Article:
”Hacking the iPhone App Store’s Ranking Algorithm”

They seem to have a really good handle on what’s going on and I guess it’s really easy to pull statistics and trends from hundreds and thousands of downloads but what I’d really like to know is how to market an iPhone app that is non-viral. ie: Project management apps like our ProWorkflow iPhone app.

We’re doing ok and there have been thousands of downloads, but I want to find out more about marketing lower traffic but more commercial applications through the App Store. Let me know your thoughts and I’ll compile a blog post abut it.

In the meantime here’s the SlideShare presentation from ReadWriteWeb. It’s a good read and great analysis.

No huge scoping documents, documentation, peer reviews, industry research, tight visuals or anything! No large teams of usability experts or developers – just two hardworking bootstrappers (working remotely from each other) with a loose idea, a few pencil sketches, and understanding partners who let us work all hours to turn the idea into what is now the ProWorkflow project management solution. A world class tool managing huge amounts of customer info globally.

We’re now a tight team managing critical info daily for thousands of people worldwide. They depend on us to deliver results daily and we do. They expect the solution to work reliably daily and it does. We deliver the goods and have done for years.

Below are some of the original design sketches sent to Alan to work on. We just communicated lots, built the app and then started to build a business!

Now we have:

• Thousands of users globally
• 629,022 projects created
• 2,620,234 tasks created
• 9,349,890 hours tracked
• $301,762,038 has been invoiced through ProWorkflow
  (Note: these are from live accounts and don’t include trials)
• An awesome team in 2x offices
• A pile of servers
• An iPhone App (One of the top in our industry)
• Time Tracking Widget
• Integration with Xero, QuickBooks and Kashflow
• 3x plans for different account sizes
• Support, Help site, Videos, Blog etc
• A professional and robust API
• Most backend systems we have built and automated (including multicurrency recurring account billing)

This post should also be a little encouragement to people that you can build a world class solution and business from nothing. We did this with no debt or funding – only sweat equity! Just some smarts and hard work.
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Collaboration Concept:

The basic idea behind ProWorkflow is that Staff, Clients, and Contractors can login to one place, see their work and all work on the same page. Essentially all working on the same project together.

The ProWorkflow tool makes sure all the permissions are under control so people only see what they need to see and can only access what they need to access.

We manage project in 2 screens when most other solutions take up to 10+ screens to do the same thing! Here’s a few of my early sketches to figure our our core process/permissions model.

The first Visuals!

Below are some of the very first ProWorkflow visuals as supplied to Alan (Cofounder) to develop.

Job (Project) Page:

This is the original ‘Projects Page’. Pretty loose visual, but it’s quite funny seeing that we used to have the navigation on the right. It’s all a heap more professional and powerful now.

Job (Project) Details:

In the original version you would expand the Job to see the details. Nowadays we click through to a new ‘Project Details Page’. This old version was pretty basic.

Timesheet Page:

This is still pretty much the same concept so I think it must be time to rethink this page using some new technology available.

Contacts Page:

This has been extended somewhat…

Notes Page:

Pretty simple really. Not much to say here…

Calendar Page:
And my all time favourite development visual – the ‘Calendar page’. Brilliant! The developer (Alan) must have loved me for sending this brief. I think developers must have great patience at times to put up with designers like me  ;-).  Sheeesh!

I’ll see what else we can find in the cupboard from the ‘early days’ that can be blogged. Possibly real screenshots of version 1.0?

I do realise that not everyone hangs on everything I have to say, but for those out these who leap out of bed in the morning just to hear my thoughts on things, here’s your very own “Julian101 iPhone app!”

Keep me in your pocket! Show me to your friends (and followers)! And let me keep you updated with my latest ramblings! I’ll be sharing thoughts on business, design, creativity and to be honest, whatever comes to mind!

Download Now!

Am I right in assuming that monthly…

• 200,000,000 downloads p/m x 1/4 = 50,000,000 paid downloads
• 50,000,000 paid downloads x Av $2.59 = $129,500,000 Income
• $129,500,000 x 70% = $90,650,000 Income to Developers
• $90,650,000 Income to Developers / 28,000 Developers equals…
• Total: $3,237 per Developer
• = $38,850 per year!

I’m not going to make any conclusions here but am keen to hear what other people think of this. Is that level of average revenue enticing enough to make writing iPhone App’s worthwhile? Would you quit your development job yet to develop iPhone apps?

