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Last active August 29, 2015 14:03
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The Ecstasy and Disappointment of App Store Rankings

In 2010, Rob Foster and I released our first app, Calvetica, to the app store. It was one of the first two or three, if not the first, third-party calendar apps to use the new Event Kit that was released with iOS 4. The first day we sold around 20 copies, which wasn't bad I guess, but we're pie-in-the-sky dreamers, so we were a little disappointed. The next day, I woke to see we had sold 700 copies, and it got better and stayed that way for a while. It was the most excitement I'd felt since Christmas as a kid, watching our app climb the app store rankings. We made a lot of money.

Then, to our confusion and great disappointment, the rankings started to slip. Then, John Gruber linked to it on Daring Fireball and we sold about 2000 a day for a while and go to the #2 spot in productively and the #50 spot in the whole App Store. Thank you John! But, that was also just a spike. We began to watch our app sink again and wondered if and when it would stop. I bet if any app developers are reading this, they are shaking their heads, knowing exactly how we felt.

Finally, it came to a ranking it seemed pretty comfortable at. It would float at around 40 in productivity. Then we'd get featured by something or someone with influence and we'd get another spike, but again, it'd eventually settle back down to 40. I found this to be the case with almost every one of our apps, even though none were as popular as Calvetica. I call this an app's "Natural Ranking." Every app with more than a few dozen downloads a day has one.

An app's natural ranking is not like a person's natural eye color. It can change quickly and/or slowly over time. It depends on quite a few things. I'm not sure anyone knows what all of them are, but I can name a few for certain:

  1. An apps rating is probably the most influencial variable in an apps natural ranking. The difference between a 5 star rating and a 3 star rating is surprisingly large. When we had close to 5 stars for Calvetica, its natural ranking was around 40-50, when we had a buggy release and and average rating of 3 stars, it was closer to 70-80.

  2. How long ago it was updated. For whatever reason, a recently updated app will get a spike in sales. Seems odd considering everyong who is updating has already bought your app. My guess it has to do with usage statistics. If Apple detects that 90% of people who own a license to your app update it, that means they still have it on their phone and that's a good indication your app has value. So that's a factor I'm not sure about, but I'm guessing that also factors into your natural ranking.

  3. Going hand-in-hand with the second variable is how often you update your app. If you don't update your app often enough and people see that your app's latest update was months ago, they are less likely to download. If you don't touch your app, its natural ranking will slowly decay. It is quite slow, usually dropping 10 ranking in a category every 3-4 months.

  4. How many outside articles and links point to your app. If you search for "Calvetica" on Google, you'll see posts that are years old still in the top Google rankings. These play a big role in your app's natural ranking and the durability of its natural ranking.

This is just how it works. If you've had a somewhat successful app on the app store, you know this. If you haven't but plan to, you should be prepared for this. Spikes are short lived, but regardless of how many times they happen, you will always cross your fingers that it'll stick this time, but it won't, and it doesn't, and you feel that disappointment and panic as it sinks back to it's natural ranking. Ever time.

Well, stop. My step-mom says that enlightment is having a relationship with your mind rather than just being your mind. Being aware of how you work will enrich your life and being aware of how the App Store works will enrich your business. Let the spikes come and go and focus on the variables that increase your natural ranking. The apps on the app store that are in the top 10 of their category? They've worked hard to get there. They've stuck with their app, improving it and supporting its users for months and often years. I worked for Paul Mayne on Day One for a few months short of a year recently and it took years for Day One to settle at its current natural ranking and win Mac App of the Year and an Apple Design Award.

So, hold your head up high player, this game is fun. Take a deep breath as your app plummets the charts and wait for it to settle at it's natural ranking, cause that's where you get to mark with a pencil and then get to work to improve that natural ranking over months and years.

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