Greener Pastures in the App Store
Monday night I finally decided to pull the trigger on a decision I’ve been debating for quite some time. I moved Gas Cubby from the Utilities category to Productivity.
As the App Store grows, the “Top Paid” list (the top 100 apps by sales volume) in each category has become crowded with various levels of crap, soft porn, and cheap apps. I don’t know the exact number, but when Gas Cubby first launched in November of 2008, the Utilities category had less than 1k apps. Now it’s overrun with almost 10k.
The problem with the Utilities category is that most of the apps in the category, especially the popular apps, are priced at $1.99 or $0.99. That makes it difficult for an app like Gas Cubby ($6.99) to stay in the top 100 of the category even though it’s one of the top 20 grossing apps in the category.
Apple doesn’t display category specific Top Grossing lists (the top 100 apps by revenue) publicly in the App Store, but it’s easy to see them using an app like MajicRank, or with a bit of URL hackery. Here are several links to category specific Top Grossing lists (links work on the iPhone and desktop):
Productivity: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?id=25244&popId=38
Utilities: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?id=25284&popId=38
Finance: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?id=25172&popId=38
Now that Gas Cubby is in Productivity and showing up in both the Top Paid and Top Grossing lists of the new category, I have a few interesting data points to analyze. Monday night Gas Cubby was #75 on the Top Paid list and #19 on the Top Grossing list in Utilities. This morning, Gas Cubby debuted at #32 on the Top Paid list and #15 on the Top Grossing list in Productivity.
I had assumed that the sales volume in the Productivity category was going to be lower, but I was just hoping to break the top 50 and didn’t expect Gas Cubby to land so high on the Top Paid list. It’s also interesting to see the disparity between the Top Paid and Top Grossing lists for each category. Having only moved up a few spots from one Top Grossing list to the other, it appears that the top apps in both categories generate roughly the same revenue even though the Utilities category does significantly more volume.
Being able to analyze the Top Grossing list and compare relative position with my competitors has had a huge impact on my decision making process. In the past, I would freak out and drop the price or take some other drastic action any time Gas Cubby started sliding in the charts. But since Apple first introduced the Top Grossing lists in September 2009, Gas Cubby has been grossing significantly more than any of its competitors and has spent most of its time as a top 20 grossing app in Utilties. That extra bit of data has given me the confidence to ride out some of the scarier days aboard the App Store roller coaster. Even so, the App Store is all about visibility and I’ve been wondering what a new category might do for Gas Cubby.
Moving from #75 to #32 on a Top Paid list should give Gas Cubby more visibility, but it’s hard to tell without knowing much about App Store shopping patterns. Do more shoppers view the Utilities category than the Productivity category? The overall Top Paid list has been proven to drive significant sales, do shoppers even spend much time looking through the Top Paid list in each category? How much does being “above the fold” (first 25 apps on the iPhone App Store, depends on window sizing for the iTunes App Store) impact sales?
It’s obvious why Apple can’t allow developers access to raw App Store traffic and sales logs, but I do wish they would give us a glimpse into our own presence on the App Store (like how many users view our App Store listing each day and whether it was on the iPhone or in iTunes). As a developer I’m doing everything I can to “read the tea leaves” and optimize my position in the App Store. With access to so much more data, I sure hope Apple is working hard to improve the shopping experience for users AND optimize business opportunities for developers. Every time there is an Apple event looming, I get my hopes up that the App Store (and iTunes Connect) will get some love, but progress with the App Store has been slow… slow, but steady.
