App AppleInsider.ru: design, statistics, errors

Greetings, readers of Habra!

Last week we released the app AppleInsider.ru that first day was in the top-50 of Russian App Store and in this article I'd like to tell you a little about its creation, instrumentation used, and share statistics in the first days of its launch.
I hope that my story will seem boring and you will be able to glean something useful from described.

Let's start with the fact that as a developer was made by the company Unreal Mojo, and we think we made the right decision with choosing a company for application development.

It is worth to mention that in the beginning we tried to create an app "native" forces, bringing to it our readers on a voluntary basis, but the reality made its corrections, and eventually we agreed with one of the leading development studios for mobile applications.

At the initial stage we had a "TK" on two sheets of A4 describing the rough functionality of the application and Napoleon's plans for its development. And then there was the first problem, namely the communication between the designer (from the AppleInsider.ru), resource administration, involved in the design, and directly by the developer. We were offered quite a handy program for Mac OS X called "Kickoff". With a minimum number of functions, it has the necessary tools for such development.
It is possible to add tasks to ToDo's, files, notes. In addition, the application has a built-in chat, which in practice proved to be an indispensable tool in the discussion of a particular functionality. For example, here is a few screenshots of this program, so you can appreciate its minimalism and functionality.





On pages of Habra already written stories about the process of development, so in this area I will not go deep. Here we have it all as at all: high expectations increase in terms, search of compromises, and as a result the finished product in version 1.0. Unfortunately, as in most applications, not without mistakes, and today we prepare version 1.0.1, which will try to eliminate most of them.

Next, I would like to share some, I think, interesting moments, and talk about them a little more detail.

downloads Statistics

As you know, Apple is quite poor on the provide stats, and all we can say at this stage is that the day of launch, the app was downloaded about 3,000 times, and on the second day the number of downloads exceeded 7000.
A lot or a little is an open question. For reasons of competition, we can't post the review of our app on sites devoted to Apple. For them it would be a negative publicity, so we settled for the first stage of the launch only its own audience. At the time of starting the application site had about 20,000 unique visitors a day. Thus we can say that every third visitor of the website have downloaded our app.
In my opinion this is a good result, though certainly there is room to grow and something to strive for. We think through other options of promotion applications, and one of them was this post in the appropriate category Habra.

usage Statistics

To get a more advanced statistics, we've built Google Analytics. Thus we were able to get quite a large amount of data on using the app in an easy to read format.
In addition, in the present application, the collection of statistics from Yandex.Metric, but for unknown yet reasons, it does not work correctly.

Below I will give a few screenshots of the statistics (for the first two days after launch). For example:
The number of page views during one visit to the application more than 8 (average). For example on the web-version we have a figure in the region of 3 pages per unique visitor.
At the same time the app is used by about 150-250 people. Very interesting to see a qualitative leap call in the application immediately after receiving a push notification by the user. This information can be obtained through Google Analytics "real-time". However while it is still in beta.
The number of visits from Russia amounts to 78.3% Ukraine 10.5% of
App start iPhone 78,33% of cases, iPad of 10.92%, iPod touch 10,75% (it is worth to mention that the app is written for iPhone 3GS and above with iOS 4.x and above)
For two days the number of views news (or any other materials) amounted to 152 757. It is almost comparable with the number of hits on the web version of the site, with the only proviso that the number of unique visits to the site three times more than app.





Attendance of the resource after run the mobile app

We had some concerns about the fact that after the release of the app can drop the attendance of the web-version. However, they were in vain. The attendance did not decrease, but even increased slightly. I think this happened for two reasons:
— Due to exit application in the top 50 (33rd in the overall Russian App Store and the 1st place in the category of News) we have attracted new visitors, who were not previously aware of the existence of the resource;
— The use of the application does not affect a visit to the web-version. When a person is at the computer, it is more convenient to use a great site, and when he goes back home, or relaxing in front of the TV, a mobile solution is preferable.

the load on the server after running the application

Needless to say that the load has increased? I think not. If you look at the numbers above, the number of requests to our servers increased by about 30%. At the moment we are working on expanding the capacity and willingness to accept load in ten times more current, but this topic deserves a separate post. I just want to give a screenshot of the load on one of the servers after the app starts. Red marked the day of the launch.



