In the last few weeks I’ve decided to dust off my Roomr app code and start working on a small update to it. Whilst I’m writing some new code, I decided I best start trying to drive some sales of the app, which haven’t been very strong.
To try and boost downloads, I decided to rework the marketing site (www.roomrapp.com), simplifying it beyond all recognition and just concentrating on the main features with some simple screenshots. No need to be clever. I think the app has some useful features and with a simple site explaining those features, things should improve in the sales department.
In addition to revamping the sales site, I signed up for Distimo, a site which gives you lots of metrics and statistics for your app, including sales information, ratings and rankings.
Whilst reviewing this data, I came across a negative comment that a user left.
“So I have to know the name of a list of rooms before I can see… any rooms? How does this make sense?”
As the Apple AppStore gives me no-way to reply to a user’s comment, I thought I might try and address it here.
Yes, you do need to specify the list of rooms to my app. However, if you’re using Exchange 2010, you can use a Room List, which will download a list of rooms automatically. I’m sorry that the process is so manual, but the Exchange Web Services provided by Microsoft, don’t give me a way to automatically access this information.
I know the user that left that comment will probably never read this, but it’s the best I can do. I will add this information to the FAQ on www.roomrapp.com so that nobody else runs into this problem.
On a more positive note, reworking the marketing site has resulted in a 6 day stretch of downloads (totalling 7!), but the longest stretch to date.
I think this app is something that people most likely find useful because there were almost 400 sessions in the past month, so people are definitely using it.
I’ve got to figure out if the downloads from the App Store are being driven from my improved marketing site or because of some other reason. In the last month I’ve had fewer visits on average than other months, but more sales, so it’s hard to see a correlation!
Also, I’d like to make a shout-out to the Swedish people as they are my best customers!
Tomas McGuinness 