The history of a single android application

For almost two years now I have been developing a small android application . I must say: no miracles and secrets of development (promotion) here you will not know. I just want to share interesting, in my opinion, moments in the development of an open source public application.
Who cares how it was and what I came to in the end, I ask for cat.

What for

Initially, my main motive was a simple desire to try writing under android, although later it turned into something more. Moreover, at that time, there were very few analogues and indeed applications for Belarus. And then there's the next currency crisis . That was the idea.

Idea

Make a widget to get current information about exchange rates in Belarus. Then another resource of semi-legal currency exchange was still popular. With the download of this information, it all started. Then, of course, various banks of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine were added, and the original source, with the stabilization of the foreign exchange market, has sunk into oblivion.

Mechanism

Given my desire to write for android, and not for the backend server, it was decided to use publicly accessible sources of information with low traffic consumption. No matter how unpromising it sounded, it turned out to be quite real. You just need to spend time on correspondence and agree with the owners of the resources, as well as adjust the application code for each resource.
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Sources

Each source of downloadable information is a separate story. Someone wants money, someone bans the use, even though he does not plan to develop an android-version, someone after my appeal quickly cooks up his application, others pull correspondence for several weeks with zero result, however there are positive examples: some immediately allowed and even changed my own API for my convenience!
To summarize, the Ukrainian resources turned out to be the most responsive: I found several integration options at once, moreover, with an explicit link to the site and acceptable documentation. The second place is Belarus - although with difficulty, often with the help of tracking AJAX requests, but you could also find a way. And, unfortunately, the worst thing is Russia - not only the complete lack of documentation and acceptable integration methods, but even a banal response to letters. If someone shows me an acceptable Russian source of information, I will be very grateful.

Approximate market assessment

Somehow this article helped to estimate the volume of the target audience before publication. Well, to rebuild the statistics for Belarus was not so difficult. Then it turned out about 500k devices. Even 5% of this market seems quite sufficient for the publication of the application.

Community

I did not expect such a high activity, really! Reviews on the market, letters to the developer's box with suggestions for improvement, most importantly, a lively forum with responsive participants. Thank you so much! It helps a lot and motivates further development .

Competitors

Soon after the launch, the first competitors appeared (the topic was still relevant). Developers pushed unparsed html into the text output field or uploaded web-informers for sites via WebView. Now, of course, these applications are no longer relevant. However, they also had a lot to learn: they prompted me to expand the functionality of the search screen for the best courses - that is, not only to show the current rates of specific banks, but also to choose the best courses offered by the city.

Analytics: a turning point

From the very beginning, there was a lack of information about the user's behavior. Therefore, Google Analytics was connected and it gave an interesting result: it turned out that only a third of users use the main functionality (widgets), the rest only open the screen with the best courses. So you need to change the development vector : pay more attention to the screen of the best courses. Major improvements have since dealt mainly with more requested features.

Another turn: courses on the map

One evening, standing on the street and frantically wondering which of the nearest grocery stores to go to catch before the closure, and not carry the grid too far, and not lose at the prices, I suddenly realized that a person who wants to exchange currency is tormented by almost same questions.
So why not implement some kind of exchanger map tied to the terrain with the ability to see the rates in them (for example, as shown on the board in the exchanger itself)?
How to find, link, collect, update data is a topic for another article, I can only say that in the end everything turned out.

Competitors again

A few months after the publication in one of the contests, new android-applications (that is, my application did not fit the time of creation) flashed and even won a prize a job with a very close functionality.
Yes, and quite a large local portal decided to write a similar own application.
I am not going to blame anyone for plagiarism (the idea lies on the surface), on the contrary, I am even pleased to realize that I saw the niche first and implemented the solution for it.
Especially, despite the rather strong competition, the application remains in the top ten in the “Finance” category for quite a long time, possessing, however, chips that have not yet been implemented by competitors.
Honestly, when it became known about the emergence of competitors, I was even a little glad: it means that the idea is worthwhile and will evolve.

Promotion and statistics

There is nothing special here: several unique articles were written, there is a forum, a wiki article. Strongly helped to increase the number of reviews unobtrusive dialog box with a proposal to evaluate the application on the market.
The only noticeable download jump was only after the publication of the review on w3bsit3-dns.com for the developer support program (then it was still free).

Development cycle

After some time I had the following process.
Comments, suggestions, error messages are collected from the Google Play Store and the forum. The active phase takes 2-4 weeks. When all planned functions are implemented, the assembly should go through the following steps:

• Small smoke junit test
• Control of energy and traffic consumption
• Alpha test
• Beta test on the forum and in the G + group
• Publish to Google Play Store

Waves of new versions: not all users periodically update their applications, and some never. About 50% of the devices are updated in the first 2 weeks after the release of the new version, then the update rate is significantly reduced.

Source

If anyone is interested, it is open and located at Google . I would be grateful for the review and recommendations.

findings

Without claiming the ultimate truth, I will briefly state that I know six hundred and forty fish later.

• Know your user : what does he do in the application? how long? how often? There are enough tools for this. Perhaps you are not moving there.
• Do not underestimate the community : among the users there are those who want to help you - just like that, especially if you are attentive.
• Do not be afraid of competition. This is what will make the application better and, perhaps, will show that it is better than you thought.
• Ask (help, access, permission) and, perhaps, you will get what you want. After all, if you do not ask, there will definitely be nothing.