One of the better things of been involved in an startup is the hundreds of crazy ideas you discuss every week. Normally, most of them are discarded in the first minute, but from time to time one of these ideas become "interesting" and the members of the team start to think that it's not so crazy and dedicate to it some exciting brainstormings. And just after this is the moment of truth: To decide. It's a crucial moment for a startup. You must to decide to change everything, stop the development of your product, or whatever in order to follow the new "crazy" idea. It's not easy to keep a cool head because the last weeks you've been discussing about the idea and the incredible revenue it will provide the company and how good and unique it is.  We lived this situation the last 3-4 weeks with one of these crazy ideas. Everything started reading a news about London tube during the Olympic games: Tube Stops named after Olympics athletes. We said, this is our chance, hundred of thousands tourists from many countries will be visiting London during the Games, so why not take advantage of it to show them our work. The idea was to develop " London Tube Olympic Games Special Edition".
It would be an Android app with the following features: - Free - Multilanguage (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) - Typical data of a transport app (Lines, Stops, etc...) - For each Stop we would provide details about the biography of the Athlete and a picture - Info about the different sport events places (how to arrive, etc...) Advantages: - Use the core of BilbaoBus, so we wouldn't need too much time to develop it. - A powerful Marketing tool for us. We think a lot of people would download it during the weeks of the event, so many people of different countries would know us. - Good for our portfolio. - Good position to raise a payment app for London tube after the games. Risks: - Redesign the graphics to become it an smart application. - Develop the product on time. The deadline in this case was clear: 27/07/12. - Use data feeds of Transport for London (TFL). We would need to develop a new feature of the app only to parse the info from TFL format to our format. - Stop our current work and delay other products we are working on. - And the most important one for us . Raise the app with the Quality that we demand to ourselves.Conclusion So, after think a lot about it and many discussion we decided that Discretion is the better part of valour. We love the idea but the deadline was very close and for us it's not a choice to raise an app in the market with the minimum warranties.
Is it an error? We never know.
Was it lost time? We don't think so, all these discussion help to the team. We are more focus now, even discarding the idea.
What do you think? How should an startup manage this kind of issues?
As we told in our March post about the release v.0.99.3 of BilbaoBus we've included an important (invisible) feature, Google Analytics, to learn more about the habits of our users and so be able to improve our app on that way. After two months in the market and more than 2500 active users we have got some lesson learned. In our last post we talked about the comments and rating of our users and how we try to take them into account for future improvements. Anyway, it's a reality that most of the users don't provide direct feedback but now thanks to Google Analytics we are receiving it anyway. We are working in the new release of BilbaoBus v0.99.4 (we hope to have it before the end of this month) and we are including some improvements based on analysis of Analytics data. What Analytics is telling us In the picture above we can find very interesting statistics. Let's discuss topic by topic. - 81.17% Returning Visitor. Very good news, it means that most of our users continue using the app and don't remove it after first testing. This number is quite aligned with our downloads vs active users.
- 7.04 pages/visit and Avg Visit 00:04:25.We need to check this more carefully. It looks like good news because the users spend more than 4 minutes each time they open the app. If they are looking for different stops and/or lines that's fine but if they spend all this time to find the info they need, we are in trouble. It won't take long until the users search for a new app. We have clear this is a "service" app, so the users only open it when they need the info regarding the buses, etc... So, it's mandatory to find it easy and fast. On the other hand it could be that our users like to check for different options or spend sometime "playing" with the app while they are waiting next bus (what means terrific news for us).
- Line Visits evolution. We started the first week with a big increment of the visits (this is due to the time spent by our user to upgrade the app to the version 0.99.3 that supported Analytics. The next 3 weeks we kept more or less the same visits and we had an increment the last month due to the more than 1000 downloads during April.
- Line Avg. Visits Duration evolution. The time spent by our users each time they open the app is ok. We think between 3-5 minutes is a good average. It should be enough time to find the info they need and check for other lines, read the news, etc...
This screen from Analytics is specially useful. It gives us at a glance how our users are navigating through the app. We've added the view of the home screen of the app in order to help you to understand the graphic. As you can see the name of the options are self-explanatory. - home. As normal most of the users go trough the home (we are trying to understand how is possible some users go directly to other section :-D). In this page the most important topic is that most of the users continue navigating. Only 12.8% (in red) drop off.
