MoreFlow

A look at how innovative web and mobile apps acquire customers and monetize users.

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Automated welcome emails by Sensor Tower

This little welcome email trick caught my eye this week. The startup Sensor Tower whose product helps iOS marketers track competitors and monitor their apps walks first time users through an onboarding flow to add their first app. An hour or so after adding your app, a friendly email arrives in your inbox from a real person! So dedicated they are doing it from their iPhone. Very cool.

and a second account..

Personal, customized, authentic. automated. good work.

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User Engagement = Value + Novelty

Ikea's new iOS and Android app is making its way around the internet because of the novelty and direct value it provides the user through the use of augmented reality.

If you haven't seen the video, you can check it out here:

While the physical catalogue hasn't even been released (in Canada) at the time of this writing, the app does work and serve as a preview of the physical thing, building anticipation to try out the same tricks as shown in the video.

Once you've downloaded the app on your mobile device, there is no hassle to sign-up or login like most apps have. Ikea is focused on getting you to their main product - or in this case products - featured within their catalogue.

You just select your location and language, then you can select parts of the digital catalogue to browse or download the entire thing. 

But once inside, they make sure to stress the new AR feature and allow you to share individual pages.

So far the main draw has been the publicity and novelty, but comments on Twitter seem to indicate a positive response:

Wait until this is available on your Google Glass.....

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The Future of the Calendar App - Sunrise.im

This flow made my jaw drop. Sunrise.im has been in market for some time now but I figured I'd best document it before it goes. Former designers at Tumblr built sunrise as a inbox deliverable every morning to tell you what events you had scheduled in Google Calendar, Facebook, or LinkedIn. They have more recently released an iOS calendar app

Step 1:

Connect with Facebook (note use of facebook facepile plugin). I can't seem to find it but there are stats out there stating 200% conversion rate increases on authentication if a user sees a familiar face "uses" the app" <-- if you have data on this please share in comments

Step 2:

Authenticate with Facebook

Step 3:

Connect your Google Calendar for events.

Step 4:

Authorize Sunrise to gain access to your Google Calendar.

Step 5:

Connect your LinkedIn account for events.

Step 6:

Authorize Sunrise access to your LinkedIn events.

Step 7:

This gets more interesting. Sunrise uses your Google Contacts + their emails to send a custom invitation to your Google contacts. (option to skip this step)

Step 8:

We now know everything about you, tell your friends about the app!

I loved this flow so much I implemented a similar approach on a side project. Fittic - Training Plans for your iPhone.

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Quick IAP tests with Playhaven in mobile apps

Mobile devs the world over are discovering a neat little free tool called Playhaven. Their notable business model includes a free to use LTV tool that helps developers introduce:

Consumable in-app purchases

Cross promotion Walls

Email capture forms

Targeted promotions

among other great ways to engage with your users..

And if you're looking to monetize that non-converting audience you can introduce interstial ads at strategic session lengths to monetize non-paying users which they take a cut from (30-50%).

We recently used Playhaven to test some limited edition skins for the Official Rubik's Cube app on iOS, here's what that looked like.

The Official Rubik's Cube App was launched in 2010 and stuck to a pretty standard free to play lite version of the app with only the 2x2 cube  and an option to upgrade to the full paid SKU with 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 cube for over 2 years. The paid SKU came handy with a lot of neat features like changing the stickers on your cube, solving a real cube using a solver tool and guides on how to solve the cube manually.

We introduced new limited edition cubes leveraging Playhaven in game popups to purchase and keep the cubes in your game play inventory.

One week of development and we had a working model based on three real life cubes that had been introduced over the years, included in the bunch were:

The Limited Edition "Mystery Cube"

The Icon Cube:

The 30th Edition Wood Cube.

All existing physical products that resonate with Rubik's Cuber players everywhere and now available for a limited time only on their iOS device.

Game play un affected, this was a great way to offer users value. It's also a great way to test a concept leveraging a platform that does a lot of the heavy lifting. The final result, great looking Rubik's cubes and a monetized titles with depth of IAPs.

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User On-boarding with Stripe

Stripe is a payment processing alternative to Paypal for developers. The minimalistic approach to customer on boarding is a painless process with great flow that minimizes barriers to entry and removes set up anxiety. They face some unique hurdles in the fact that they require a multitude of information from their customers before developers can even start using their service. They use an intelligent approach that has the developer un forced to enter crucial information such as bank account details until deep in the funnel. 

