Regular Round-up
Featured app, reviews and presentations, what's been going on in the RunRev world...

By Heather Laine

This time round I've quite a few bits of gossip to bring you. My featured App Success story today comes from Obleo Beck, we've a new review, and Caroline's report from Glowjam where the RunRev puppies featured to great acclaim... but more of that later.

Featured App
Lets kick off with Obleo, and Pop Tone. Recently Obeo wrote to me to share his experience with selling his app.

"I know you all like to hear of success stories using Livecode. Well do I have a roller coaster story for you. I have been using Livecode for years, and had released some iOS games early this year. I was more than pleased how simple it is to make an game using Livecode or several other tools I tried, and I tried many of them.

Then my app was released and I did all of the marketing I could think of to get my app noticed. Submitted to over 50 review sites. Tried promo code giveaways. Did social media several times a week. Did product videos on youTube and Vimeo. Had launch parties where anyone from the public where welcome, gave away food, drinks, prizes etc. Tried advertising on sites like Touch Arcade.

Over 8 months time we averaged about 20 sales a week. You might be thinking how is 700 sales in 8 months a success story? Well it is not, until October 2012.

On October 10th I checked into iTunes connect and could not believe my eyes. There were over 600 downloads on October 9th. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that. Then I checked in the next day and it was over 1000 for October 10th. And day after day that amount got higher and higher.

I couldn't understand it. At first I thought the App Store must have put our app on the front page. Then I located it. In a google search I found one of the many
sites that we had sent a request for an App Review, actually gave my app a few words and 7 days on the front page of their web site.

That's all it took. That one review turned just over 700 sales in 8 months into 8000 users in 2 weeks.

I'm telling you this because I was so frustrated with those 8 months of poor sales. I worked really hard marketing and seemed to be getting nowhere. I started second guessing new games I was working on. One can think of so many things, when times are not good. The moral of this story is, if you think its an good app, and your beta testers think its a good app, it likely is a good app.

The key to app success after building it with Livecode is never give up. And try to get it on a review site!

Checking into iTunes connect is actually fun now. If this keeps up we may get to over 25,000 users by the end of the year. I may not be dreaming this time."

That's a great story Obleo, and thank you so much for sharing it!

Finalist for Jolt Awards 2012
We're proud to have been listed again for the Jolt Awards, and received a positive review from Rick Wayne. He says:

"The card/stack paradigm, visual editing tools, and support for a wide variety of media combine to make a development tool that's simple enough for non-programmers to put together applications, while providing plenty of power for dedicated hackers... If you need cross-platform app development, and especially if you want to empower non-programmer participation, you should seriously consider RunRev LiveCode."

Thanks Rick!

GlowJam
Last week Caroline Finlay gave a presentation to Glowjam, a group of business leaders, to introduce LiveCode.

The event was to introduce innovative technical and creative digital companies to international peers, potential international partners, mentors, funders and multinational buyers. The aim was to create meaningful connections between the best of Scotland's digital/tech community and international visitors. The evening started with an interactive panel discussion between visiting business leaders and a selection of local digital start-up CEOs.

Caroline's challenge was a 10 minute speaking slot, during which she was allowed no technological aids at all - no projector, no slides, no computer.

She came up with the idea of telling the story of RunRev via (printed, paper) images of the RunRev mascots - Tio, Pancake and Meg, dogs belonging to members of staff. These dogs have been coming to work with their owners since they were puppies and the arrival of each puppy seems to have marked a new epoch in the RunRev story:

From the left, Tio, Meg and Pancake

Caroline tells me the presentation was a memorable one, and seemed to go down very well - she's sure those attending are going to remember the name of RunRev!

About the Author Heather Laine is Customer Services Manager for RunRev Ltd