Marketing Kids Apps (Part I) – 3 Things No Amount of Code Can Fix

December 6 2011, 2:37pm

[In this reprinted Digital Storytime piece, Carisa Kluver provides an in-depth look at the marketing strategies for children apps. This is part one of a three part piece examining marketing strategies. Carisa Kluver is the sole reviewer for the iPad picture book app review site, Digital-Storytime.com. She co-founded this site with her husband, Marc, an app developer and programmer. She tries to run her site with the following three “A’s” in mind – to be Approachable, Accountable & Accurate.]

An enormous amount of time, energy and money go into app development these days. And after the programming dust settles, an app is born into the App Store or Android Marketplace. But many developers are unprepared for the really challenging work of marketing their app … so much so that they may overlook some of the most important things that get that shiny new app the consumer-attention it deserves. While toiling away this past year on our popular new review site for iPad kids book apps, I have also been moonlighting as the marketing consultant for a kids game my husband developed for Android last year (and just released for iPhone today). This experience has gotten me thinking a lot about how people shop for apps, so I began asking a series of questions on my Facebook fan page to do a little informal market research. So, what are those ‘most important’ qualities to get a kids app (or any app for that matter) noticed? I’ve synthesized dozens of comments on Facebook, asked friends who download a lot of kids apps & considered my own shopping habits (since I download over a dozen new kids apps everyday to screen them for our curated daily deal page). While there are a lot of factors that go into the decision-making process, three things seemed to be ‘gatekeepers’ for consumers … things that need to be done, and done well, to get an app noticed in the first place … way before anyone bothers searching for a review on a site like Digital-Storytime: 1. Icon: The icon for an app not only matters more than most developers realize, it also matters more to consumers than they realize. We humans use a lot of visual shorthand in our brains to make decision-making easier, so we unconsciously gravitate toward things that ‘appear’ to meet our needs. In the case of app icons, this means an exceptional app may never get noticed, simply because the icon is not eye catching or attractive. And for kids apps, this is even more true, because consumers unconsciously ignore app icons that don’t look ‘child-like’ in some way. As shoppers for kids apps, we have to search through categories in the different marketplaces that include both child-friendly and very adult-oriented apps. This means the average person looking for a kids app is going to first glance at the icons and gravitate towards those that look the most like something for a kid. This means that even if the app only contains sight words, for instance, and no images at all, the ideal icon is still going to be something illustrated like it’s right out of a children’s picture book. It also helps to have an image that looks good from a great distance, since these icons are very small in many of the places consumers will encounter them. A sampling of some of the most interesting comments about the app ‘icon’: “… if the icon isn’t catchy I wouldn’t even click in to check out the reviews. With so many apps out there the icon needs to look professional and intriguing.” “I want something that has strong well drawn illustrations … it needs a good icon” “(how the icon) looks is the first attraction” “(I look at) the brief look you are given on itunes … (t)hose first few glances tell alot.” “A really gorgeous icon … will lure me in.” “I first look at (the icon) for visual appeal … the graphics are what catch the eyes of kids the most, so I look at them first.” “I look at the initial picture …” Continue reading at Digital Storytime and learn additional marketing factors here.