Account creation is reduced to three input fields from a subsequent 23 fields that are required deeper into account setup in order for the payment system to function on a developer's website. You can even choose to skip this step and use the implementation documents to move forward with setup.

Once you've set up your account stripe helps developers understand the four silo's they will need to go about creating in order to begin accepting payments from customers.

In order for your dashboard to become active, you must confirm your email address. It's explained very well what benefit you will receive from doing this "You'll be able to begin accepting payments".

Password confirmation.

Here is where they take advantage of your ambition to set up your account. This can be done in one sitting or at a later time.

The 23 fields required for activation:

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The Future of Fitness: App Design + Data

The New Year has always been a peak period for selling fitness equipment and memberships. But with the onset of smartphone, there's a shift in the way we exercise and how we track what we're doing.

The newest contender in the space is a simple iPhone app from a Finnish company called Moves. Moves launched on the iOS store yesterday amid much hype that it was taking on the likes of Nike's Fuelband and personal fitness tracker Fitbit because it can work with only your iPhone - no device necessary.

Unlike the latter devices, moves is an app and doesn't require you to buy and carry yet another device.

The app is fairly basic but presents it's visual appeal and data formatting in a style we're all familiar with - a timeline (I'm quite certain this will begin to look like the Facebook timeline in later versions. Letting you know if your friends are exercising nearby, if you both went to the same gym, who has the fastest route home etc).

But for now, it's simple and allows you to get a report on your physical activity on a daily or weekly basis. 

This app reminds me of Strava, an app for avid runners or cyclers that works with only the phone (although for more precise data you can also connect it to a Garmin GPS device or watch).

Their iPhone or android app looks slightly different depending if your running or cycling, but the data focuses on you and others who have done the same circuit. 

Where Strava really gets cool is in their premium membership web app that pulls all the data in. If you're really into your sport and training, this is an elite mix of data and design to present you with your performance (or that of others). 

Nike Fuelband is one of the original pioneers of the fitness device/data hybrid leveraging their full clout and expertise to integrate even your Nike running shoes into the device that's waterproof and worn like a bracelet.

Their iPhone app packs lots of data into a sleek design as well.

And tries to leverage a mix of gamification and rewards (through Nike Points) to entice it's users to achieve their fitness goals:

Fitbit started off as a very small, but social pedometer but quickly found it's way as an all around fitness tracker.

The Fitbit iPhone (and now Android app) both do very comparable stats visualization as the Nike Fuelband, but they take it to one step further for the dedicated user.

The website allows you to track your meals and calorie intake, you can track your sleep and the devices measure your weight and fitness.

They've also created an environment of friendly competition between social users with a simple leader board and badges.

Fitbit has now focused on connecting their many devices and creating the ultimate fitness monitoring system through the app:

These apps and devices are set to take on the future of fitness and it all has to do with reinforcing user behaviour through appealing visuals and pivotal data.

For the professionals or hardcore trainers, it's a step towards better understanding how you preform - and just wait until these apps integrate Spotify to show that you worked harder during a certain song, or with a weather app to show that when humidity was at a certain level, you went farther. 

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The Minimalistic Social Network

One of the most well designed social networking apps of 2012 was definitely Circle.

The app is available for both iPhone an Android and is meant to be geolocational chat app for friends or networking.

While the homepage is nice and seems standard, the experience quickly unfolds on the mobile (Android for me). Prepare for flow nirvana...

Once you launch the app for the first time you get a very smooth, quick walkthrough:

Once you've connected with Facebook and it's run the initial setup, the app presents you with 2 sides - people you know and others you should meet (as well as a message at the bottom:

Starting with the left side of the app (friends that are using the app) that you just slide out:

Then on the right you can add more networks.....

Once that's done, the app has new friend suggestions based on your location and interests:

In the message section at the bottom of the screen (which slides up), you'll find a message from the CEO of the app Evan:

From the main setting, if you pull down on your name you get the profile settings. This menu looks like this:

That nifty green slider goes from offline-online-networking mode to help speak conversations.

  The bottom part is the rest of your typical profile:

There are so many little details that are just perfect - and almost nothing in terms of buttons or feeds -  that make looking at this app very appealing, but would you use it to chat with more than friends around you? 

Is this app the follow up to the minimalism of social networks set in place by Path or is it just pretty enough to be acquired by a big design hungry company like Google or Facebook?