Remember I’m talking here about average apps, not the odd successful iPhone apps that sell millions… Like this, this and this.

Awesome! After about 6 months hard work and testing, the ProWorkflow native iPhone app is now live and available in the iPhone App Store!

I’m really proud of our ProWorkflow team and the dev team at Curious Media. Curious Media are PWF customers that developed the app in conjunction with the PWF guys. They all put in solid effort to plan, design, develop, test and document this app.

The iPhone app will add some awesome value to our user base and extend the ProWorkflow application’s use past the desktop to anywhere people are connected! This is a first release so we’ll be looking for feedback to develop the solution further.

Although there was significant cost to develop, we have decided to make this app free so it’s easy to download and deploy for all ProWorkflow users and their staff.

Richard has added an iPhone App section to our Help Center to help users get the iPhone app up and running.

Make sure you spread the word! Tell your workmates, friends, colleagues, business contacts, clients, contractors and anyone you can think of!

Download Now!

The Duct Tape Programmer

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html 
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It’s basically saying don’t worry too much about the polish on your code or getting it 100%, just ship it! I talk to other software co’s that get so wound up in perfecting technology that they never get their releases to the customers.

At ProWorkflow, of course we’re always trying to improve technology and programming – that’s just ongoing, but we do ship, and often! We roll out updates about every 1-2 weeks. They contain a mix of fixes and functionality, but the fact is they’re rolled out and the customers benefit.

All functionality updates are posted about on the blog here: http://www.proworkflowblog.com

Back to the the article though, there were a couple of paragraphs that really stood out.  Check out these:

“Yeah,” he says, “At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”

and…

“A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.”

So true! Our Chairman reminds us of the latter on a regular basis. So Ship people, ship, ship, ship!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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He’s right though. We operate a leading project management software company – www.proworkflow.com. We’ve been around since 2002 and have seen a few things over that time. The most obvious is the natural shift from a ‘Code Selling’ model to a ‘Subscription/SaaS’. I say a ‘NATURAL’ shift because over the past 4 years we’ve been marketing a single solution with both code download and subscription option.

When we began, we only offered the code download option, and listed in many code libraries. 2 years later, we started the subscription offering (SaaS/Software as a Service). At no point did we ever really push the deployment option as a marketing angle. Simply put, our approach has always been that we have a solution, and customers can either download locally or host with us on subscription. It’s their choice – not us pushing.

Admittedly, the past 6 months our focus is leaning towards the idea of a full subscription model, but only because the ‘Code Download’ option has declined to the point that it’s obvious it’s a trend. We want to invest our efforts where the best return is for ourselves and the customers.

“So we’re not forcing subscriptions, rather the customers are now ‘preferring’ that option
- This marks a change in businesses perception of SaaS as a viable and credible option”

At our company, ProActive Software (www.proworkflow.com) code sales these days are nearly non existent as users are looking for SaaS solutions so they can outsource the maintenance aspect of their core software (They just want to use it – not have tech/IT hassles). It may cost them a little more in the long term for SaaS solutions, but we’re finding that in this economy businesses don’t have large piles of cash for traditional perpetual license purchases. They are looking at their cash flow and budgets monthly rather than annually. The Subscription/SaaS model suits this as it’s typically a low monthly price, and they can have the flexibility to leave at any time.

Some software co’s may say “flexibility to leave at any time” is a bad thing, however the opposite is true. SaaS companies must perform, deliver and support at a high standard if they are to keep their customers. This adds value to the customer as it’s not a purchase, but an ongoing relationship with the SaaS co.

Support is better, more proactive. Updates are delivered faster. The feedback loop from customer to developers is closed and all customers start to work on the central solution with a couple of common goals.

Customers – Make suggestions to the software company so the solution will work better for them

SaaS Company – Works hard with customers to perfect the app and systems so they can reduce support load and increase customer satisfaction.

So what’s the difference in regards to the software company making money?

With traditional software solutions (perpetual licensing), the software company would need to make double the sales to double their revenue.

With SaaS companies, the software company only needs to hold onto the customer for twice as long to double their revenue.

And we all know it’s a lot easier to retain a customer than to find a new one! So to put it very simply, With SaaS, the software company MUST satisfy it’s customers not just once, but continually to succeed. And that has to be good for the customers!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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However, times and technology have changed – we develop all code to a high current standard, however, some older code in the application is being rewritten or optimized to perform better or to take advantage of new technologies.

