15.9.09

Setting Expectations

One of the mistakes I made when I first posted my apps to the App Store, was failing to set expectations. This is important because when people come across apps, they have all kinds of wild expectations as to what it is and what it should do. If what they expect doesn't match up with what they experience in the app, they will come away with a negative impression of the app, which leads to negative comments a lot of the time. So it is up to the developer to do what they can to set the proper expectations for their apps.

Let me illustrate with a couple of my own apps. When I first posted Egg!, I didn't want to spoil the surprise and tell everyone what was inside. So I posted it with this description:


Just tap tap tap to reveal what’s hidden inside the Egg!


I have since added the following:


Egg! is for those times when you’re waiting for the movie to start, stuck in a boring meeting, or for when you have to entertain a small child and don’t know any magic tricks.


Adding this line, gives Egg! more context and helps people understand some of the rationale for it.

For FlashCardz, I added this to the description:


When I was creating FlashCardz, I took a look at similar programs on the App Store, but none of them was what I was looking for. There were some apps out there that did more than FlashCardz, but that didn't really concern me. I didn't set out to make the Swiss Army knife of flash card apps with all the bells and whistles. I just wanted something clean and easy to use, that let me make flash cards on my iPhone. This is my niche. People that want more will choose the other stuff that's out there, but there will be many people that find FlashCardz meets their particular need.


People naturally compare similar things to one another, so here I try to differentiate FlashCardz from the other stuff that's out there and give my perspective on where FlashCardz fits in. If people come in expecting FlashCardz to do everything they will be disappointed, but if they understand that it's not trying to do everything, then they can focus on what it does do.

So whether you're making the next great iPhone app or not, setting expectations will help people understand you and your apps better and reduce the negative comments from mismatched expectations.


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