How is Blue Label Labs different from its competitors?

First, we live and breathe cutting-edge/bleeding-edge technology, so your app will similarly be cutting-edge/bleeding edge with a long “shelf-life”. Second, with a perfect mix of local, domestic and international talent you are guaranteed to get the optimal mix of a high-quality product and a fair price. Third, you will be assigned a dedicated Program Manager (PM) after we’ve established a contract who will be your single point-person for all of your needs and questions. This PM will stay with you for the duration of your relationship with Blue Label Labs and is your conduit to all of the resources we have to offer, thus streamlining your communication and preventing you from having to repeat your message to multiple resources or play air traffic control. Our PMs are the best in the business and we’d be happy to introduce you to a projected PM (and project team) once we’ve got an estimate on the table to discuss. Fourth, the size of Blue Label Labs team (now 64 people strong) means you don’t have to worry about the “single point of failure” issue that exists at smaller shops of just one or two developers, nor the burden paying for the high overhead cost associated with larger shops. Fifth, we have a stronger focus on design than most other shops. We split our design team into two specific functions—Product/User Experience and User Interface. It’s a rare unicorn designer that is good at both thinking through flow and product decisions, as well as branding, colors, logos and overall User Interface. To that end, each project team has both a UX Designer and UI Designer staffed to ensure top notch design. Sixth, with over 7 years of operation and over 250 apps completed, we have both the experience and extensive re-usable code base to ensure your app is built as efficiently and as inexpensively as possible. Seventh, our QA and Testing methodology is rigorous and as important to us as the actual development—meaning your app will be as bug free as is possible. We have a dedicated QA Engineer staffed on every project. This engineer is not the original author of the code ensuring the highest quality results from the QA process. Please see the below sections for more details.

How does Blue Label Labs work with clients?

Blue Label Labs Labs begins most projects with a Discovery, Planning & Design Phase (Phase One). First, we determine the proper technologies and development schedule. Second, the Design teams inherit the User Stories that were drafted during the sales process. User Stories are simple one-liners that outline the activities your users will need to be able to accomplish within the app. These User Stories then get grouped together into meaningful features and feature sets. The Design teams work with the client to finalize the User Stories. Third, our design team sets out creating greyscale wireframes to illustrate how a user will move through the app (i.e., the user experience, UX). Fourth, we transition to full color illustrations/designs that have the final look and feel of the app (i.e., the user interface, UI). Fifth, the app designs are then uploaded into a prototyping platform called Invision that allows our team to create tappable and swipeable “hotspots” so that you can show the app on your phone or via a mocked-up phone in a web browser. At the same time, we draft a Functional Specification document that details the technical hows and whys of the project for the development team. Once that work is complete, we them move on to the Development Phase (Phase Two). The Agile development/engineering team works hand-in-hand with the Program Manager and follows the wireframes and the Functional Specifications to build the app. Our first development goal is the First Deliverable milestone—we call this D1; this is a highly functional build of the app that contains a subset of features agreed upon by Blue Label Labs and the client. We then begin an iterative process of finalizing the remaining features. At the same time, a QA Team builds a full test plan for the app. The QA Team continually performs functional and regression testing on the app, reporting issues to the Project Manager. Learn more about our process here.

How long does it take to complete the average app?

Typically, for our average 4 to 5-month project, the Phase One: Discovery & Planning and Design lasts for approximately 4 to 6 weeks, with Phase Two: Development and Testing Phase occupying the remaining 3 to 4 months. At the end of the Phase Two, the final app is prepared for Deployment. Deployment involves moving any web services and server side components to a production environment and submitting the app to the relevant app store(s).

How much does the average app cost?

If we were in full-swing on a new project, a client can estimate a cost of between $10,000 and $30,000 per two-week sprint ($20,000 to $60,000 per month) for the effort—typically billed bi-weekly. If Blue Label Labs is handling everything from Discovery, Planning & Design through to Deployment in an app store, total app costs average about $120,000 for one “platform”–iOS, Android, Web, etc. That said, it very much depends on the complexity of the design and development required for each individual app, we’ve completed full apps at costs of between $50,000 (a bare-bones, simple MVP/prototype) and $2,000,000 (a full featured, enterprise apps). We provide free, no commitment estimates to clients. After the app is submitted to an app store(s) or pushed live on the web, the Blue Label Labs team monitors the app store and customer reviews and deals with any issues, questions, delays or approvals that arise. We have a great track record with app submissions and make sure that the app submitted is highly likely to be approved without issue. Post approval, a maintenance agreement can be put into place to cover and small issues, minor app edits (e.g., color, image or text changes) and any bugs that might linger. At the end of the project, we will transfer all source code and project files to you and you will remain the sole owner of all IP in the app. After that time, we provide our services at an hourly rate of $120/hour for ad-hoc updates or at an hourly rate of $100/hour for a mutually agreed upon set number of hours in a 6-month retainer. The monthly maintenance cost for the average app is $2,000/month: in other words, a retainer of 20 hours per month at $100 per hour equals $2,000/month and guarantees expedited service vs. ad-hoc requests.

What is the difference between a Native App, a Hybrid App and an HTML5 App?

