Eric Ries was a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He shares some of the challenges you will face when you make your game available for retail download at the Apple Store or another game portal.
I’ve also been playing around with the App Store. From a technical point of view, it’s amazing. You just install app after app after app, and it just works…
But from a customer experience point of view, I’m not yet sold. Figuring out which apps are going to be any good is almost impossible. Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. Most of my time in the store is spent scrolling through endless lists. And what distinguishes a good app? I can’t really tell.
I think this is a major challenge for companies that hope to build dominance in some category on the iPhone …
Browsing the app store is an awful lot like shopping in a retail grocery store. You see row after row of tiny boxes, each vying for your attention. They can’t present much information…
So what is the solution? Eric points out that you should look at the lessons learned in the retail industry for selling consumer packaged goods.
This is what brand marketers and consumer packaged goods companies have been studying and refining for years: how to win the battle in your mind before you ever set foot in the store. Once you have come to think of Crest as the #1 toothpaste, and, more importantly, your toothpaste, it’s unlikely you’re going to pay attention to the other boxes on the shelf, no matter how shiny they are.
… we may revert to the retail model, where good positioning and good branding will win. When I’m scrolling through the endless list of games in that category, the icon that I’ve come to associate with “that company that makes amazing iPhone games” is going to get a disproportionate share of my attention.
You will have to think about, what differentiates/distinguishes my game from the competition? What can I do to capture the customer’s attention when she finds my game?
jgc
Technorati Tags: IMVU, Apple, iPhone, consumer packaged goods, marketing, positioning, branding, online gaming , Procter and Gamble