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The Biggest Problem In App Discoverability For Startups

I read a great post a few weeks back by Gabor Cselle - the founder of reMail which sold to Google a few years back and most recently, DrawChat.

In the post he made something I've been thinking about recently very clear - how complex it is to find apps via your mobile phone. 

This got me thinking about how startups can better promote their apps with "launchrock" style pages - with something like ooomf or the new LaunchRock templates.

But then I noticed a few startups that actually text the app right to your phone:

Belly the loyalty rewards platform does this

And New York City based Sonar does as well:

I've reached out to both startups to see how this feature boosts their conversion numbers for on page visitors to downloads as well as for downloads to active users.

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An interesting hack by Dave at Euri.ca

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Product Specific Remarketing on Third Party Sites

A recent trend in the Google Adwords cpc space is the use of remarketing scripts on third party sites. The idea here is to use resellers or partnering sites to embed a remarketing script on an individual product page that attach a cookie to the browser of the visitor. These visitors can then be remarketed to on any site within the Google Display Network.

Here's an example of this strategy:

LCBO is a regional distributor of Beer, liquor, wine, and spirits. Their product pages are individually scripted with the Remarketing tag of major brands like Glenfiddich.

After visiting the LCBO product page Glenfiddich can now remarket to you on any publisher that is in bed with the Display network.

Ads displayed by Glenfiddich are directed towards a Glenfiddich landing page for a second opportunity to convert a customer who has already demonstrated purchase intent.

The nature of the startup environment makes this a viable strategy for acquiring targeted customers while creating a new type of revenue generation for publishers. 

Now get out there and start reaching out to publishers in your space, before someone else jumps on the opportunity.

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Social Proof and Startups

As a first time visitor to your site (assuming I'm following a direct link to your site), my main interests in the first 30-45 seconds of seeing your homepage are:

1) Who are you?

2) What you offer?

3) How does that benefit me?

Making sure the value proposition is clear and the home page is simple and can be seen in less than 2 scrolls is critical (above the fold and a little more below the fold).

There are a few sites that make great use of this:

Mailchimp's value proposition is simple: easy email newsletters. The Monkey looks pretty friendly and helpful too.

Stripe doesn't have a mascot, but that ok, cause the few images they have on the site speak volumes and complement the limited (and simple) copy wonderfully. They tell you exactly who the product is for ("Payments for Developers") and then present a few of the simple features that wil make you love their product.

Any.do is yet another to-do app - yet they've taken a remarkably simple approach to the design and feel of the app (and they've carried it through to their website).

From these three sites, i know exactly what they do and it's pretty obvious what the benefits to me are. 

Now because they are already established names, I don't have to think to long about creating an account, downloading the app and getting started - but new startups need to up their game an extra level and provide social proof as part of demonstrating the value of the product or service (after all if a bunch of people are using it, why wouldn't you?).

The best example of Twitter/testimonial integration I've seen in an early stage startup is yumpapalote.com

While the rest of the site needs improvement (and what's with the name?), this little bit of design nails it - and should be more front and center (currently below the fold).

They're a food service and they are letting potential new customers know what existing clients already do through Twitter testimonials WITH that person's avatar image next to it. This creates a personal rapport with the brand because there are other people (like you) there! 

But the don't stop there, they offer you more information (or a way to become one of those very people shown on the site) if you're interested in other key (already established) communities like Yelp and Foursquare - Dwolla is clearly out of date here.

More startups should be looking to leverage growth through what their hard earned, existing customers are saying. That way when you hit it big and drive a ton of traffic to your site, you've already made it so easy for the potential customer to say yes and signup.

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VeganCuts.com Email Capturing for Flash Sales Sites

Vegancuts.com is quickly becoming the leading e-commerce site for Vegan lifestyle. The company is growing their business primarily through an intelligently designed 3 touch email capture flow plus invite process. Vegan times a 3 second pop up on their homepage that offers updates on flash sales for vegan lifestyle products.

If landing on a product page or second level product page Vegan cuts has optimized an email capture trigger that is displayed as the user scrolls down to 30% of page.

They have also taken a good crack at the invite a friend screen. 1-25 (1 point per invite), this is the first thing a user sees upon completing an account. (email, password)

Perks for inviting friends are as follows:

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How To Increase Your App Download Rate

The Apple app store and the Google Play store are the leaders in the mobile app marketplaces.

But with so much competition  how do you make your app stand out so that people can download and use it?