- lines. Most of the users like to go directly to check the line they need and once they get it go to Stopdetail (this is an screen that show details about the Stop, including timetable, next bus estimation, Streetview, etc...). After stopdetail only 5.66% of the users left the app. So, it seems they like to check of the lines.
- favorites. 15.3% of the traffic go directly to Favorites. To be honest we though more people would use it. Anyway if we check only the "Returning Visitors" the number of users that go to Favorites is a bit higher.
- goto. This is our STAR feature but it's not being used so much as we expected. We think it's due to most of the people that is using the app are from Bilbao so they have an idea where is the Stop or what is the Line they need. Anyway, we think that it will be a fantastic feature for big cities
- stops. Definitely, our users look more useful Line screen than Stops.
- news. 5% of the users are looking to the news. It make sense because we are only providing the info regarding BilboBus than normally are regarding changes in the service.
- other. The rest of pages of the app aren't almost visited. It's quite normal. One of them is the "Information" that shows Quoders information. Only 1.87% of the users navigate till Greentab screen where we show the CO2 info (we need to think if we remove this screen from the app or if we change it.).
Apart of this info in other graphs we found that most of the people is using Spanish (89%), 10% is using Euskera (Country Basque local language) and less than 1% english. (So, definitively not too much tourists are downloading our app :-( YET).
Conclusion
Returning to the begin of this post users continue providing us with very good feedback. They tell us what their favourite features are and how they want to use our app. After analyzing the info above we have to take some decisions about the improvements for the new release of BilbaoBus v0.99.4 (vs the current v.0.99.3). - Most of the users go from Lines to StopDetails page. We should think in a way to avoid this step to our users.
- Should we remove Greentab screen? Nobody is using it but at the sametime it's not disturbing anyone. So, what's the best choice?
- Is there some way we can get that Bilbao tourist have a look to our app?
As always your feedback will be more than welcome. Leave a comment or send us an email from our Contact webpage. In our next post we will provide you the first screens of the new release of BilbaoBus and the new features.
 On Nov 29, 2011 was released the first version beta of BilbaoBus, our first professional job (after our dear Archer Master). Many hours, efforts, discussions and pizzas were spent until we had it on the Market (yes, Google Play was known as Market yet :-P).In the last 5 months we have accumulated a lot of experiences and we would like to share them with you and as always receive feedback.
Statistics
Below you can find the evolution from Nov 29, 11 to Apr 29, 12. Total users vs active users. Daily and monthly installs.
At the first blush the numbers could seem not very significant but taking into account the market conditions we are very happy with the results and believe they are a great success.
When we uploaded BilbaoBus to the market it wasn't the first app for Bilbao Urban Transport. It even existed an official app from Bilbao Council (with more than 75.000 downloads) but the truth is that it wasn't a real app for Android (it was a Java app compatible, but not specific for any platform). Also, in January of this year the council raised an iPhone app.
Our budget for publicity was 0 €. It doesn't mean we didn't run marketing actions, on the contrary we did a very big effort in social networks and in the local media (in this case we didn't pressure to global Bloggers because our app was focus on local people and tourist).
Ok, let's go with statistics and discuss them below.
We can see in the charts above very interesting information. The line that shows the installations is quit straight, it means that daily installs are regular. Looking to the daily installs chart we see that it's not totally on that way. During the first 2 months we had significant differences. It's normal we hadn't too many installs during the 2-3 first weeks due to nobody knew us, our rate didn't exist yet and this kind of local transport app is quite specific, it's not like a game that 1 week later has been posted in China and USA blogs... Also, it's funny to see our download record on Jan 2. You are probably wondering what happened. We delayed a couple of days to discover it. We were stunned, how did we pass from 20-30 downloads to 100 during 2 days? Finally, a friend told us that a lot of people was talking about our app in the local newspaper. Our first question was Why? :-S As we said before Bilbao Council released an iPhone app and there was a news about that in the internet edition of the newspaper. Someone asked about an app for Android and "magic" a couple of people talked about our app with very good ratings. So, it's interesting to see how sometimes the competition helps you :-) The last three months we have more or less the same downloads. It looks like April wasn't so good as previous months but we should add the downloads from April 30 (out of scope of this study) that would help to be very close to 800 installs. Other statistics
 Installs by Android version  Installs by Mobile Device Android 2.3.3+ is the King yet. One of the interesting things looking at these numbers is that it looks like we are a bit behind the average in Spain regarding Android update version. For transport apps Android 2.2 is 9,41% while we are yet in 19,35%. And for version 4.0.x we are at 9,68% when the average in the world is 14,05%.
