greenrobot’s latest app “Prime Guide” brings the TV program to Android Smartphones, Tablets, and Google TV. With a quickly growing installation count, great reviews and very high ratings in Google Play, Prime Guide successfully challenges big players of established brands.
We want to present technical and non-technical aspects of app development:
• The technical app anatomy
• Android and server libraries we used (and wrote) for Prime Guide
• Google App Engine as a backend: good and bad sides
• Strategies on how to compete with “the big players”
• The marketing campaigns we ran and their outcome
• Successful customer support and presence in social networks
• Stats and numbers
http://www.primeguide.tv
9. Technology Overview
Prime Guide App
Prime Guide
Server Cloud GUI
Events
Managers
Remote ORM
EPG Data
Source ($$$) SQLite Database
10. Libraries used
Action Bar Sherlock
Android Support Library
EventBus
Facebook
Several internal greenrobot libraries:
Common Android stuff, bitmaps, cache, …
In total: 12 client libraries used
Libraries are essential for app dev!
11. Libraries written for Prime Guide
greenDAO
Fast O/R Mapper (code generation)
Object oriented access to SQLite
Open Source
Protobuf RPC
Binary Client/Server RPC protocol
Based on Google Protobuf
Multiple remote method calls per request
12. Backend – Why App Engine?
The 20:15 peak automatic scalability
No OS maintenance / administration
High availability
Backed by Google and its infrastructure
Good Java support
Task Queues for background processing
Easy deployment / version control
13. App Engine: nothing‘s perfect
No SQL (no, that‘s not cool)
P.S.: Today there‘s Cloud SQL ($)
Proprietary APIs (no full JEE standard…)
Data store impacted our data model
Entity groups, TX consistency, …
Request time limits (no long polling etc.)
Local server: slow, not 100% compatible
Not the cheapest solution
15. Some Backend stats
Number of serving instances, 24h
20:15 New day, Widget updates
16. Are we ready yet?
December 2012: Should we release?
Personal impression of the app
About 100 TV channels are plenty
Basics OK, some cool features still missing
100+ issues in our backlog, hmm…
OK, let’s release anyway… Before Xmas!
Code crunch & last minute PR started
Big question: Will people like it at all?
17. First day in the store
Beta Release on December, 21st
1,500 installs
4.6 stars rating
Phew!
Good start, how will it continue?
Can it keep the great rating?
18. Our last Minute Marketing…
Trying to spread the word
We informed 1,000,000 blogs upfront
One bigger mobile blog picked it up
It was worth the effort
19. As expected, People liked…
Native Android look and feel
Simplicity, thought-out UI
Speed of the App
First class tablet support
Features
2D scrolling TV overview
Integration of movie related web sites
YouTube videos
Reminders
20. And a few Surprises…
People were happy to give feedback
Other features matter to them
Most wished: add channel XYZ
Top Missing features
Search
Support for TV series (reminders, etc.)
21. Surprises continued…
Data collected during a 14-day period ending on March 4, 2013
Devices statistics from Google
22. Device statistics from Google
Just one problem with these stats:
It shows all devices
The real question should be:
Which devices install new apps?
24. Marketing Campaign (paid)
CPI campaign with a Android website that
also run a 3rd party store
Good impact in 3rd party store:
Downloads over Time
25. Marketing Campaign / Play
Prime Guide featured on a big German
Android web site plus newsletter coverage
So, what‘s the impact in Google Play?
Unexpectedly low:
Downloads over Time
26. How to make people rate you
Ratings are essential for success
Make it easy for users to rate your app
But don‘t force it on them (dialogs, …)
Our solution:
28. Customer Support
Take feedback seriously
Answer each mail personally (we try to)
Value people‘s input, they invested time
We track wishes and prioritize accordingly
Implement feedback: makes people happy
Takes time, about ½ - 1 day per week
29. Things underestimated…
Complexity of TV Data
Legal issues with TV Data (Germany)
Costs of TV Data
App Engine quirks
General complexity, both app and server
infrastructure
30. Lessons learnt
Optimize for Smartphones,
Tablets and Google TV for
initial launch.
One of our biggest mistakes?
31. Lessons learnt
Pick great new technologies,
create them if non-existent.
Takes its time…
Whatever, that’s the fun part.
& Solid base to build upon.
35. How did we do since?
Rating improved by adding TV channels
~ 100.000 downloads
Next milestone: leave beta with V1.0
New features
Ads, or paid version