You have to think of how you'd shop for apps!

So what's your typical app buying process?

Step 1 – your eye totally ignores the apps with 3 or less stars

Step 2 – you visually weed out the crap icons thinking the app must also be crap

Step 3 – you tap into comparably priced and reviewed apps to see which one looks the best

And that's how apps get downloaded.... based on appearances! Let's break it down:

Once you get into App profiles, the screenshots must out-do all others:

Notice how crisp and clear Any.do app looks compared to the others....

One of the most recent cases of presentation comes from the Android app Dwellable who launched on the Google Play store with minimal attention to their presentation design.

They got featured as an "Editor's Pick" with this image:

Really orange and doesn't stand out as anything special. They then decided to spend a bit more time on the design and chose a new image:

Looks much more professional and pretty swaggerific (technical term). The best part is you can see the difference that branding made within an hour.... IT DOUBLED THEIR DOWNLOAD RATE:

So spend some time making sure your presentation is set. Just like fine dinning, presentation is the experience and you're setting the bar for your customers from the get-go.

(Photo credits to DesignBoost.net and Dwellable - rock on guys and girls!)

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Design Sells: The Fab.com Effect

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, Breadpig and Hipmunk has always said two critically important things of startups: make sure you solve a problem in the most effective and simplistic manner, and make sure it looks good.

Design has come a long way in separating, and even defining startups. But one example that stand out above the rest is Fab.com.

Originally a gay social network, Fabulis.com, had flatlined at just 130,000 members in June 2011. Rather than throw in the towel, co-founders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer refocused the business on their shared love of great design and relaunched the company as Fab.com, a flash-sale site that offers a spectrum of chic items, including handcrafted furniture and avant-garde jewelry.

Fast forward six months, and Fab was valued at $100 million, had 2 million users, and had raised $50 million in venture capital. They ended that first year by selling over 1 million products — that’s 2.6 per minute.

In less than two years, Fab has grown to six million members, adding one million--a 20 percent bump--in July 2012 alone - and is on pace to reach $150 million in annual sales.  

They managed this by defining the "flash-sale site". 

Right below the main navigation on each category is a sale expiration clock and a call to social sharing if you really want more from the site. 

This is followed by a fairly detailed, crowdsourced endorsement of why the category has meaning to the "community" and should relate to individuals. A picture of one of these said members adds a human touch to the elegant design.

Each item on the site showcases the savings in the top left (the most looked at area of a webpage) and again, more calls to social sharing or a direct purchase.

If you "like" an item you are adding it to you "fab" list - reinforcing the feeling of community and unique behaviours of the site.

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So does it take a well designed and highly functional site alone to make it? According to Jason, there's one more crucial element that came into play:

"My cofounder and I decided from the beginning that we'd never make a single decision about what goes on the website based on how much money we'll make on a particular product. Instead, we ask, Will it make customers smile? Excite them? Make them tell their friends about it? The biggest realization I've had is that if you really want to build a successful business, it's not about how much money you're making. It's emotional. For us, it's how do we make our customers smile? Every single decision we make comes down to that."

And you can tell they are serious about this. The fist thing you see below the site navigation on every page is this banner:

Reaffirming their commitment to design and their customer's happiness. And what better time to ask people to share your company with their closest friends then when they are most content with you. 

FAB was already profitable in its first month, with orders exceeding 1,000 per day. The site now boasts more than 650,000 members and adds another 5,000 every day, most via social sharing--e-mails from members to their friends, Twitter mentions and Facebook shares and likes (it would be hard not too when they have so many social calls to action).

Finally, Jason stresses that they have a saying at Fab: "We focus more on why we suck than why we're doing great." 

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The Timeline Boost: Visibility and User Acquisition

Facebook Timeline has been a powerful feature since day one. But coupled with Open Graph and more startups overlaying their app on the biggest social network in history, it's no wonder Facebook can make or break your company...

Viddy’s “Timeline Bump” saw it surpass some big names in its rise to the top of the App Store rankings. Since integrating, Viddy claims to be seeing 500K new users a day, and last week confirmed that it closed a $30 million Series B round at a reported $370 million valuation.

Other startups have also leveraged the Timeline/Open Graph combo to gain visibility, acquire new users and increase revenue. Khan Academy for instance has also enabled their users to share the badges they earn on their site to social networks (Facebook included). After a few badges, there is a dedicated area on your timeline reserved for your most recent badges to let your friends know what you've been up to.

