Customer Courtesy: What Mobile Developers Should Consider

Something that has been getting on my nerves lately is the missing of customer courtesy to their loyal buying fans.

fans. I’ve seen dozens of apps get released on the App Store at about $4.99, then the next day, they drop it to $2.99. What’s the big idea here? I know lowering the price will act as an incentive, but are you just throwing the first-day buyers under the bus? Yeah, I think so. Most hardcore fans buy games the day of launch, but are burned the next day because the developer chose to drop the price.

What should developers do to please customers? Well, that can be answered in many different ways with several different opinions, but as a customer, I’d have to say: Start with a special launch price. Some companies are actually getting this right, but many aren’t. I’ve also noticed the rising amount of apps going free lately, and I don’t mean from a promotional service ( FreeAppADay, App-o-Day, FreeAppReport, etc.) or special event (birthdays, marriage, death, etc.), but just for the heck of it. Something like: “Hey, I’m making this game free! Get it now!” or to that similarity. How does that annoy me? It’s not just a dollar that I could of spent of something else, but over a cumulative amount of time, it’s grown to be over 50+ dollars or even more.

To be honest, I’ve saved tons of money from snagging free apps, but I do feel a bit sorry for the buyers. After all, they just did lose their money. Now, I know what your going to say: “Their supporting the devs! It’s not going to waste!”, but as a customer, it certainly does feel like it goes down the drain. Especially if it’s your hard earned money.

To conclude, I’m not saying it’s a terrible thing to let your apps go free for a limited time, but try and be courteous to your current buyers. Perhaps, if had an update that gave them some promotional in-game cash (which would normally be an IAP), which was before the promotion (meaning only the buyers would receive it), I think the previous purchasers (such as me), would be a bit more lenient on the issue that we just paid money for something that goes free. It’s something that doesn’t happen to console games, where as the game value exponentially depreciates, but developers should know when they may be upsetting their fans.