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- Apr 7, 2013
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Hey all,
this weekend my app project suddenly went up to the top100 section of the Dutch AppStore. The cause of it was an app review on a leading iPhone website. I was out, and asleep when it happened. And since the website never contacted me, I had no idea of the massive trouble heading my way. After a very stressful weekend of server patching, reading 1 star reviews and generally no sleep, it's time to reflect:
My lessons learned:
• The servers stopped working, but kept accepting connections. As a result there was no message to inform users that they should try another time, or that the service would be slow. Until I discovered the server was misbehaving, there already have been hundreds of downloads. Potential evangelists have been lost, which could have been avoided with a simple alert screen.
• The server stopped because I implemented a new database connection technology the night before. I had old versions of the server ready just in case. The lesson here, keep backups around and ready.
• Don't rush your patching. Its horrible to see your log come by with tons of errors, and user sessions failing. But a hot patch has the potential to do more damage. Imagine when your app is not working, a user uses it again after a few hours, only to see it crash in a new screen. I started with very quick patch updates, before I rerolled the server. It just made everything worse, chaotic, and out of control.
• Some of the problems in the app where also caused because I failed to properly check the last submitted version. I figured everything would be fine, as the last patch was a simple bug fix. But somehow that fix cascaded down to the onboarding process and messed it up. I now have a checklist for everything that needs to be checked, before I can submit a new version, and its hanging next to my desk as a grim reminder
• I immediatly started tracking social media, and replied to tweets and comments made on the internet. Disgruntled users can be very understanding as soon as they know the context of what went wrong.
• Always test market a digital/server product on a small market. I'm happy this happened in the Netherlands, where everything is manageable. If a similar event would have appeared in a larger market, I wouldn't not have been able to cope and turn things around.
Now the good news!
Plenty of people seem to be coming back to check if the app might work. And it does! I expect that I can still salvage some of the users, and give them a valuable experience
I know some statistics that I need to rank in the app store, so I can start marketing more effectively.
These where my lessons learned, I hope they will benefit some of you
this weekend my app project suddenly went up to the top100 section of the Dutch AppStore. The cause of it was an app review on a leading iPhone website. I was out, and asleep when it happened. And since the website never contacted me, I had no idea of the massive trouble heading my way. After a very stressful weekend of server patching, reading 1 star reviews and generally no sleep, it's time to reflect:
My lessons learned:
• The servers stopped working, but kept accepting connections. As a result there was no message to inform users that they should try another time, or that the service would be slow. Until I discovered the server was misbehaving, there already have been hundreds of downloads. Potential evangelists have been lost, which could have been avoided with a simple alert screen.
• The server stopped because I implemented a new database connection technology the night before. I had old versions of the server ready just in case. The lesson here, keep backups around and ready.
• Don't rush your patching. Its horrible to see your log come by with tons of errors, and user sessions failing. But a hot patch has the potential to do more damage. Imagine when your app is not working, a user uses it again after a few hours, only to see it crash in a new screen. I started with very quick patch updates, before I rerolled the server. It just made everything worse, chaotic, and out of control.
• Some of the problems in the app where also caused because I failed to properly check the last submitted version. I figured everything would be fine, as the last patch was a simple bug fix. But somehow that fix cascaded down to the onboarding process and messed it up. I now have a checklist for everything that needs to be checked, before I can submit a new version, and its hanging next to my desk as a grim reminder
• I immediatly started tracking social media, and replied to tweets and comments made on the internet. Disgruntled users can be very understanding as soon as they know the context of what went wrong.
• Always test market a digital/server product on a small market. I'm happy this happened in the Netherlands, where everything is manageable. If a similar event would have appeared in a larger market, I wouldn't not have been able to cope and turn things around.
Now the good news!
Plenty of people seem to be coming back to check if the app might work. And it does! I expect that I can still salvage some of the users, and give them a valuable experience
I know some statistics that I need to rank in the app store, so I can start marketing more effectively.
These where my lessons learned, I hope they will benefit some of you
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