Regarding mobile devices Samsung Galaxy wins (3 between the 9 first).
User ratings
As we always say quality is a MUST, so everything below 5 stars is not acceptable for us. We focus in opinions with the poor ratings. Unfortunately, sometimes the users only select a low rate but they don't include any comment that give us a clue about the issue.
In this case we only had 1 comment from the 1 star rating. It was in Spanish but it said something like: "Bad bad bad. Buses time are wrong". Well, this is not exactly on this way. We show in the app the official times, so in the cases that a bus is under time we are not able to anticipate.
Many users have asked us about GPS connection. We are in touch with Bilbao urban transport company (Veolia) in order to get access to the GPS servers and provide real-time information but at this moment we are waiting an answer yet.
The rest of the people are happy with the app and they congratulate and encourage us to release new versions.
Milestones
- Nov 29, 2011 BilbaoBus Golive (3 downloads :-P)
- Dec 29, 2011 515 total installs
- Jan 02, 2012 109 installs in one day (record)
- Jan 10, 2012 1008 total installs
- Feb 15, 2012 2003 total installs
- Mar 08, 2012 Last Release v0.99.3
- Mar 22, 2012 2999 total installs
- Mar 26, 2012 Interview in RadioEuskadi (important local radio)
- Apr 15, 2012 Posted in Caverna Cibernetica (important local blog)
- Apr 29, 2012 Over 4000 downloads :-D
Conclusion After 5 months, 4060 downloads, 3 releases these are our thoughts; - It was a good idea releasing BilbaoBus as free app. The feedback provided by our users will be more useful than all money we could get. Our app is now much better than 5 months ago and it will be a lot better in the future thanks to users feedback and our own experience.
- It's a MUST to listen the users, they are the best to tell us what they need.
- Raise often releases is a good idea, the users feel comfortable with continuous improvements. It generates more traffic and downloads.
- A good rating is the key. We escalated to the first positions thanks to user ratings and at this moment our app is the number one for Bilbao for local transport.
- Internet provides options that were very difficult (almost impossible) a few years ago. Now, you can contact directly with bloggers, journalists, etc... If you provide them a good story they will be happy to help you for free. We sent several mails explaining clearly what we did, how we did it, which were our objectives... and of course a lot of them didn't answer us but two (very important) did and we could talk about BilbaoBus in the most important local radio in Country Basque and in a technology blog of a very important local newspaper.
And that's all for the moment we hope don't bother you with so many data. In our next Post we will explain our lessons learned after including Google Analytics in the last version of BilbaoBus.
 New BilbaoBus app v0.99.3 Beta This new version contains some interesting and (most important) useful features... and the answer to the question you have in your head right now is YES, IT'S FREE ;-)
In Quoders we are obsessed with the quality and design, for that reason our developers take advantage of each opportunity with a new release to improve the design, so we have included new improvements in the graphic interface of this version.
Also, we have developed a new functionality that we are sure will be very useful for our users.
It consists of a News service from Bilbao Council (BilboBus) through RSS.
 RSS feeds from BilboBus Every news regarding change of lines, street cuts, etc... are available for our users in real-time providing a more complete service from BilbaoBus app. And that's all? NO.There's other important improvement that can't be watched by our users but will be very important for future releases of BilbaoBus. We have also added a new feature: Google Analytics. It will provide us with information about the app, what are the most interesting features for our users, etc... In a few days we will provide details of this new feature and how is working this new release in the market. We are very interesting in your feedback, so please don't hesitate to contact us.
We have a new colleague onboard. He is Alejandro Orviz (an old friend). A few weeks ago some friends were talking about Quoders and our next steps. Alejandro was very excited about our ideas and join a project based overall on the quality. One day later he asked us about the chance to join Quoders and after a big discussion of about five minutes we decided to tell him: Welcome to the team ;-) Alejandro has an strong resume. He's being working in IT sector for 13 years (doing everything). The last 6 years has been involved on International projects as PM. He will be taking care of different aspects of the company like strategy, customer relationship and funding.