Bugs in the app

Is our pain. But the ability to admit mistakes and promptly correct them will allow us, I hope, to make the app even better and stay ahead of possible competitors a few steps forward.
After the publication in the App Store, literally within hours, we received a number of messages of praise, criticism, comments, and the way that we took a lot of time that all this would develop and make the necessary changes to Kickoff for further analysis and, if necessary, corrections.
In addition, the first users of the app suggested a huge number of ideas for improvement. Some of them are quite simple to implement, but add convenience in using the app. We are now planning the introduction of certain "features" that will constantly be added with updates of the application.

Unfortunately, at the stage of application testing can never catch all bugs. This is due to many factors, but always comes down to the fact that the number of testers is always less than the number of end-users (in mass use).

For example, after starting the application began to appear on that phone with installed jailbreak-om, the application does not start. Such a message was not very much, but perhaps a dozen were gathered. If we are able to identify the problem, then of course fix it, but honestly have no idea how this can be done given all the "zoo" methods, proposed and suggested for jailbreaking.

Another interesting observation was that the application is not in all places correctly handles voiceover (this technology allows you to use the app to people with disabilities). To launch the release, we even could not think that it is necessary to test this side of the application. I confess. We will try to resolve everything in the next updates, to users of our app can use it the way they used to do it with built-in apps from Apple.
Creative flour

Originally, when we started developing the app, we had a completely different design but in the testing phase, we realized that it was too dark, although at first glance looked pretty nice. Eyes tired quickly, and we get pleasure from using the application.
In the end, the whole design was redrawn from scratch. As an example, let me give you a few screenshots of the old design.



Raisin

We sincerely believe that in each application, in addition to ease of use and beautiful design should be "highlight". To tell you the truth, we did not have it until the last moment. And only after you have rejected from the Apple (app in the play mode podcast over 3G consumes more than 5Mb of traffic in 5 minutes) we came up with a great idea, which would provide our application of these. And even though this is just a small stroke, but as shown by the reaction of the users of the application, he was in the "Apple."
When you receive a push notification on your iPhone you will be spared from the standard sound, but instead hear the crunch of the ripe Apple touch it. This sound is quite annoying, and allows you to catch interested glances at each alert. Of course, this sound can be disabled in the settings for push notifications.

Another "highlight" can be considered the availability of all episodes in a special section of the app. They get there automatically (parsim RSS). However, we had to do a little focus, the opportunity to listen to podcasts hit the app: if you turn on the player without connecting via Wi-Fi (with 3g or edge connection), then the files will be streamed live not from the primary server, where we keep all of our podcasts, and extra. We had to limit the speed of file access on the server side and lower the bitrate of the podcast, to avoid the restriction Apple 5Mb over 5 minutes for a 3G/edge connection when playing media files.

Our expectations

During testing of the application before you run it in release, we were sure of two things:

Convenience comment from the app was so high that we have no doubt that users will comment, will comment a lot. In fact, it turned out to be. Eyes the increase in comments on the website was 25-30%
We have added a social component for sharing of content on various social networks. Using AddThis SDK there are a few dozen. The most popular social. network we derived separately for easy use. Here, however, we were disappointed. For two days using the application this functionality took only a little more than 300 people.

Where to go

In the next big update of the app we plan to add a live broadcast of our weekly podcasts and make in-app chat not only for the audience live, but to leave it in the app for direct communication between users.
It is now available on the podcast's page in the web version and works on jabber Protocol. Hope that you will appreciate our work and would love to hear any constructive criticism or suggestions for development.

You can download the app from iTunes for this the link.

UPD: today the app is used by more than 11000 people (according to Google Analytics). The increase in traffic on the website during the week increased by more than 20%
Now we can say that nested in-app investments is fully justified in our case.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru