DealHunter - as we did foursquare for lovers of discounts and sales
Hello to all! I want to talk about the experience of creating and launching a mobile geosocial service DealHunter , in which we tried to combine several of the most relevant and interesting trends and mechanics.
The idea of ​​the service, where users could add discounts and sales themselves, was born more than a year ago, when two trends were rapidly gaining momentum on the Internet and mobile applications: daily deals (generated by Groupon and picked up by hundreds of similar services) and geosocial applications with game mechanics (one of the first were Foursquare and Gowalla, then Foodspotting and checkinization of everything and everyone - from the fact of watching a TV program to the number of drunk beer mugs). The reason Foursquare has gained over 10 million users over the past 2 years and collected through them an unprecedented database of various places and establishments around the world is the impact of another trend - the use of game mechanics for non-game services (gamification). On the one hand, many have done this for points and badges — that is, status in the Foursquare gaming universe. But many were also motivated by simple altruism, the desire to warn other users from visiting “bad” places and to recommend good ones.
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At the crossroads of all these trends, from the love of discounts and other freebies to the desire to beat others in statuses and ratings, Deal Hunter was born. If earlier only your friends and colleagues found out about a sale at a store or a business lunch at a nearby cafe, then why not give the opportunity to tell about it to other people around you whom you have never seen, but which this information can be useful for. And you get another virtual reward for it.
... a whole year has passed. The idea that was born last summer was on the shelf for half a year, then it was decided to carefully try to enter the water. In February, work began on an Android application called Skidkafon , in which it was decided to simply implement the idea of ​​aggregating coupons and see how interesting it is to users. The studio was engaged in the development of HippoApp, which quite quickly, during the month made the application and in early April it came out in the Android Market. The discount card quickly got into the reviews, even hit the first place in the hit parade of one of the Droider Chart . Looking ahead, I will say that Skidkafon, in the absence of any promotion costs, is currently in 7th place in its category and has 19,000 downloads in the Russian market, which is 3–4 times more than that of Topskidka and Couponer.
In general, in May it was decided to go ahead and add custom discounts and game mechanics. A couple of weeks took up the writing of documentation, the definition of game mechanics and other in-depth stories. It was decided that for each added discount, a favorable price offer (for example, a business lunch at a low price) or a share with gifts, 3 or 4 points will be awarded (additional points are given for an optional photo), another point will be given for a check in an existing card (both to the author of the added sentence, and to the one who used it), as well as one for sharing in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte and Foursquare are connected) for more viral distribution. Also about 25 badges were invented, for the first time. Naturally, users are rated by points within cities and other administrative entities (two types: common and for the week). There were difficulties with the concept of mayors - I really wanted to make them by analogy with Foursquare, it was obvious that competition for mayoralties was one of the main reasons for the success of this service. However, it is strange to make merstry around discounts - usually they are used once, especially if it is some kind of sale in a clothing store. The decision in principle lay on the surface - to bring the rating to the level of the city and number 1 in the rating to give out the status of mayor.
At the beginning of June, development began directly, and at the same time the design was drawn. Both tasks were handled by our partners - Studio Provectus IT . For those who are interested in aspects of development, I asked to comment on the project of the head of the development team Dmitry Povolotsky :
“Dealhunter is a rather large and interesting project that has happened to deal with our still relatively young company. We carried out the development of both the client and server parts of the application.
Most of the functionality of the iPhone client is based on communicating with various servers (our own server, google location api, social network servers (facebook, four square, twitter, vkontakte)), and therefore a convenient layer was developed to interact with various api, based on the ASIHTTP library. All these servers use the json communication protocol, which was used by the json-framework.
Our server is implemented as a set of servlets running under Tomcat. PostgreSQL is used as a DBMS, which is handled with Hibernate. Also, to ensure the implementation of maintenance work, Quartz Scheduler was used, and the Thumbnailator library for image processing. ”
Initially, the release was planned for August and was supposed to become Russian-American (Russian coupons were taken from Kupongid, American - from yipit.com), but the development process introduced its own corrections. Also in August, two news fell like snow on the head: first, Google announced the purchase of The Deal Map, which, it turns out, already partially implemented a similar idea a year ago and managed to collect 2 million users. In the app The Deal Map was the ability to add custom discounts and user ratings, but there was no foursquare-like gaming strapping. Yes, and Google after the purchase almost sawed out the user part. Then, on August 9, Qwiqq app appeared in Appstore, which even interface was similar to Foursquare and DealHunter, except that there was no user rating and the mayorstvo institute.
Nevertheless, the development of the service has already moved into that phase when it was too late to retreat, and on September 13, DealHunter went to the appstore for the review. At the same time, an unpleasant interface bug was found in the application and, not waiting for an answer from the Apple AppStore testers, the update was again sent to the review, which he successfully passed the first time and on September 29th the application became available in the Russian appstore (the western release was decided to postpone for a while, testing the mechanics in the Russian market). For the first 4 days, there was practically no promo and DealHunter got its own way up to 75th place in the top category of the Lifestyle category, then on Monday began to leave reviews , which abandoned the application for 19th place in the general top of free applications and for 2nd place - in Lifestyle. At the end of the week, the novelty effect has already begun to subside, and the application gradually began to emerge from the tops (although in the Lifestyle is still kept in the Top 25). However, this is not surprising for this kind of applications. Say, if you look at the schedule of Foursquare in appannie - even in the American appstore, he only once got into the overall Top 50, and is usually located in the area of ​​200-300x places.
In the first week, the app collected more than 6,000 users and more than 100 discounts they added. Outputs of reviews on thematic resources and in the media will give some more stream of downloads, but we expect the main increase in users from viral spread, including through sharing in the social networks of user discounts and their use.
Like any social service, DealHunter will be the more valuable for users, the more users will actively use it, for which the game mechanics were actually created. For our part, we will collect feedback, correct errors (for example, on the iOS 5 beta, the application is still very unstable while in operation) and prepare to enter western markets. The application is already connected to the API of the American coupon aggregator yipit.com and has an English interface, however, there will be no novelty effect on the American market, so the option to start expansion from Europe is being considered.
We will continue to share information about the service and its development, if you are interested, follow the news on Twitter and the project blog .
From trends to the idea
The idea of ​​the service, where users could add discounts and sales themselves, was born more than a year ago, when two trends were rapidly gaining momentum on the Internet and mobile applications: daily deals (generated by Groupon and picked up by hundreds of similar services) and geosocial applications with game mechanics (one of the first were Foursquare and Gowalla, then Foodspotting and checkinization of everything and everyone - from the fact of watching a TV program to the number of drunk beer mugs). The reason Foursquare has gained over 10 million users over the past 2 years and collected through them an unprecedented database of various places and establishments around the world is the impact of another trend - the use of game mechanics for non-game services (gamification). On the one hand, many have done this for points and badges — that is, status in the Foursquare gaming universe. But many were also motivated by simple altruism, the desire to warn other users from visiting “bad” places and to recommend good ones.
')
At the crossroads of all these trends, from the love of discounts and other freebies to the desire to beat others in statuses and ratings, Deal Hunter was born. If earlier only your friends and colleagues found out about a sale at a store or a business lunch at a nearby cafe, then why not give the opportunity to tell about it to other people around you whom you have never seen, but which this information can be useful for. And you get another virtual reward for it.
From idea to implementation
... a whole year has passed. The idea that was born last summer was on the shelf for half a year, then it was decided to carefully try to enter the water. In February, work began on an Android application called Skidkafon , in which it was decided to simply implement the idea of ​​aggregating coupons and see how interesting it is to users. The studio was engaged in the development of HippoApp, which quite quickly, during the month made the application and in early April it came out in the Android Market. The discount card quickly got into the reviews, even hit the first place in the hit parade of one of the Droider Chart . Looking ahead, I will say that Skidkafon, in the absence of any promotion costs, is currently in 7th place in its category and has 19,000 downloads in the Russian market, which is 3–4 times more than that of Topskidka and Couponer.
In general, in May it was decided to go ahead and add custom discounts and game mechanics. A couple of weeks took up the writing of documentation, the definition of game mechanics and other in-depth stories. It was decided that for each added discount, a favorable price offer (for example, a business lunch at a low price) or a share with gifts, 3 or 4 points will be awarded (additional points are given for an optional photo), another point will be given for a check in an existing card (both to the author of the added sentence, and to the one who used it), as well as one for sharing in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte and Foursquare are connected) for more viral distribution. Also about 25 badges were invented, for the first time. Naturally, users are rated by points within cities and other administrative entities (two types: common and for the week). There were difficulties with the concept of mayors - I really wanted to make them by analogy with Foursquare, it was obvious that competition for mayoralties was one of the main reasons for the success of this service. However, it is strange to make merstry around discounts - usually they are used once, especially if it is some kind of sale in a clothing store. The decision in principle lay on the surface - to bring the rating to the level of the city and number 1 in the rating to give out the status of mayor.
At the beginning of June, development began directly, and at the same time the design was drawn. Both tasks were handled by our partners - Studio Provectus IT . For those who are interested in aspects of development, I asked to comment on the project of the head of the development team Dmitry Povolotsky :
“Dealhunter is a rather large and interesting project that has happened to deal with our still relatively young company. We carried out the development of both the client and server parts of the application.
Most of the functionality of the iPhone client is based on communicating with various servers (our own server, google location api, social network servers (facebook, four square, twitter, vkontakte)), and therefore a convenient layer was developed to interact with various api, based on the ASIHTTP library. All these servers use the json communication protocol, which was used by the json-framework.
Our server is implemented as a set of servlets running under Tomcat. PostgreSQL is used as a DBMS, which is handled with Hibernate. Also, to ensure the implementation of maintenance work, Quartz Scheduler was used, and the Thumbnailator library for image processing. ”
From implementation to release in appstore
Initially, the release was planned for August and was supposed to become Russian-American (Russian coupons were taken from Kupongid, American - from yipit.com), but the development process introduced its own corrections. Also in August, two news fell like snow on the head: first, Google announced the purchase of The Deal Map, which, it turns out, already partially implemented a similar idea a year ago and managed to collect 2 million users. In the app The Deal Map was the ability to add custom discounts and user ratings, but there was no foursquare-like gaming strapping. Yes, and Google after the purchase almost sawed out the user part. Then, on August 9, Qwiqq app appeared in Appstore, which even interface was similar to Foursquare and DealHunter, except that there was no user rating and the mayorstvo institute.
Nevertheless, the development of the service has already moved into that phase when it was too late to retreat, and on September 13, DealHunter went to the appstore for the review. At the same time, an unpleasant interface bug was found in the application and, not waiting for an answer from the Apple AppStore testers, the update was again sent to the review, which he successfully passed the first time and on September 29th the application became available in the Russian appstore (the western release was decided to postpone for a while, testing the mechanics in the Russian market). For the first 4 days, there was practically no promo and DealHunter got its own way up to 75th place in the top category of the Lifestyle category, then on Monday began to leave reviews , which abandoned the application for 19th place in the general top of free applications and for 2nd place - in Lifestyle. At the end of the week, the novelty effect has already begun to subside, and the application gradually began to emerge from the tops (although in the Lifestyle is still kept in the Top 25). However, this is not surprising for this kind of applications. Say, if you look at the schedule of Foursquare in appannie - even in the American appstore, he only once got into the overall Top 50, and is usually located in the area of ​​200-300x places.
What's next
In the first week, the app collected more than 6,000 users and more than 100 discounts they added. Outputs of reviews on thematic resources and in the media will give some more stream of downloads, but we expect the main increase in users from viral spread, including through sharing in the social networks of user discounts and their use.
Like any social service, DealHunter will be the more valuable for users, the more users will actively use it, for which the game mechanics were actually created. For our part, we will collect feedback, correct errors (for example, on the iOS 5 beta, the application is still very unstable while in operation) and prepare to enter western markets. The application is already connected to the API of the American coupon aggregator yipit.com and has an English interface, however, there will be no novelty effect on the American market, so the option to start expansion from Europe is being considered.
We will continue to share information about the service and its development, if you are interested, follow the news on Twitter and the project blog .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/130159/
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