It's been two months since the last post so we'd like to give you a quick update on the latest happenings.
 We've released our first "serious" app for Android: BilbaoBus. This project was born because we love public transit and we think it's the most sustainable way of moving within a city. However, after having a look at the existing public transit apps for the city of Bilbao, we found that most of them were way too complicated to use. As passenger, my first and foremost problem is: "I'm here and I want to go there, show me how". The available apps didn't solve this question effectively. Here's where everything started out. The first milestone we set was coming up with an algorithm to calculate routes using public transit. This was the feature that we missed the most in the existing apps. Once we had developed a good solution, we thought it would be useful to add more stuff: lines, schedules, CO2, streetView... and then we ended up with an standalone app. Despite the project was still unfinished, we thought that "ship early, ship often" must be the way to go, so we let the app see the light as Beta. However, we're still halfway. We've got a bunch of ideas we haven't included, the user interface is rather spartan, neither tram nor subway are supported yet, etc. So we plan to invest more time on the project because our ultimate goal is to create the best public transit app. Now it's time to listen to users and get as much feedback as we can.
 Regarding to Archer Master, we had to postpone the second version while we were working on BilbaoBus. Furthermore, we weren't completely satisfied with the new scenarios we were designing so we decided to take a break, let our brains rest and make some room for fresh ideas. In terms of downloads, we've got around 2000 per month from the Android Market and, so far, the total number reaches 12500. To the previous figures we've got to add the "unofficial" appstores, forums, etc, so we estimate 20K-25K downloads overall. With regard to revenue, unfortunately we've lost all data because our Admob account was closed by Google. On November 2nd we received the following message: "Your account has been disabled for invalid activity or repeated policy violations. Some examples include recurring manual clicks or impressions, violation of our content policies which can be found here, robots, automated click and impression generating tools, third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as pay-to-click, pay-to-surf, autosurf, and click-exchange programs, or any deceptive software. If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information here."We think it's been due to the bonus screen we introduced in 1.0.1 version. Truth is that the bonus feature was performing pretty well: generated revenue by 1.0.1 version was five times higher than the previous one. Honestly, we knew we were walking on thin ice so the account closure wasn't totally unexpected. However, in our humble opinion, exchanging points by clicks is at least as fraudulent as placing ads strategically to provoke accidental clicks. The latter it's done by many famous games that are even marketed by Google as an example of spotless advertising integration. Anyway, this is nothing but a tantrum. We're not considering suing Google yet :) We've learnt the lesson the hard way and now it's time to look ahead and come up with a different approach. That's all for now. We'll keep reporting regularly in this blog.
Marketing Plan for Week #12
After checking the project backlog, we're officially behind schedule. As a result, next version of the game is going to delay till at least mid November. The main reason is that we're involved in another time-consuming project we can't abandon right now. Notwithstanding, we'll push as hard as we can to launch new stuff ASAP.
Statistics
1. Downloads. This split bar chart shows downloads per week.
2. Ad Requests. The game is supported by ads ( AdMob) so each time you enter the game or play a level, some ads are shown. The following chart shows how many ad requests Archer Master has made to Admob servers. It’s a good indicator to know how many people are playing the game. 3. Ad Clicks. This graph shows how many times ads were clicked.
4. Revenue.
Conclusion:- The Google's bug we mentioned in the last report has already been fixed so we've updated the last week data.
- With regard to downloads and revenue, the situation seems to improve slightly, but when it comes to the rest of the parameters everything remains steady. At this point we must admit that we're pleasantly surprised because, after eight weeks without new content, we expected to be a little bit worse. In a sense, it feels as if the game promotes itself.
- We're considering moving from weekly to monthly reports because currently there's not enough activity to support a weekly update. The plan is back to the usual frequency once we launch the new version.
So, next update on stats will be published in early November but, in the meantime, drop by this blog from time to time, because we will unveil some details of the next Archer Master.
Marketing Plan for Week #11
We continue putting all our efforts and time into creating new levels with new scenarios and challenges.
Statistics
1. Downloads. This split bar chart shows downloads per week.
Marketing Plan for Week #10
Just working on the new version.
Statistics
1. Downloads. This split bar chart shows downloads per week.
Marketing Plan for Week #9
Nothing remarkable...still working on the next version.
Statistics
1. Downloads. This split bar chart shows downloads per week.
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