Over the next month or two we’re focusing on speed and performance! We’ve just released the first maintenance update last Friday. This was rolled out to all subscription accounts seamlessly over the weekend with the new ProWorkflow v6.3 update. You should notice it’s running faster already! Below is a list of the speed enhancements in this update.

Optimized code on these pages
The  following pages have had code rewritten to remove spacer GIF’s, make better use of CSS, or to remove/trim old code. Over time we’ll work through the entire application.

    – Invoices Page (& Past Invoices)
    – Quotes Page (& Past Quotes)
    – Projects Page
    – Tasks Page
    – Invoices Page (& Past Invoices)

Improved the Audit Log
More events have been added to the Audit Log. We’ll continue to add further events with each update.

Improved Calendar Loading
The way the small sidebar calendar loaded used to slow down the page redraw as it was processing ALL tasks prior to displaying. We’ve changed this so the whole page loads, and THEN the calendar loads. Sounds trivial, but makes a huge difference!

Added a ‘Live Alerts’ notifier
Although there is currently a ‘ProWorkflow Updates’ blog built in, it wasn’t prominent enough, so many users would miss important updates, ie: Scheduled Maintenance Downtime’. We wanted to improve communication between users and the ProWorkflow team. So we’ve now added an extra ‘ProWorkflow Updates’ bar that appears at the very top of the screen ONLY for the ProWorkflow Updates we flag with the ‘Show In Header’ option. So if we need to let users know about a maintenance period or important update, we can do this easily. 

Added a new ‘Tasks Archive’ page
Most users have huge tasks pages. At the base of this page is the ‘Task Archive’ which actually slows down the page loading speed. This has been separated out to a new page called the ‘Tasks Archive’.

Added ‘Shared Images’ directory
Each account is currently a separate installation on the server and it has it’s own “/Nav_images/” directory. Every account has a copy of this same images directory. We’ve now pulled out all the generic images, ie: buttons, nav icons etc into one shared directory which all accounts access. This account’s images are cached on the server. This means when these graphics load in the application they’re already cached – so load very fast!

Added a ‘Speed Tips’ link in the header
We’ve added a new link in the header called ‘Speed Tips’. Clicking this will slide down a panel with tips specific to your login view only. These are just tips to fine tune your ‘Personal Settings’ to increase speed. ie: Clearing Updates and Alerts regularly, Hiding the small sidebar calendar under the left nav etc.

Introduced server caching for static data/images
Previously, images and static data would be cached according to your browser settings. This has been changed so that common images and static interface parts will be held in cache on the server. This makes a huge difference in page loading speed!

Server optimization for better performance
The developers have been monitoring and adjusting settings in ColdFusion, SQL and IIS on the servers to minimize heavy and repeat processing issues.

So what’s next?
Heaps! But the next key areas we’re working on now are:

- Project Details Page (Optimizing the code)
- Optimizing other pages throughout
- Upgrading all servers to  the latest ColdFusion 8 (Huge speed increase)
- Eliminating page refreshes
- Easier creating/editing of projects, tasks and time

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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We’ve recently been working on a QuickBooks (http://quickbooks.intuit.com) integration to do virtually the same function. Whilst QuickBooks is a great application and has high adoption, I have to be honest and say the integration wasn’t that easy. It’s taken about 2 months and we’re nearly there but keep encountering small, odd complexities. It should be ready very soon though.

Going back to XERO though, this is a whole different game. I personally signed up and have been going thorough the solution. It’s looking very promising and QuickBooks should be watching their backs – XERO are doing a nice job of reinventing accounting. There are pro’s and cons to a web based approach, just like there are to a client side app, but personally I prefer web based and portable.

On the API front though, it took weeks to suss out QuickBooks, but our developer had integration with XERO sorted within a few hours with data moving back and forth. He told us it was a piece of cake. So I wanted to say a big thumbs up to the dev team at XERO for the really easy API – It’s much appreciated!  Here’s a comment from our developer:

“Working with the XERO Network API was a great experience because of its simplicity in the integration compared to some other Accounting packages around.

I am very impressed with the guys at XERO on how they have created their Network API that allows partners to integrate smoothly without any problems. It basically requires a simple line of code to transfer to and from XERO. Out of all my experience in integration with outside applications, XERO is one of my favourites!

Great Stuff!!” – Vishal (Senior Developer)

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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