they can donate money at the red cross website. 

I can now check in realtime how the campaign is going. Let me do it right now... nice, just raised another $10 since I started writing this blog. 

Other Thing to consider in a Mini-Campaign

1. I updated the text in the AppStore to let "new" buyers know that we will donate the money. 
2. I updated the picture with a slogan that about our mission. Honestly, I think that did not attract more people. I even think it might have turned some people off. Not sure whether I would do that again. 
3. I twittered and blogged about it

So, did it work?

Yes, yes, yes. We did make it to #4 of paid apps in the Navigation category in Australia and #16 in US. I cannot describe how happy I am to have the shoutmob tools available to use. Currently, the shoutmob tools are still in private beta (actually, we use it only internally at jTribe) but we work hard to make them available to the public soon.

ShoutMob Beta now open for iPhone and Android developers

We have been busy creating a new service for iPhone developers and Android developers. The Beta of ShoutMob has launched yesterday. iPhone and Android app developers can sign up now and receive a $20 early sign-up credit. The Beta is limited and will be closing as soon as we got enough beta developers - so be quick. 

We tried to think about a way to reward early adopters who sign up now. As a result developers signing up for ShoutMob Beta will receive two things:

1. $20 a credit so they can get started as soon as shoutmob goes public

2. $5 referral credit, so they get rewarded for spreading the word

We hope that early adopters will get enough credits to be able to use ShoutMob for free for a long, long time.