Author Archives: Alwin

Trying to get my Android apps live on Kindle Fire

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The Kindle Fire is live and it’s a huge success. Even before launch, it was clear that this would be a hit, an Android tablet device at this price point, coming from Amazon.

I figured this could be a nice extra channel to sell our existing Android apps.
About a month ago, as a test, we created a special build of our CLZ Movies app and submitted it to the Amazon Appstore for review. Approval took 2 weeks, but it got approved in one go. So we quickly prepared builds of our other 4 apps and submitted them too, hoping to get them all live before the launch of the Kindle Fire on November 15. We just missed that deadline, but still, on November 17 we received the OK on the other 4 as well.

After which I proudly announced to my Facebook fans that our Android apps were now available for the new Kindle Fire. Some customers had been asking about apps for Kindle Fire, so I told our support guys that they could tell them the happy news.
In the meantime, we had already sold some copies of CLZ Movies through the Amazon Appstore, so things were looking good. Continue reading →

Adwords tip: check the Geographic report

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I have written about the importance of running your Adwords Geographic reports before, but in the meantime checking your geographic performance has become much easier, so let’s look at this again.

Nowadays, to view your campaign performance (impression, clicks, conversions) by country, you can just go to the Dimensions tab in your Adwords online interface and select GeoGraphic from the View list on the top left. Make sure to select a date range long enough to have substantial data (say the past 3 months). Continue reading →

Fighting the App Store Attitude, or: how to get users to “ask for help” again.

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This week, in my post What happened to “asking for help”?, I wondered about a trend I was seeing regarding the user attitude in case of software problems. A short summary:

10 years ago, when users ran into a software problem, they just contacted the developer for help, resulting in a useful conversation where the user got his problem solved and the developer got useful information about possible bugs.

However, nowadays a user is more likely to just complain about the problem in a public place like Facebook, Twitter, the App Store or the Android Market. No request for help, no conversation and therefore: no solution. Continue reading →

Drinks are on me at the ESWC pre-event meeting

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In the weekend of November 19 and 20, the 11th annual European Software Conference (ESWC) will be held at the DoubleTree hotel in London.

My company Collectorz.com will sponsor the pre-event meeting on November 18 in BAR92 at the conference hotel. So if you will be attending the ESWC come say hi and have a couple of drinks on me.

BTW: I will also be speaking on the first conference day, at 1:15 PM. My topic:

How to sell more stuff to your existing customers

Attracting and converting new visitors is very important, we all know that. But don’t ignore your existing customers. There’s good money to be made selling more stuff to people who already purchased from you before.
This session will focus on cross- and up-selling to existing customers, using email campaigns, newsletters, auto-responders, Facebook, Twitter, etc…

See you there!

What happened to “asking for help”?

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In the early days, when a user of my program ran into a problem, he/she just contacted me to ask for help. Resulting in a nice and friendly conversation, where I would ask questions, and the user would provide more detailed information.
Ultimately, in most cases, resulting in a satisfying outcome, either me helping the user use the software, or the user helping me fix a bug. Nice, fruitful, effective …

However, here’s what we’re seeing more and more nowadays, especially for our mobile apps, but it’s becoming more common for our desktop apps too:

A user runs into a problem, and instead of asking for help, immediately jumps to complaining about it in a public place like the App Store, the Android Market, Facebook or Twitter. Just stating the problem… no request for help, no conversation and therefore in most cases: no solution. Continue reading →

Android app sales still lagging behind

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About a year ago, I already wondered: Is there a market for Android apps?
The conclusion at the time:
“Yes, there is, but it’s still much smaller than the market for iOS apps.”

Since then, the marketshare of Android devices sold has become much larger. Here’s a chart from a June 2011 article about the worldwide smartphone marketshare:
Worldwide Smartphone Market Shares
See the steady light-blue diamond line (iPhone) and the purple dotted line (Android)? A more recent article at the Android Authority site indicates that the Android Marketshare is now at 42%, vs 27% for iPhone.

It looks like Android is growing fast and has gone way past the iPhone. That is, in terms of devices sold. But how does the increasing Android device marketshare translate to actual sales of Android apps?
Let’s look at the Collectorz.com numbers again. Continue reading →

Speaking at ESWC 2011: How to sell more stuff to your existing customers

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I will be speaking at the ESWC 2011, held on November 19/20 in London.
This time my talk won’t be about A/B testing, traffic or conversion.
Instead, I will be speaking about something that has become more and important for Collectorz.com. And which IMO should just as important for any software company that has been around for a while:

How to sell more stuff to your existing customers

Abstract:

Attracting and converting new visitors is very important, we all know that. But don’t ignore your existing customers. There’s good money to be made selling more stuff to people who already purchased from you before.
This session will focus on cross- and up-selling to existing customers, using email campaigns, newsletters, auto-responders, Facebook, Twitter, etc…

See you in London!

Looking for a Mac OS X developer

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Mac DeveloperAt Collectorz.com, we’re working on a new Mac edition of our Comic Collector software, and on major upgrades of the existing Mac editions of Movie, Book and Music Collector.

There are all huge projects and we need more help. So we are currently looking for an extra Mac OS X developer.
Are you experienced in Mac OS X programming, OR a smart programmer interested in Mac development? Then read on… Continue reading →

Collectorz.com acquires long-time competitor CD Trustee

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For immediate release:
Collectorz.com, a company specialized in multi-platform cataloging software for music, movies, books, comic books and video games, has acquired long-time competitor CD Trustee, a CD cataloging program created by Mike Paulick.

The purchase includes all rights to the CD Trustee software, the domain base40.com (former home of CD Trustee) and the CD Trustee customer database. With this acquisition, Collectorz.com is strengthening its position in the CD cataloging market.

Continue reading →