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“Coffee.app lets people find and
share great coffee experiences
everyday. Coffee.app makes it
quick and easy to say ‘I’m havin’
a Coffee.”
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I’m Katie from Kisky Netmedia all the way from Liverpool to talk to you about “The Making of Coffee Buzz” - an application for iPhone. Coffee Buzz has been in the App Store now for over a month so I’m here to share some thoughts. This presentation is a snapshot of “What we learnt about the iPhone Apps Business”\n
Back in the Autumn of 2008 we embarked on a project with ICDC called ‘The Amazing iPhone’.We created a 40+ page report on the iPhone platform and the opportunity it offers to consumers and to businesses. So that we could talk about the iPhone platform, we thought we’d better also make and launch an iPhone app!\n
Our app is called Coffee Buzz: ‘the social coffee app’. It’s available at coffeebuzzapp.com\nAnd as you can see it has a pretty nice logo!\n
So what does it do?\nWell, Coffee Buzz lets you...\n1. Find Local Coffee \n2. Share your Coffee With Others\n3. Integrates with Twitter, so you can easily say ‘I’m having a coffee’\nYes it’s true - a lot of people do that! \nIf you don’t believe me check out http://search.twitter.com\n
So what does it do?\nWell, Coffee Buzz lets you...\n1. Find Local Coffee \n2. Share your Coffee With Others\n3. Integrates with Twitter, so you can easily say ‘I’m having a coffee’\nYes it’s true - a lot of people do that! \nIf you don’t believe me check out http://search.twitter.com\n
So what does it do?\nWell, Coffee Buzz lets you...\n1. Find Local Coffee \n2. Share your Coffee With Others\n3. Integrates with Twitter, so you can easily say ‘I’m having a coffee’\nYes it’s true - a lot of people do that! \nIf you don’t believe me check out http://search.twitter.com\n
So what does it do?\nWell, Coffee Buzz lets you...\n1. Find Local Coffee \n2. Share your Coffee With Others\n3. Integrates with Twitter, so you can easily say ‘I’m having a coffee’\nYes it’s true - a lot of people do that! \nIf you don’t believe me check out http://search.twitter.com\n
Following making the Coffee Buzz App, submitting it to the iPhone App Store, launching the app, and monitoring our daily sales, I am going to share 10 of the many things we learnt about iPhone application development. (Or, our top 10 tips!)\n
Erm.. Get a Mac and an iPhone\n(Some people don’t realise this)\n
Erm.. Get a Mac and an iPhone\n(Some people don’t realise this)\n
Sign up early with the app store!\nSign up as an individual (you don’t have to sign up as a company first off)\nStart playing with the SDK (that’s the Software Development Kit’!) as early as you can\nFill in all the forms. (Even the IRS, and the Tax ones!)\n
Create your product definition statement. Don’t skip on this.\nHere’s the Coffee Buzz (then named Coffee App) definition statement.\n\n
If you are not already an expert Objective-C programmer, learn some new skills! There are a few things out there to help you. We tested a lot out and like this the best: The Pragmatic Programmers publish a great guide. Also make sure you read Apple HIG guide & then read it again.\nOf course you might also be interested in these lovely books published by O’Reilly! (iPhone Open Application Development)! \n
Paper prototyping - do this properly. Don’t just start programming and building.It’ll most likely not be very usable or intuitive. \nIt takes longer to make your mistakes in Code than on Paper!\n
Design. Design. Design. This is very very very important. Don’t skimp on the styling, the user interaction design and the finish. There’s arguably a lot of crap in the App Store and you want your app to stand out!\n
Field test!Field testing is very important. If you’re used to creating software for desktops or the web; you need to learn this. iPhone is portable, mobile and functions in changing, and uncontrollable environments.\nGet on a tram, a train or bus!\n
Localise your app! French people might not buy your app if it’s all in English (although a few have bought ours). There are lots of users outside of the U.S. and UK.\n
Marketing\nDo not assume being in the App Store means you’ll sell a million. \nMarketing is very very important.\nThe basic Marketing principles of ‘Product, Price, Place and Promotion’ apply!\nOr if you’re lucky - make sure your app enjoys infamy as a banned app. Then blog about this. Then blog about it again when Apple lets your previously banned and now famous app into the App Store!http://mashable.com/2008/12/13/twitter-coffee-iphone/\n
Pricing! This is still a dark art and the subject of much debate. We experimented. You can always drop, not increase the price of your app. \n
Coffee Buzz retails in the App Store at £2.39\nWe did a poll at a previous presentation and most people thought this was outrageous. However the rationale for the pricing is that it’s the same price as a venti Latté! Which when you think about it like that seems like very cheap software!\n
How many copies of Coffee Buzz did we sell?\n92 copies sold?\nNot zero, but certainly not ‘insanely great’\n
Version 1.2 is coming soon. (February 2009)\nIt’ll contain some new features that make it super smooth to use.\nAnd some requests from our (92) users.\nCoffee Buzz version 1.2 will include \n“Place me here” and\n“Create your own custom drinks” - thanks Imran for the suggestion; you will be able to ‘have a Chai’.\n
Version 1.2 is coming soon. (February 2009)\nIt’ll contain some new features that make it super smooth to use.\nAnd some requests from our (92) users.\nCoffee Buzz version 1.2 will include \n“Place me here” and\n“Create your own custom drinks” - thanks Imran for the suggestion; you will be able to ‘have a Chai’.\n
Price drop. Yes there’ll of course be a credit crunch style price drop. \nOf course it maybe that this works as a free app - but this is an exploratory project so we want to see what happens at 59p first!\nOther monetisation options right now are also pretty exciting. \nWe’ve been having a chat with a few coffee chains!\n
We’ll let you know how we get on in future versions of our report: \nhttp://www.theamazingiphone.com\nThank you for your time, and if you are embarking on an App Store journey I hope you enjoy making iPhone apps as much as we did.\n