App developers and companies ought to take notice of a recent book published by the iPad DJ, Rana Sobhany, as she takes us on a first-person account of how apps fail and succeed. We all know that you can’t just create a new iPhone or iPad app and hope it succeeds by floating around in the app store. Apps like Skyfire and Instagram – both of whom received hundreds of thousands of downloads within days of release – do well through solid advertising and getting exposure in the media.
Mobilize: Strategies for Success isn’t just a book that tells you how to become a successful developer or how to make your latest iPhone or iPad app blow up, it’s also a collection of interviews and stories from developers and companies who’ve made it big with their apps. It also includes commentary from respected bloggers and tech journalists, many of whom are often influential in the success or failure of an application.
From the press release:
Mobile phones—and particularly iPhones—are very personal devices, completely unique to the individual user. As a result, there is one-to-one mapping between users and their devices, a characteristic that doesn’t exist on other platforms. Length of engagement, focused engagement, user preference, click-through rate, conversions, and decay are all behaviors that can now be calculated. “Take advantage of these measurements—called metrics—and analyze them so that you can maximize exciting opportunities to advance, promote and scale your product,” says Sobhany. “It’s essential to isolate the affects of the various components of your marketing mix—so that you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.”
Prior to becoming better known as the iPad DJ, Sobhany was a co-founder of Medialets, a “rich media advertising and analytics platform for mobile.” At Medialets, she coached developers – both individual and firms – on how to position themselves for successful app launches and better marketing.
Mobilize became available yesterday and is only $17.95, but it’s going for $11.47 from Amazon.
Disclosure: Rana June Sobhany is a close and personal friend of the author of this post.