New icon sends app from #400 to #4 Overall

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Tony@N3VGames, Feb 8, 2013.

  1. Tony@N3VGames

    Tony@N3VGames Member

    Feb 8, 2013
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    I'm here to share we you all our story as we can't quite believe what has happened in the past 8 days.

    Trainz Driver was released in August 2012. We have been up and down the charts, and last Wednesday, we were generally ranked around 4-500 overall and Top 30-50 Simulation app.

    After some success with a new icon on other stores (Android), we got the approval from Apple Jan 30 and released our new icon (only visible change to our customers).

    In just 8 days we have now hit #1 Family, #3 Sim & Games and #4 Overall on the Germany store.

    USA has gone from Top 50 Sim and nearly out of the Top 1000 Overall up to #11 and Top 200 Overall (and climbing).

    Most of this was due to an icon change, but our 99c special has been the icing on the cakle.

    I wrote a blog piece about it here which gives you charts and shows you the old and new icon etc.

    Gotta love this marketplace we operate in :D
     
  2. MrLeQuack

    MrLeQuack Well-Known Member

    It's obvious the second icon is more expressive and user friendly. The first one was to corporate as you said.
     
  3. Wizardo

    Wizardo Well-Known Member

    Jul 30, 2012
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    Starving indie developer
    New Jersey!
    The new icon is great.

    Congratulations, and thanks for sharing.
     
  4. Platyrrhine

    Platyrrhine Well-Known Member

    Jan 6, 2012
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    You just got yourself another purchase :p The game looks cool, and I've always wondered about train simulators. Guess I'll find out soon enough ;)
     
  5. Blue Jungle Studios

    Blue Jungle Studios Well-Known Member

    Dec 30, 2012
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    Making Games :-)
    Sure do like the new icon! Can see why others feel the same!
     
  6. Rainier

    Rainier Well-Known Member

    Apr 16, 2012
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    Wow, great story. Congratulations on finally getting noticed!
     
  7. bardbarian

    bardbarian Member

    Jan 24, 2013
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    Wow thanks so much for sharing, I knew icons were important but I never figured they'd have that direct an impact on sales, first impressions really are important :D
     
  8. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    I think too much overthinking is going on here. The only thing you need to worry about wrt icons is "don't have a shit one".

    Frankly, the original one was the worst of the worst saying nothing to anybody about what the app might be. Now you've fixed it, the game's fulfilling it's truer potential which is great.
     
  9. KennyK

    KennyK Well-Known Member

    Who said you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? :)

    Congrats on your success Tony!
     
  10. Tony@N3VGames

    Tony@N3VGames Member

    Feb 8, 2013
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    This may well be true (and according to the stats, most likely is true), BUT, how do you know that before you have tried something else?

    No-one was saying "well the app is really great but the icon really sucks" etc.

    And an update on the rankings after 3 days of our 99c sale:
    - Switzerland # 2 Overall App
    - South korea # 2 Overall App
    - Germany #3 Overall app
    - UK #3 Overall app

    Only real issue now is USA = #9 Sim but still #100-ish Overall. Still puts USA as 3rd best market and 10X what it was doing two weeks ago.
     
  11. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    Focus group. Usually our parents in our case - anyone who doesn't know anything about anything techie.
     
  12. mrmikeg

    mrmikeg Member

    Feb 7, 2013
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    Whoa that's awesome!
    Thanks for sharing and will keep in mind for the future!
     
  13. Foursaken_Media

    Foursaken_Media Well-Known Member
    Patreon Indie

    I would probably think the sale had more to do with it then the icon though... not saying changing the icon didn't help, just saying dropping the price is a pretty huge factor, one that you can't separate from the game's current success... so its a little misleading to be able to tell what - if any - effect the icon change actually had just by itself.

    In any case, congrats :)
     
  14. Tony@N3VGames

    Tony@N3VGames Member

    Feb 8, 2013
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    Actually it is pretty easy to figure out the contribution of each since the sale came after the initial surge in sales. The article was written the day before the sale started, and so we had triple the sales already.

    That said, the sale then took us from rank #200 UK to rank #3 this time around. When we last did a sale (with the old icon) we went from Rank #237 to #132.

    It would appear to be a combination of icon, sale and "the other magic ingredient that gets people to press the buy button" - we're not complaining that's for sure.
     
  15. raekess

    raekess Well-Known Member

    Feb 3, 2013
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    Product Manager
    Lafayette, CO
    Thanks for Sharing!

    This is really fantastic information! With so many options people have in the app stores, I can see how the icon must tell the game's story in a glance.

    Congratulations and thanks for sharing!
     
  16. el Brainvomito

    Jun 29, 2012
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    Nice job!

    However, I would like to see what had been the impression simply because of the icon. The download rate only counts people who download the game, not those, who are checking what's behind the icon.
     
  17. Bigmac1910

    Bigmac1910 Member

    Jul 13, 2012
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    Congrats. The new icon looks great, I always believed that your icon has to represent your game, the more "game" you can squeeze in there, the better. The price drop probably helped as well.
     
  18. GlennX

    GlennX Well-Known Member

    May 10, 2009
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    I must admit that, from the thread title, I was skeptical about the icon making that much of a difference but looking at the two, I suspect that if I was searching for a train game my eyes would have simply skipped over the original. I'd have thought it was some online timetable app that had come up by mistake in the search. Not that it's a bad icon or that the new one is a better design. Sometimes you just need the icon to say what the app does.
     
  19. Appvism

    Appvism Well-Known Member

    Feb 9, 2013
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    Congrats!

    Wow and just from a change of icon? Amazing!
     
  20. sprite

    sprite Member

    Feb 3, 2013
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    Really like the new icon. Huge upgrade!
     

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