How WiFire Made it to the “App Store Best of 2016”
Our unconventional journey from an idea to being a top 10 app on the App Store
Just yesterday, Apple gave us the incredible news that WiFire, our app that helps you discover and connect to the best public WiFi hotspots with a single tap, is being featured in the App Store Best of 2016.
As anyone who has launched an app will tell you, getting Featured on the App Store is quite literally the holy grail for a newly minted app — that stamp of endorsement from Apple’s editors that says your app is quite literally worth its weight in megabytes.
Being picked for the 2016 showcase is a huge honour for us at MobStac and I’d like to share our journey for the benefit of my fellow entrepreneurs, app developers, and app marketers, with the hope that you find it instructive.
WiFire launched on the India App Store on September 22nd, and in the first week, we clocked over 10,000 downloads, blowing through the expectations of even the most optimistic of our lot. We went on to be featured for 10 weeks in the “New Apps We Love” section, which gave us enormous visibility.
At one point, we were trending above the mighty Cleartrip, a day I fondly remember because of how much I admire Cleartrip’s design.
At the outset, we knew that even for an Android-dominated market like India you can’t possibly ignore iPhone users, whose numbers continue to swell quarter after quarter. More importantly, if you hope to make your way to influencers, whether journalists or celebrities, there appears to be a low probability that they have an Android device.
Our marketing plan around WiFire was simple: get featured on the App Store. We stuck to a 5-point playbook that would maximise our chances of getting noticed by the App Store editors.
1. Don’t reinvent the design wheel
I’m sure this is something pretty much everyone knows already, but Apple truly cares about design. And if you’re serious about getting featured, you have to really care too. However, you don’t need a major design agency working with you to get there.
With just a single designer and plenty of inspiration from outstanding apps already out there (AirBnB, Apple Music, etc.), we focussed our efforts on making our app feel familar and native to iOS users.
We followed Apple’s Human Interface Design Guidelines very closely to deliver an app with near-zero learning curve.
Our color scheme also mirrored Apple’s own apps, with the dominant color being white, coupled with the use of a single key color to indicate interactive elements like buttons, markers, and cards, and line icons to conform to iOS 9 aesthetics.
2. Use Apple’s latest tech even if it means leaving some users behind
The App Store editors like to reward apps that make Apple devices really stand out in the crowd. They give weight to the use of unique iOS features (and Apple hardware) such as TouchID, 3D Touch, SiriKit, etc.
Since WiFire interacts with the WiFi function on an iOS device, we chose to use the new iOS 9 NEHotspotHelper API (a privileged networking extension). This was a controversial decision, because it meant excluding users on iOS 8 and below. While some members of the team pointed out that it was possible to support iOS 8 users in a somewhat clunky manner, we focussed on delivering an outstanding user experience knowing that our singular goal was to be featured on the App Store.
Even though getting the approvals from Apple surprisingly took months (is an Apple Developer Evangelist reading this?), the wait was worth it because of the unique experience we were able to deliver.
Underneath the hood, WiFire is written entirely in Swift. Our decision paid off in numerous ways — rapid development speed, fewer headaches with Objective-C, and being perceived by the larger iOS developer community as major proponents of Swift.
3. Perfect your release, instead of throwing it out there and hoping it will stick
As development entered the alpha test phase, everyone at the company was required to run the nightly alpha WiFire build, and we started a drive to recruit beta testers who would help us put WiFire through the paces before the actual public launch. We signed up over 300 beta testers who were then sent updates via TestFlight every week.
In today’s age of rallying cries like, “Throw an MVP out there and see if it sticks”, and “You have to be embarrassed by your first release”, we chose to really take our time in perfecting the iOS app and paying close attention to the details.
WiFire’s beta phase lasted nearly 3 months, during which we also ran usability tests at the local Starbucks in Indiranagar, Bangalore, randomly accosting folks sitting around and willing to help us out with 5–10 minutes of their time. You’ll be surprised by how helpful people can be, and how much you can learn by merely watching your users interact with your app.
4. Hustle until you reach an App Store Marketing Manager
Even as WiFire was entering the beta test phase, I embarked on getting on the radar of an App Store Marketing Manager, one way or another.
This is also the part where you hustle like your life depends on it, knocking on the doors of fellow iOS developers and asking for introductions, cold emailing Apple Dev Evangelists on LinkedIn, and repeatedly following up even if all they do is ignore your email.
I can’t emphasize this enough, but you really have to truly believe in your app to persevere long enough to finally break through. After all, these guys and girls are completely overloaded, and are probably being inundated by many an app developer hoping to get featured.
Thankfully, my persistence paid off and about 2 months into the beta, I succeeded in getting through to the App Store Marketing Manager for India.
5. Double down on PR once you are featured
Once we had an inkling that we were likely to be featured on launch, we created a targeted outreach campaign that went after app reviews, talking about the App Store feature as an endorsement of the quality of our app.
This worked pretty well for us, because right after the App Store feature, we got reviewed by NDTV Gadgets, Economic Times, The Hindu, and a few other mainstream publications. The kicker there was that those reviews in turn led to a flood of new users on Android as well.
Conclusion
As we say in the startup world, constraint leads to razor-sharp focus. Being a four person team with little in the way of marketing muscle, we were crystal clear in our end goal of being featured on the App Store. All our decisions from that point on were based on our core belief that it was crucial to get the design right and deliver a seamless user experience.
Download WiFire, available on Android and iOS.
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