Kung Fu Windows Phone–Marketing 101

So, you have written your application and it rocks… But you are the only one who downloaded the application? How do you get more poeple to download your piece of art? Telerik has jus released a AWESOME whitepaper on how to promote your application

Download –> http://www.telerik.com/products/windows-phone/getting-started/promote-your-wp7-app.aspx

“You’ve built your WP7 app, uploaded it on the marketplace and now you are probably out of your comfort zone wondering what comes next? What should you do to get your download numbers up? Most probably you do not have a marketer at your disposal or an advertising budget.”

• MAKE YOUR APP’S PRESENTATION SEXY
• Make the most of your landing page
• Monitor the stats
• Google Analytics? Now possible
• YouTube is your friend – SEO tips
• BUILD YOUR CORE OF MOST LOYAL USERS
• Start off with a free version
• Add support/feedback link to your app
• Beta test your app
• Get in touch with the Microsoft User Community
• Get in touch with local user groups
• INCREASE DOWNLOADS THROUGH IN-APP TRICKS
• Regularly update your app
• Add “Rate my app” message to your app
• IN-APP ADS
• Microsoft Advertising SDK
• Alternative Advertising networks

Kung Fu Windows Phone - User Feedback

One of the easiest tips I can give any windows phone developer is… USE THE TILT EFFECT!!!

If you create a new Windows Phone application using any of the templates that support sample data (Pano, Pivot or Databound), it will create a Windows Phone app that has a list off items that you can selected… notice when you click on any of these items that their is NO indication that you clicked on it!

Let’s change this… Via NuGet, download and install the Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone. Once you have this installed, add the toolkit namespace

xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"

And enable the tilt effect

toolkit:TiltEffect.IsTiltEnabled="True"

Easy? Try it out and see the difference…

This works for buttons too… Also make sure that you NEVER use color changes in listboxes to indicate selection (This is the default for “normal” silverlight applications)

Kung Fu Windows Phone - Capitalization

Capitalization is one of these un-written rules of windows phone! Your application will not be rejected because it uses capitalization wrong but it does make your application look a little… different

So, let’s look at the official “rules” for capitalization:

Use lowercase for:

• Page/Panorama/Pivot titles
• List titles
• List group titles
• Push button control text or words that function as commands
• List items
• Example text that appears in search boxes
• Link controls in the middle of a sentence

Use sentence caps for:

• Check box and radio button labels
• Progress indicators
• Status, notification and explanatory text
• Toggle switches

Use all caps for:

• Application title
• Date and times AM or PM

Although this is considered the “rules”, as a tip… Launch the Music and Video hub and verify!

BTW. Also note that capitalization is different based on current language! Don’t believe me, change your language to German and check out the music & video hub

LittleWife™

One of the big advantages of mobile applications is that thy are featured in a marketplace where the users gets to rate the applications… This makes the best applications naturally float to the top…

Why not help this process a little by asking your users (after a couple of runs) if thy would like to rate your application?

Introducing LittleWife™

LittleWife is a very simple service with one very important method… Nag()

namespace MmaUnderground
{
    using System.IO.IsolatedStorage;
    using System.Windows;
    using Microsoft.Phone.Tasks;

    public class LittleWife
    {
        public static void Nag()
        {
            if (!IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings.Contains("RunCount"))
            {
                IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings["RunCount"] = 0;
            }

            int runCount = (int)IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings["RunCount"];
            runCount++;

            if (runCount == 5)
            {
                if (MessageBox.Show("Do you enjoy using The UnderGround? Please take a quick minute to rate it...", "The UnderGround", MessageBoxButton.OKCancel) == MessageBoxResult.OK)
                {
                    MarketplaceReviewTask task = new MarketplaceReviewTask();
                    task.Show();
                }
            }
            IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings["RunCount"] = runCount;
        }
    }
}

To use LittleWife, just add the following to the application life cycle events…

private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e)
{
    LittleWife.Nag();
}

NOTE: Inspiration for the name is based on LittleWatson by Andy Pennell

applicationbar opacity in mango

In mango, a common way of using the ApplicationBar is to minimize it and make it opaque. This minimizes the space used and also hints to the user that their is more content to scroll thru.

One “trick” the OS uses is to make the menu non-opaque when expanded

Here is how to do this, set your applicationBar’s opacity and attach the StateChanged event handler

<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>
    <shell:ApplicationBar Opacity="0.9" Mode="Minimized" StateChanged="ApplicationBar_StateChanged">
        <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Images/appbar.refresh.rest.png" Text="refresh" x:Name="refreshButton" Click="refreshButton_Click" />
        <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>
            <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="about" x:Name="aboutButton" Click="aboutButton_Click" />
        </shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>
    </shell:ApplicationBar>
</phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>

In this event handler, switch the opacity

private void ApplicationBar_StateChanged(object sender, Microsoft.Phone.Shell.ApplicationBarStateChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.IsMenuVisible == true)
    {
        ApplicationBar.Opacity = 1.0;
    }
    else
    {
        ApplicationBar.Opacity = 0.9;
    }
}

Easy…