I would like to invite you to a little experiment.
I have created probably the smallest niche app on the mac app store and I would like you to help me sell and optimize the marketing around it.
Now you might think, "who does this guy think he is? – doesn't he know I have my own business to run?" and you are right it would be unfair to just ask you to help me market my product.
So instead I would like to offer you something in return:
Each month I am going to post all the numbers and the learnings. But more importantly each month you can post suggestions to improvements and strategies and each month those with the highest number of votes will get implemented (within reason of course)
It is my hope that this will be a case study for people to learn from before they venture out into spending money and time on something similar themselves or for people who find this stuff interesting.
The product is done in the spirit of the small butique network weekendhacker.net I started in May So far have +6100 members and have had 150 projects through and is still going strong. And the things I learned from members of the HN community have been invaluable.
Now this is of course just an experiment. Maybe I will break even, maybe I won't. Maybe I will have to cancel it within a couple of months. But none the less I am certain it will both be informative and fun.
Oh and yes you can move the slider on the webpage :)
So what do you think the first round of improvements should be?
Just tweeted it out. I've got mostly designer followers so hopefully it boosts you a bit! It got >100 clicks in the first minute so now we'll see if you get some sales :)
Maybe I will break even, maybe I won't. Maybe I will have to cancel it within a couple of months. But none the less I am certain it will both be informative and fun.
I'm curious, what support costs do you have that would require you to cancel?
As for all these people bitching about the price of this app: If you think it is worth less than the value that it represents to you then you should go and re-create this app and sell it at a lower price point rather than telling the original developer to lower his price. Be sure to publish your figures.
If you find that $16 is less than the value you'd extract from the app then you should probably buy it.
Of course he can lower the price later, just not all at once, but I'd be more interested in the same story at a different pricepoint with another useful app.
A couple of those and the data would become very valuable.
The fact that people are buying the app just by browsing the app store means that he's at least in the ballpark, the 'ideal' price is something that you can only determine experimentally, not by responding to whining about the price.
That's some kind of logical fallacy... sort of like saying... "if you think that aircraft carrier is overpriced, you should build one and sell it yourself."
One can determine objectively whether something is overpriced based on comparisons with competing products.
If you need to A/B test any of the ideas proposed here (or in future), we'd love to offer you a free subscription to Visual Website Optimizer http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com Just contact me paras {at} wingify {dot} com
As for ideas, here are mine:
* If you want to generate traffic, there are some long tail terms that can get you traffic. Try writing some articles on keywords "best mouse for photoshop", "best photoshop mouse", "magic mouse photoshop" or "mouse for photoshop" (Have these terms in title, headline and link them from homepage with this anchor text). Promote your app on these specific articles.
* Contact Smashing Magazine and other design magazines and offer them 3 free licenses to award to their readers.
* Tweet prominent designers to try out your app
* Landing page tip: show a small video demonstrating how to use your app and what results can be gotten.
Good luck with your initiative. Very excited to see this experiment.
Fab! This is the kind of feedback I am looking for. Will get in contact with you regarding a/b testing. Too bad I can't AB test pricing on the app store :)
Unless the unobstrusiveness is the main selling point, I would drop "A small unobtrusive app that allows you to" from the description and just go with "Achieve unrivaled precision with your mouse". You could list the fact that it is unobstrusive further below.
15.99 is too expensive, IMO, but I guess you can make that decision based on sales data. I would experiment with 4.99.
Something else a lot of people don't realize is that mouse acceleration is turned on in OSX and it's 'impossible' to disable without an app like USB Overdrive. Mouse accel is terrible for gaming -- especially FPS. I would add this feature to your product and call it out.
Having sold a SAAS app for far too little for far too long, I can tell you from my experience under pricing is a fast track to losing your hair and your shirt.
At $4.99 how many pre-sale/support emails are you willing to answer? At 4.99 how much marketing can you do? At 4.99 there's just not much room for profit assuming you have to do these tasks.
The reality is that as soon as someone opens their wallet and buys your software they think you're their bitch for life. They don't consider HOW much they paid, only that they paid.
