Today's blog post is an exploration of the way our first app, Rollover 1, performed, during it's 1255 day life, lots of things happened.. let's take a look
day -318 Work began on the concept, the team was two-strong. A developer, and a designer, and an idea - create a library of image transitions, so non-technical users can add easy hover effects to their Wix websites.
day - 310 Wix Approved the concept, and development work began
day -144 Rollover v0.1 was submitted, and the QA process kicked-off
day- 120 Review returned, and with over 200 tasks to deal with, our team got to work.
day - 30 Rollover passed Q3, and was scheduled for live
Day 0 Nov 16 2014 - Rollover was set free, we sat back and waited for the millions to flow in.
Day 31 Our first months reports are in, sales aren't great, but people are happy to see this product on sale. We made extra effort to deal with every customer contact, in an extraordinary way, and customers noticed.
Day 45: We are honoured to be included in the Best Wix Apps of 2014.
Day 200: We notice an uptick in installs, why? Well, Wix launched their latest iteration of the editor, and put Rollover in a super-easy to find place inside the editor
Day 365: One year in, and we've only got a handful of customers, 390 to be precise. Even though the numbers were small, we had built personal relationships with many, and many of these early adopters are still with us today. We were encouraged by the small but steady growth. At this point, we're working part-time on the product, if this was going to succeed, we needed to ramp up our efforts, and improve the product.
Day 410; The founder, makes a commitment to give a full-time commitment to work on Rollover, finally, rollover gets it's own website, and we begin making tutorials for You Tube.
Day 530: We release the first major update to the product, nine animations we called 'The Artisan Pack'. This breathed new life into the product, and we were seeing excellent growth at this time.
Day 560: We reach 1000 paying subscribers, a milestone. Next target is 2,500.
Day 600: Finally, we start to see money worth mentioning. But it's too late for one of the original team, who jumped ship to set up his now successful SAAS. That meant flying solo for a while. Obviously, the perfect time to completely redesign the app.
Day 620: Work begins on Rollover 2, 12 new effects, a complete redesign of the front end, using the Wix U.I Lib 2.0 We're using developers from the Philippines, are they are great, the v2 MVP progresses really quickly, everything seems rosy.
Day 650: We begin making promo videos and recruiting beta testers.
Day 680: We submit the v2 MVP to Wix, to positive feedback, we await results of Q1
Day 800: During Q2 fixes, we have a bit of a nightmare, the lead dev quits to do another job, leaving Rollover in a messed up state. These are the dark days. Anxiety levels rise as sales start to show signs of slowing
Day 860: We finally find the right man to become CTO, ending a couple of months of ad-hoc development We're back on track.
Day 1000, We know it, the product has reached the end of it's natural line, we're seeing more and more cancellations, and painfully, at excess of one-star reviews, as customer expectations are no longer being met. The original app is good, but it's looking tired
Day 1100: We're still working on QA2 tasks, but at the same time, planning and building the features you'll see in version 2.1
Day 1150: Internet explorer 11, threatens to derail the whole project, the Image Mask property, doesn't work. Oops, how did we miss this? We have to redo a lot of work, converting .png files to .svg (much better to use these as it happens, so a happy accident, tbf)
Day 1170: We confirm our official partnership with the Wix App market. We're grateful the invaluable support they give us every day.
Day 1220: We pass Q3 stage 3, all issues are fixed, we await confirmation for launch date.
Day 1230: The bell curve is almost complete, sales are down to levels of 18 months ago. Despite massively overspending on development for R2, and sales of R1 petering out, we still get great exposure on Wix, and have an average of 350 new installs every day, so there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Day 1255 - The endpoints are changed, the new app goes live. Let's see what the next stage brings.
Add Rollover2 to your Wix site, here
*days are approximate, we're not psychotic enough to remember every detail
Update: day 1255 6pm - rollover one refuses, to die, a config error on the server resulted in downtime for r1 users - bluegh. anyhoo, r2 will overcome - later tonight. Sorry for the teaser
Comments