Posts tagged app
Yahoo launches app for navigating apps
Jun 17th
With hundreds of thousands of apps, how can people find the best one for whatever they’re looking for?
Yahoo has the answer. The search giant is making an effort to solve the problem, both on your computer with a new Yahoo App Search service, and on iPhones and Android devices with a new Yahoo AppSpot app.
Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s senior vice president of search and marketplaces, this week compared the current state of the app world to the early days of the web, before Yahoo’s founders made navigation easier with their listings and search engine.
He reckons that people are already using Yahoo Search as a way to find apps.
So, as part of the company’s broader mission to provide “answers, not links”, Yahoo has attempted to provide more information for people searching for apps.
When a user tries to search for an app by name or type, instead of just offering a link to a listing in an app store, Yahoo now points people to a Yahoo profile page about the app, including reviews, an overall star rating, screenshots, and pricing.
If a user decides that they want to try the app, they can scan the QR code on the profile with their device, or Yahoo can send a text message to their phone with a link to the store.
Yahoo also points to related apps and provides daily app recommendations, personalised based on factors like what apps users have already downloaded to their phone.
To a certain extent, it sounds like Yahoo is just duplicating the kinds of information that you can already find in the app stores. But the company argued that it can provide some unique benefits to users, such as:
- The search results themselves are significantly better than what you’d find by searching in either of the app stores.
- The personalised recommendation engine is also unique because the results are constantly changing based on what’s trending in Yahoo itself, making them fresher than the relatively static app store rankings.
and…
- Yahoo’s listings can help you learn about an app and then download it on all your devices, rather than navigating multiple app stores to find the same app.
Yahoo plans to expand to other devices and app store eventually, too.
Good to see Yahoo trying new things.
SECTOR FOCUS: AVIATION Lufthansa’s hidden treats
Apr 19th
German airline Lufthansa is on the promotion trail. It’s about to launch its very own A380 and is celebrating the end of the economic crisis with record profits (€130m). As well as its chocolately treats, it’s harnessing the power of digital and new technology to reach passengers.
The slogan for the wider campaign for the launch is, ‘A380 Be part of it’ and the airline has held an online competition for people to indeed ‘get onboard’ and name its new big bird. The airline received a more than 150,000 entries and is now deciding out of 50 finalists.
The Lufthansa website also has a dedicated microsite which has a gallery of pictures of the new aircraft as well as an interactive 3D film showing passengers around the plane. Flights on the A380 will begin next month.
Lufthansa has been busy in terms of marketing so far this year. Last month it launched an optimized iPhone application allowing customers access to a host practical information about services while on the go. Read the rest of this entry »
80% of apps are unsuccessful, but Pizza Hut’s made it $1m in sales
Nov 5th
With Apple’s App Store now holding over 100,000 apps, one would figure that only a few would enjoy success.
Only five applications are on half of all iPhones/iPod Touch devices and a staggering 80% of apps never get any sort of popularity.
The 1000th ranked app, which is the top 1%, is installed on “only” 1.76% of iPhones/ iPod touches. If there are 50 million devices out there, that is almost a million installations so that is still significant.
So, the chances of a brand making a successful, engaging and above all else useful iPhone app is slim. However, there are a number who have got this new form of marketing spot on.
Take for example Pizza Hut’s app. After being live in the App Store for three months it surpassed $1 million in pizza sales and has been downloaded almost one million times.
The app is featured icon in the iTunes Lifestyle Category, and allows customers to order their pizza, pasta and wings from Pizza Hut while on the go.
From an income standpoint, iPhone customers tend to be more affluent, and they’re in the tech-savvy 18-34-year-old demographic skewing slightly male that we tend to go after online, according to Bernard Acoca, senior director of digital marketing at Pizza Hut.
He adds that the fast food chain has always saw a steady level of growth with its mobile business via its WAP site, but it wasn’t the explosive level of growth now seen with the iPhone app.
IPhone applications capture consumers’ imagination in a way that WAP sites simply can’t do. The goal of launching the iPhone application was to provide a convenient way for Pizza Hut customers to order from its franchisee locations (the brand has 34,000 restaurants, delivery-carry out units and kiosks in 100 countries).
As for incentive to download and continue using the app, each time a user orders using the application they get 20 percent off their entire order. The app was also featured in a recent TV campaign for the brand.
Following its huge success with the iPhone, Pizza Hut is now in discussions to expand to other smartphone platforms such as RIM’s BlackBerry, Google’s Android devices and the Palm Pre.
Acoca said that in terms of the mobile side of the business, over the next three to five years, more and more online transactions are going to migrate to smartphone usage.
Rather than consumers simply migrating from calling in or visiting the PC Web site, Pizza Hut believes that the iPhone application is driving sales it may not have closed otherwise.
He said if consumers have taken the time to download an app, they perceive it as valuable, because it’s taking up coveted real estate.
A relatively simple idea and some staggering results considering a mid-level iPhone app can cost just $50,000.
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