Ironically, I've also found the people who want the app the most are:
As a software developer, I find it depressing that people would find 16$ (about 15 minutes of billable work?) too much for an application that, presumably, would be used all the time by people who need high precision pointing.
I think $15.99 could potentially be too cheap. There are a finite number of developers who actually pay for stuff. It would be an interesting experiment to raise the price up to $29.99 and see if the sales change.
With a higher price, you may be able to advertise in ways previously unthinkable because your margins will be so much higher on every sale.
Yes, I understand most people program games here, but this isn't a game. It is a tool, and Adobe has proven that people will pay a lot for a tool.
BTW, as far as competition is concerned, your primary competition is WACOM Tablets which are much, much better for editing than the mouse.
* I will concede that I do not know if it is too cheap or too expensive, but I will say that I have not read a valid argument on HN today that proves it is too expensive. I think it is just as valid to say it may be too cheap.
It got approved Thursday and I havent done anything before today. The latest numbers I can see is till the 9/11 and 5 people bought the app just by browning the app store.
We will see. Since I am the only one in this space as far as I can see I think my value is justified.
Here are a few more decision points to factor in for pricing:
1. It's not about building "how hard was it to make" directly into the price. The cost to build is a fixed cost and the selling price is marginal.
2. Neither is it about building "how much value does it add"
directly into the price. An example: light bulbs provide more value than the price at which they sell.
3. What it is about, is asking how many units could I move directly if I sold it at this price versus this price versus this price. And then asking how many units could I move indirectly as a second-order consequence of having moved so many units at such and such a price. Another small example: Thomas Edison sold his light bulbs at a loss for several years in order to sell more units, scale production efficiency and ultimately recoup those years of losses in a single year of tremendous volume.
4. This hints at something people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Sam Walton all discovered: it's better to charge less if you can sell more because there are more than first-order consequences involved. The idea applies to light bulbs, cars, retail. It sparked revolution in those industries and it will spark revolution in other industries which apply it. All industries are commodities, some industries have yet to recognize it.
Practically, price should be constantly decreasing.
Great app, but you need to drop the price to below $8 - I think this will help you maximise revenue. (based on my experience of having several top 50 apps on the mac app store over the past few months).
Good luck. A small comment: "precision speed" is a slightly misleading term, especially when combined with a percentage measurement."Mouse speed" or "Movement speed" or just "Precision" are best? If the latter, then you can just invert the bar (i.e. 100% precision is super slow movement). As it is now, without reading the description on the website there is no intuitive selection for the user (much as with your "key mode" drop down).
Agreed, especially since your slider uses a percentage value (what's 100% of speed?). If instead you used a label of 'Precision' like anateus suggested, or a similar word like Accuracy and your end values were 'High' and 'Low' that should make more sense.
2 CSS booboos:
- .main-description has 2 font-sizes, the second should be font-weight.
- in styles.css the images/line.png image returns a 404 on line 26.
nice app, I don't have a mac, but still impressive. btw, small idea: I got the idea of precision vs speed, just format it so that precision is on one end and speed is on the otherone
My two year old, $19, Microsoft mouse has already this with the software it come with. I don't mean to discourage you, but I think you spent more time on the design and execution than developing the software itself.
$19 is a lot of money for a simple thing like that. It's the price of a mouse + a software that customize many things for it (buttons, speed...). However, the niche is interesting. I'll be glad to pay $30 for a software that improves my mouse precision.
Mice come in classes as well. E.g., I use a 69 Euro Apple Magic Trackpad (and disliked plain-old mice ever since). Compared to the cost of a good trackpad it is not that expensive.
I personally don't need the added precision, but if I did, 20 dollars is not a lot for added productivity.
I think you were right on on the price, for a niche market like the one you are going after I think the price is perfect, someone that works every day would see as a minor investment to be more productive or have a more hassle free experience. Of course, you'll learn what the right price is with experience but I think you are off to a great start.
Have you at all checked if graphic designers need this sort of functionality? I tinker with pixel perfect designs quite extensively and zooming in is the way to get more precision out of mouse. Few designers on Dribbble posted videos showing how they work and this use pattern - zoom-in, tweak, zoom-out - is so engraved into their work style that I am having hard time imagining why they would switch. Also, consider the fact that even if the mouse is moving slower, the pixels are not getting bigger. In other words, increasing mouse precision does not remove the need for zooming in. Especially on larger screens.
