The latest version of Where in the World is Santa Claus? introduces the app to three new languages: Japanese, Chinese, and Russian. This is the first language update since adding Spanish, German, and French. I guess we just like languages! (We can stop any time we want to.) Thanks to the great professionals on Elance for knocking out those translations.
The update also brought new and improved screenshots on the App Store. Actually, just new screenshots, not improved. (What is the opposite of improved?) We added some text to the screenshots, which looks fine when viewed in landscape mode. But it comes out upside-down when rotated for the App Store on the iPhone. Enjoy the goof while it lasts. Next we’ll be putting out a small update to the app’s social sharing feature, and with it… right-side-up screenshots.
Anything look off to you?
Besides the new name, version 1.2 of Where in the World is Santa Claus? has some privacy improvements as well. You may be surprised that privacy would be a concern for a simple kid’s app like this. The app does not ask for your name, phone number, address, or any other personal information. But to function properly, the app does need one important piece of information: your location.
Location: The Old Approach
The app needs your location to find the direction to Santa Claus from… well, your location. Until version 1.2, the app asked your iPhone to determine your location — only a rough location, within a few kilometers. And the app would only get your location if you approved. Once approved, the app never stored, transmitted, or otherwise used your location beyond pointing you towards Santa Claus at that moment.
But on careful reading of the latest child privacy regulations such as COPPA, it seemed that your location was now protected and could only be obtained in certain cases. Even though the app was probably fine in version 1.1, we temporarily pulled the app from sale until we could make sure it complied with the privacy regulations. Getting the proper parental permission was going to be impractical (at least for a $0.99 app) so we had to solve this conundrum:
How could the app get your location without getting your location?
The New Way
The app is back in the App Store with these changes for version 1.2:
- The app no longer asks your iPhone for your actual location, not even a rough a location.
- The app asks you to type in a very general location such as your city, state, postal code, or country.
- If you do not want to provide any location information at all, the app uses a default location in downtown Austin, Texas.
- The app also has new safeguards in place to prevent children from accessing the info screen, which contains links to the web.
Now the app requires a little more setup since it cannot detect your location automatically. And the distance and direction data is not going to be as accurate as before. But we think the app is still fun for young kids to use, and they will hopefully not notice any difference once your location is set. Versions prior to 1.2 are no longer available for download.
Santa Snoop has a new name: Where in the World is Santa Claus?
Where in the World is Santa Claus?
Although the name “Santa Snoop” is catchy, it may have a slightly creepy or ominous intonation. The idea of the app is not really to spy on poor Santa. The idea is just to see where the good man is in relation to you, and to hopefully catch a hint of how he is preparing for the holidays.
Concern over the name “Santa Snoop” first came up with a negative review on iTunes by someone who then gave five stars to a sniper game rated for people 17 and older. Santa Snoop is a cute Santa app for little kids. Somehow I was missing the target audience! Also, there is apparently a “rap battle” between Snoop Dogg and Santa Claus which tops any web search for Santa Snoop. It’s best to avoid getting crowded out by the prolific talents of Mr. Dogg.
So there it is. Say hello to Where in the World is Santa Claus?
Below are the results of my little experiment in advertising an inexpensive Christmas app with Google AdWords. Advertising ended up costing $1.90 for each $0.50 it produced. Basically, I was losing $1.40 for each advertised click. As my dad said with a wink, “Let me tell you about basic business strategy…” Still, this post is not a slam on AdWords, just some observations on why it did not work in my case.
Starting Out
After a hard push, my first app, Santa Snoop (since renamed), made it to the App Store a few weeks before Christmas 2012. I didn’t really expect the app to sell itself. Indeed, without any marketing, it was selling only one or two copies a day. Countless efforts to get coverage from app review blogs would eventually yield one result, and I was pleased to get that. The blog post resulted in about 5-10 new apps sold.
So I was trying to figure out how to get the word out about Santa Snoop. In particular, why don’t you normally see ads for $0.99 apps? That’s when Google, as if on cue, sent me a promo code to try out AdWords, their pay-per-click advertising service. The deal was good enough that I decided to give it a shot. (The deal did not affect the advertising rates — cost per click — reported below.)
How AdWords works…
You create an ad that gets shown on some Google pages and various other sites, depending on keywords that you provide. If someone clicks on your ad, they get directed to the page of your choice, and you pay Google a small fee. You pay nothing if nobody clicks your link. The exact price that you pay for the click depends on various changing factors, such as your choice of keywords and the quality of your ad, with a catchy ads tending to cost less. You can always control the maximum you are willing to pay for a click.
Results and “Basic Business Strategy”
In the end, AdWords did indeed provide lots of clicks for Santa Snoop. The catch — and it’s a big one — was that those clicks ended up costing more than what I was making back in sales. Here is roughly how it broke down…
Exposure
- In December, AdWords put my ads on 62,568 web pages.
- The ads appeared in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.
- The ads appeared only on iPhones capable of running Santa Snoop (iPhones 4 and 5).
- Each ad click went directly to the Santa Snoop App Store page
- These ads produced 1,092 clicks.
Sales
- Roughly 1 out of 10 clicks produced a purchase of Santa Snoop.
- Each click cost $0.19 on average.
- So it cost about $1.90 to sell a $0.99 app.
- I was actually earning only about $0.50 per sale after Apple’s cut and taxes.
- So I was effectively paying AdWords $1.90 to earn back $0.50…
- or losing $1.40 per sale.
Conclusions
- If you ever wondered why you don’t normally see ads for $0.99 apps, now you know. 🙂
- Advertising might work for higher-priced apps, such as $2.99 and up, but even that could be a stretch.
- AdWords could only get people as far as the App Store page. From there, only 10% made the purchase. Advertising could just work if 50% or more visitors purchased the app once they were in the right place, but that is probably unrealistic.
In my case, the numbers did not “ad” up. But $0.19 does seem like a reasonable price to find someone on a compatible iPhone and get them to my App Store page. It was worth a try, at least with the promo deal from Google. Even though sales were slow, AdWords did get over 1000 people from around the world to actually look at my app, which blew away everything else for getting people to the App Store page. Still, came at an unsustainable cost in my case.