Quora users can now share questions, answers, posts they upvote, and people they follow to Facebook, with that content aggregated by type in a widget on their Facebook profile. In turn, Facebook friends will see the most interesting stories you’ve interacted with on Quora right in their news feed.

Of course, those who might be hesitant to enable this feature for the sake of avoiding spamming their friends’ feeds with every instance Quora activity, however, users will generally only see the five most recent upvotes, questions followed, etc., a cap that’s intended to keep the integration from overwhelming your profile. 

Not to be left out of the social trend, Bing has recently announced that it is now integrating Quora into it's search results to help users discover better answers to their search queries - and again, share it back to their friends who might also want to be in the know.

Andrew Chen has a (fairly) famous post on this type of platform integration/user acquisition as a mechanism to catapult your startup to the next level. Labeled under "growth hacking", Andrew Chen explores how Airbnb leveraged Craigslist to match their offerings with interest and vice-versa. At the same time, the audience they were exposing themselves to saw value in their startup and began not only repeating the process, but sharing it to their social networks.

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Startups of the People: A New Generation of Community-Based Launches

There is an amazing new trend on the verge of coming of age in startup land: the community based, community created startup.

The two biggest examples that spring to mind and that have left the biggest shoes to fill are undoubtedly OUYA, Pebble Technologies and APP.net.

Megan Berry, the founding community manager at Klout states:

"I’ve experienced firsthand how social media can change the momentum of a company. It’s not about a set of tools, but about reducing the friction between the two things that really matter: ideas and people." 

Interestingly enough, both startups have heavily leveraged not only social networking sites to amass their legions of fans, followers and contributors, but have also implemented successful (or at least wildly popular) crowdfunding campaigns to fund their company.

Others have taken similar approaches, but in the past they were limited to the traditional "donate" buttons on the site and more of an underground, word-of-mouth marketing style. The main trailblazers of this older generation include Reddit.com and DuckDuckGo.

Now, community based missions and multisided marketplace startups are supported by massive million dollar crowdfunding campaigns to keep everyone engaged and excited.

Some (astounding) key stats from the OUYA campaign (run on Kickstarter) are:

KICKSTARTER RESULTS

29 days

63,416 backers

$8,596,475 pledged of $950,000 goal

BROKEN RECORDS

Fastest to raise $1M on Kickstarter (8H 22M)

Biggest single day total on Kickstarter ($2,589,687.77)

Some amazing stats from the Pebble Technologies funding campaign:

KICKSTARTER RESULTS

Goal of raising $100,000 in 38 days

Reached $100,000 just two hours after starting

6 days later: $4.7 million to the project

Some amazing stats from the APP.net funding campaign:

HOMEMADE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN

Community of about 20,000 people (in about 3 weeks)

300,000 posts

$154,900 (as of August 3 with 10 days left in the 30 day campaign)

But how have these companies so rapidly embedded themselves into the social conscience? The secret? They have fuzed the left and right hemispheres of a brain and so deeply engrained their marketing and development that the bar has so suddenly been raise, we haven't noticed the reset - too distracted by the impeccable execution.

People join causes at two critical moments: the beginning and the end. Marketing and promotion schedules tic perfectly in-sync with the gears of development so that as the last wave of press and site updates settle, a new feature or development emerges to capture our attentions all over again. 

OUYA has mastered this operation over the mere month their campaign lasted, and through a variety of forms: text, images, professional promotional videos, interviews, visions, press, and most of all, their personal story.

So what can the average startup take from this? That having a community of engaged and interested users has never before been as important or critical as it is now. Regardless of whether or not your product/service gets it's start from crowdfunding, the main key is to replicate the state of mind - being in front of your audience continuously but not in an annoying salesy way, rather in the sense that they are part of your startup - a founding customer.

Give them value, give them responsibility, and let them be part of what you are looking to change. 

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From 1.5 to 3 Million users using social sharing

Fab.com just recently announced another $105M investment after the $40M raised in December. What's unique about this flash sale e-commerce site is it's most prominent customer acquisition funnel: Social Sharing

Since January 2012, Fab has grown its total membership from 1.5 million to 3 million. 50 percent of new members have come from social sharing. Here is the sharing dashboard every Fab.com user has.

Fab.com builds credits into your account that can be claimed when buying products on the site.

More recently Fab has made strides in integrating it's product feed with Facebook in a Pinterest style social integration that shows friends your fav'ed products and designs.