So there you have it :) Great app, very well done website, but I think ultimately the niche is not just small, it is also very oddly shaped.
(edit) Perhaps repackaging the app and re-aiming it at gamers (as others suggested) would be a thing to try. Though on the other hand many gaming mice come with a hardware button toggling the deceleration.
There was a time a few years back where I put in a tremendous amount of time to locate a developer that could make a Mac OS X mouse drive.
Apparently, from talking to a few people, it is a hard thing to do.
I tried to buy USBoverdrive, as it is rather poorly supported, there are long standing repeatable bugs that support often times will not even reply to. It used to be bundled with MacAlly Mice.
I find the driver software for high end mouses to be terrible for your system, and often don't work well. For me, it is not about all the features, the buttons that you can define and macros.
I needed two features, one not as important, the other a must have.
Chording - it would be nice, not many think it can be done well. I tend to think it could be done well and someone should give it a try.
Where all mouse driver software stands still, and I wonder how you are working this out, is in the acceleration/ballistic curve.
I always wanted a way in USBoverdrive to hit a hot key and have a second definition of settings kick in so I could accomplish exactly what your app is doing.
However, without trying your app, I can't be sure it won't do anything more than just slow it down. Slowing it down is not all that there is to making this truly awesome.
Personally, I like to be able to move the mouse about an inch, maybe two, and have it travel the spam of ~24" display. But only if I do so rather fast. If I slow my movement down, I want to span a much lesser distance, with more precision. Current software on the market can't do this. You may get one aspect right, but end up with a mouse that is jittery and the smallest movement it can make is around 10px.
Or, you get it so that it will make a smooth 1px movement, but you have to pick up, place, drag, repeat... the actual mouse to ever get across the screen.
Is there any way to define this in your software? What curve are you using to change this? How in the heck were you able to access and over-ride Apple's built in mouse curve?
The tooltip on "Support" says "Got problems. We got solutions". You might want to turn that dot into a question mark. Also, the support page has 3 P in Support at the top
Handy, especially as I've moved to using touchpads most of the time. Seems like this should be a part of the OS itself. Site design is very clean.
Nitpicks:
- Web demo slider doesn't work in Safari 5.0.4, neither do any of the toggles, though cursor:pointer indicates that they should. Twitter dialog has a lower z-index than the precision slider handle.
- Why keep the strikethrough higher price? Seems to cheapen percieved value.
Nice website design and nice experiment. I hate to rain on the parade but most OS have implemented Precision Booster to exponentially slow down the mouse to allow precise control of the mouse pointer, and also they have implemented Mouse Keys to allow moving the pointer one pixel at a time by pressing keys.
Hopefully your app can create differentiation. Good luck.
+1 for the design and what everyone else have said. I would lower the price to something like £3 - £4 and don't create the illusion that the app has been discounted. It tells me you've tried to sell it and it didn't work. Now you're lowering the price creating an "Is the app any good?" mentality.
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
I would like to invite you to a little experiment.
I have created probably the smallest niche app on the mac app store and I would like you to help me sell and optimize the marketing around it.
Now you might think, "who does this guy think he is? – doesn't he know I have my own business to run?" and you are right it would be unfair to just ask you to help me market my product.
So instead I would like to offer you something in return:
Each month I am going to post all the numbers and the learnings. But more importantly each month you can post suggestions to improvements and strategies and each month those with the highest number of votes will get implemented (within reason of course)
It is my hope that this will be a case study for people to learn from before they venture out into spending money and time on something similar themselves or for people who find this stuff interesting.
The product is done in the spirit of the small butique network weekendhacker.net I started in May So far have +6100 members and have had 150 projects through and is still going strong. And the things I learned from members of the HN community have been invaluable.
Now this is of course just an experiment. Maybe I will break even, maybe I won't. Maybe I will have to cancel it within a couple of months. But none the less I am certain it will both be informative and fun.
