Chess Mates

Hello hello,
Seems appropriate that this is the first post in this forum since today I released my first android app!

Chess Mates is a game that allows you to play Chess with your friends in a correspondence style game. I would love it if you guys checked it out and gave me some feedback.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.epnet.chessmatesfree

I can’t wait to see what you guys think!

Note: This thread has been moved to the “Promote Your Android App” forum

I just downloaded your app - looks great! I was up and running in no time, and am currently in the middle of a game :slight_smile:

One little annoyance - all the text fields for the login & account sign up form default to start with a capital letter. It’s not a huge problem, but it was frustrating when I tried to enter a username with all lowercase letters.

Apart from that, I’m really impressed. For a first app, it has all the right things in place. The visual design is neat, and functional. It could look a little prettier with a custom theme (for buttons, etc.) but the default controls work well as they are.

And 6 reviews on the Android Market already, on day 1? That’s better than most of my apps. I’d wait a day or two and see what your download figures look like. I suspect this app will be pretty popular, if people can find it ok.

Hey Thanks David! I really appreciate you trying it out and giving me some suggestions. I am just really struggling with getting any traction in the market place, any suggestions? I have went around posting on all the android forums and the chess forums, but nothing seems to be getting me momentum. Do you think spending some money on advertising would do me any good? Are there any creditable sites out there that would give me a review? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Personally I’ve never done any paid advertising for any of my apps. I figure if all I invest is my time, then that’s all I can lose. And time keeps coming every day - as opposed to money :wink: Advertising has worked for other people, but I’m probably not the best one to give advice here, as I don’t have the experience.

In terms of organic marketing, bear in mind that the Android Market now factors web links into its ranking algorithm. So posting a link to your app in various forums and websites is likely to help your discoverability in the Android Market.

Android Police have done weekly reviews of new apps in the past. It might be worth sending your app to them and seeing if they’d do a review. Apart from that, the only review site I’ve heard much about is Android Tapp.

The most effective method I’d suggest for promoting your app is to follow two steps - 1.) Keep releasing updates for your app; and 2.) Release more apps!

This is the strategy I’ve followed recently, and found it to work quite well. The first apps I released had very few downloads. After releasing a few more, I finally hit on one that became popular all on its own. In all of my apps I made sure to include a link to my developer profile on the Android Market. So if one app becomes popular, people will click through and download your other apps as well.

If you get enough downloads through this method, your app will also appear higher in search results, and eventually will become self sustaining from organic searches. At least, that’s the theory :slight_smile: It’s a fairly long-term strategy, and I know it can be dis-consoling to have very few users for your first app. But I believe if it’s a good quality app, and you keep working long enough, it will get there eventually. The main thing is to make sure you retain the users who do download your app. The best way to do this is release updates regularly, with real feature improvements.

I am never played this game through any application. I love this game, but I like to play with the chess board. However, I decided; I will try to play this game through android app!. I hope so I love them.