Oh and yes you can move the slider on the webpage :)
So what do you think the first round of improvements should be?
[+] [-] spking|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyosity|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|14 years ago|reply
I'm curious, what support costs do you have that would require you to cancel?
[+] [-] duck|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timeuser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomlin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x12|14 years ago|reply
If you find that $16 is less than the value you'd extract from the app then you should probably buy it.
Of course he can lower the price later, just not all at once, but I'd be more interested in the same story at a different pricepoint with another useful app.
A couple of those and the data would become very valuable.
The fact that people are buying the app just by browsing the app store means that he's at least in the ballpark, the 'ideal' price is something that you can only determine experimentally, not by responding to whining about the price.
[+] [-] rhygar|14 years ago|reply
One can determine objectively whether something is overpriced based on comparisons with competing products.
[+] [-] xtracto|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paraschopra|14 years ago|reply
As for ideas, here are mine:
* If you want to generate traffic, there are some long tail terms that can get you traffic. Try writing some articles on keywords "best mouse for photoshop", "best photoshop mouse", "magic mouse photoshop" or "mouse for photoshop" (Have these terms in title, headline and link them from homepage with this anchor text). Promote your app on these specific articles.
* Contact Smashing Magazine and other design magazines and offer them 3 free licenses to award to their readers.
* Tweet prominent designers to try out your app
* Landing page tip: show a small video demonstrating how to use your app and what results can be gotten.
Good luck with your initiative. Very excited to see this experiment.
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielh|14 years ago|reply
Unless the unobstrusiveness is the main selling point, I would drop "A small unobtrusive app that allows you to" from the description and just go with "Achieve unrivaled precision with your mouse". You could list the fact that it is unobstrusive further below.
[+] [-] ssharp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarofgreen|14 years ago|reply
Feedback: Key mode 1 or 2? Whatever happened to nice labels that don't require looking up in a manual, like "hold" and "toggle"?
[+] [-] mrgoldenbrown|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
I figured since the app is so simple and there is practically no features I could get a way with the user figuring out how to use it.
If it gives problems I will change it. But so far those who have tried pretty quickly found out.
[+] [-] pxlpshr|14 years ago|reply
Something else a lot of people don't realize is that mouse acceleration is turned on in OSX and it's 'impossible' to disable without an app like USB Overdrive. Mouse accel is terrible for gaming -- especially FPS. I would add this feature to your product and call it out.
[+] [-] IanDrake|14 years ago|reply
At $4.99 how many pre-sale/support emails are you willing to answer? At 4.99 how much marketing can you do? At 4.99 there's just not much room for profit assuming you have to do these tasks.
The reality is that as soon as someone opens their wallet and buys your software they think you're their bitch for life. They don't consider HOW much they paid, only that they paid.
Ironically, I've also found the people who want the app the most are:
These are the people you want as customers.*Updated for formatting
[+] [-] roel_v|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtvanhest|14 years ago|reply
With a higher price, you may be able to advertise in ways previously unthinkable because your margins will be so much higher on every sale.
Yes, I understand most people program games here, but this isn't a game. It is a tool, and Adobe has proven that people will pay a lot for a tool.
BTW, as far as competition is concerned, your primary competition is WACOM Tablets which are much, much better for editing than the mouse.
* I will concede that I do not know if it is too cheap or too expensive, but I will say that I have not read a valid argument on HN today that proves it is too expensive. I think it is just as valid to say it may be too cheap.
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
We will see. Since I am the only one in this space as far as I can see I think my value is justified.
But it's as always up to the numbers.
[+] [-] _urga|14 years ago|reply
1. It's not about building "how hard was it to make" directly into the price. The cost to build is a fixed cost and the selling price is marginal.
2. Neither is it about building "how much value does it add" directly into the price. An example: light bulbs provide more value than the price at which they sell.
3. What it is about, is asking how many units could I move directly if I sold it at this price versus this price versus this price. And then asking how many units could I move indirectly as a second-order consequence of having moved so many units at such and such a price. Another small example: Thomas Edison sold his light bulbs at a loss for several years in order to sell more units, scale production efficiency and ultimately recoup those years of losses in a single year of tremendous volume.
4. This hints at something people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Sam Walton all discovered: it's better to charge less if you can sell more because there are more than first-order consequences involved. The idea applies to light bulbs, cars, retail. It sparked revolution in those industries and it will spark revolution in other industries which apply it. All industries are commodities, some industries have yet to recognize it.
Practically, price should be constantly decreasing.
[+] [-] mootothemax|14 years ago|reply
Out of interest, would you buy this right now if it was priced at $4.99?
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n9com|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anateus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dolinsky|14 years ago|reply
2 CSS booboos:
- .main-description has 2 font-sizes, the second should be font-weight.
- in styles.css the images/line.png image returns a 404 on line 26.
[+] [-] snowtiger|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhrosTT|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systemtrigger|14 years ago|reply
Tighten the headline: "Instantly change your mouse precision."
On the Support page: 1) respell "Suppport" 2) add a space to "FinalTouchsupport" 3) shorten "Adobe CS1 [...]" to "Adobe CS3+" and 4) drop the ".php"
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|14 years ago|reply
$19 is a lot of money for a simple thing like that. It's the price of a mouse + a software that customize many things for it (buttons, speed...). However, the niche is interesting. I'll be glad to pay $30 for a software that improves my mouse precision.
[+] [-] microtonal|14 years ago|reply
I personally don't need the added precision, but if I did, 20 dollars is not a lot for added productivity.
[+] [-] heelhook|14 years ago|reply
The design is, needless to say, stunning.
Kudos!
[+] [-] latitude|14 years ago|reply
So there you have it :) Great app, very well done website, but I think ultimately the niche is not just small, it is also very oddly shaped.
(edit) Perhaps repackaging the app and re-aiming it at gamers (as others suggested) would be a thing to try. Though on the other hand many gaming mice come with a hardware button toggling the deceleration.
[+] [-] biturd|14 years ago|reply
Apparently, from talking to a few people, it is a hard thing to do.
I tried to buy USBoverdrive, as it is rather poorly supported, there are long standing repeatable bugs that support often times will not even reply to. It used to be bundled with MacAlly Mice.
I find the driver software for high end mouses to be terrible for your system, and often don't work well. For me, it is not about all the features, the buttons that you can define and macros.
I needed two features, one not as important, the other a must have.
Chording - it would be nice, not many think it can be done well. I tend to think it could be done well and someone should give it a try.
Where all mouse driver software stands still, and I wonder how you are working this out, is in the acceleration/ballistic curve.
I always wanted a way in USBoverdrive to hit a hot key and have a second definition of settings kick in so I could accomplish exactly what your app is doing.
However, without trying your app, I can't be sure it won't do anything more than just slow it down. Slowing it down is not all that there is to making this truly awesome.
Personally, I like to be able to move the mouse about an inch, maybe two, and have it travel the spam of ~24" display. But only if I do so rather fast. If I slow my movement down, I want to span a much lesser distance, with more precision. Current software on the market can't do this. You may get one aspect right, but end up with a mouse that is jittery and the smallest movement it can make is around 10px.
Or, you get it so that it will make a smooth 1px movement, but you have to pick up, place, drag, repeat... the actual mouse to ever get across the screen.
Is there any way to define this in your software? What curve are you using to change this? How in the heck were you able to access and over-ride Apple's built in mouse curve?
[+] [-] ra|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elisee|14 years ago|reply
The tooltip on "Support" says "Got problems. We got solutions". You might want to turn that dot into a question mark. Also, the support page has 3 P in Support at the top
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] snsr|14 years ago|reply
Nitpicks:
- Web demo slider doesn't work in Safari 5.0.4, neither do any of the toggles, though cursor:pointer indicates that they should. Twitter dialog has a lower z-index than the precision slider handle.
- Why keep the strikethrough higher price? Seems to cheapen percieved value.
[+] [-] ww520|14 years ago|reply
Hopefully your app can create differentiation. Good luck.
[+] [-] xutopia|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conradr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyJPartridge|14 years ago|reply
Perhaps around $7.99, to make it £5 in the UK, more or less.
Fantastic idea, fantastic site. Well done.