Native App: A Native App is an app written for a specific platform like iOS or Android—in other words, the app is written in the coding language used for development on that specific platform (Objective-C or Swift for iOS and Java for Android). When you build a Native App, you get access to all the hardware features exposed by the native code APIs and SDKs. For example, Apple iOS Push Notifications are one example of a feature that cannot be supported by an HTML5 App. The graphics and user interface of a Native App are far superior to any Hybrid or HTML5 app. You would choose this option, if you want to use the user interface components from Apple’s proprietary user interface libraries (i.e., the usability is better); you want full device hardware access—cameras, microphone, and geo-location; you want peak performance with no lag; you want users to be able to access the app off-line (i.e., without Internet access); you want access to push notifications and in-app purchase; and you want your app to de discoverable in the app store. On the downside, your code is less portable across operating systems and it is often the most expensive development option. It is our recommendation that if you plan to start a true, revenue generating, app-based business, this is the only viable option. Hybrid App: A Hybrid App is a form of web app that is deployed to a native platform like an iPhone or Android phone inside a native shell. This shell is usually little more than a web browser view (to display the HTML5 content) and some other hooks to allow your web app to potentially access some more hardware features that are not available inside a typical mobile web browser—e.g., push notification and in-app purchases. It improves code portability because if you want to port your app to another platform, you only need a native shell on that other platform to run it, the HTML5 content of the app is directly portable. These shells can be hand written, but can also be generated automatically by tools in the marketplace like React Native, PhoneGap, Cordova or Xamarin. These tools allow a developer to push the app out to multiple platforms (e.g., iOS, Android, Windows Mobile) quickly by generating the shell and packages required to do so automatically. This sounds powerful, and it is, but clearly creators of these third-party platforms have a lot of configurations and hardware to support, and thus, the solutions do not always work the same across all devices, and in practice, testing and hacking of special cases will be required by the developer to get proper functionality. You would choose this option if you want a balance between cost and usability; you want access to some (but not all) of the phone’s native APIs/SDKs and hardware; you want to be able to quickly deploy across multiple device types; and you’re not worried about high-end graphics. On the downside, because these third-party hybrid platforms (e.g., React Native, PhoneGap and Xamarin) need to support so many device types there are always implementation and usability issues to workout. In addition, you will only have access to the features of a new operating system 6+ months AFTER it is released by Apple, Google or Microsoft. In this way, your app will never be able to cutting-edge technology. While we are fully capable of building Hybrid Apps, it is our recommendation that this option is only viable for simple, lo-fi apps that are heavy on text and images, but don’t need much in the way of functionality or user interface. An HTML5 Web App: An HTML5 app is essentially a website with JavaScript code written to allow the app to perform dynamically, as opposed to a static website that you need to refresh to see the changes. It works interactively to make it feel like an app, but it is actually running in a web browser. It is essentially a website, which will support multiple viewports or screen sizes so that it works well on mobile. Because it is running in a browser, it is confined to what is possible within a mobile web browser. You would choose this option if you want to support multiple platforms with the same app/codebase; you want to deploy it on the web; you want the widest possible support across multiple device operating systems and manufacturers; and you want to be able to update your source files on your server and have them immediately deployed to all devices (i.e., removing the need for the app approval process). On the downside, your app is not discoverable in the app stores; it will never look and feel like a true mobile app; and you will have limited access to some of the software and hardware functionality of the phone (e.g., push notifications and cameras). It is our recommendation, that this option is only viable for view-only content where users are not expected to interact in any meaningful way.

Has Blue Label Labs ever transitioned an app the firm has built to a client’s internal development team? What is the typical process and how long does it usually take? Is there a fee for this?

Quite often Blue Label Labs transitions an app to a client’s in-house development team. As part of our regular transition for any client, we transfer all functional specs, wireframes, UI design resources, screen flow maps, passwords/certificates/credentials and source code to the client. We also have extensive experience working in tandem with a client’s existing engineering team. For example, Blue Label Labs will build the front-end experience of an app on top of a client’s existing backend web service and databases. These transitions are the quickest, averaging only a few days, since the Blue Label Labs team and the client team have already been working hand-in-hand for months. If we are handing over a complete project with no prior engagement with the client’s development team, then the transition can take a little longer depending on the support needed. This can range from a few days to a couple weeks. The transition is typically free of charge unless engineering resources are needed to facilitate the transition or the Program Manager is required to spend more than a week on the transition and training. We’ve even helped companies to interview potential new technical team members—e.g., developers and CTOs.

How does Blue Label Labs provide training to a client’s development team so that they could make app enhancements and how much would that training cost?

Along with all the project documentation and support outlined in the answer to the question above, we are happy to provide hands-on training to in-house developers/team members as part of the transition. There is typically no extra charge for this if only a few hours are required. If ongoing training is necessary, for example an in-house developer is not familiar with app development and requires a crash course, then we can offer our services at our hourly rate of $120/hour for training. We’ve even aided our partners in their hiring of their own technical/development team if/when the time is right.

How many designers and developers does Blue Label Labs have on staff? How many work on each client project? Where is the team located? Can the client talk directly to whomever will work on the app?

The Blue Label Labs team is comprised of 64 individuals across its UX Design/Product, UI Design, Development, Program Management, Quality Assurance, Sales, Marketing and Leadership teams. We have 6 Designers, 10 Program Managers, 35 Developers, 3 App Marketers—the remainder of the team is comprised of the Sales, Marketing, Operations & Leadership Teams. Depending on the size of the project, a team of at least 7 Blue Label Labs staffers will work on your project: 1 Program Manager, 1 UX Designer, 1 UI Designer, 1 Technical Architect, 1 Front-End Developer, 1 Back-End Developer, and 1 Quality Assurance Engineer—in addition to the technical and strategic oversight provided by Blue Label Labs leadership. The majority of our Design and Program Manager teams is based in New York City, Seattle and San Francisco areas. The Developers and Quality Assurance Testers are also based in the aforementioned cities, in addition to India-based team members. The Development, Design and QA Teams are managed directly by the Program Manager. The Program Manager is your primary point of contact and the liaison across all other Blue Label Labs team members associated with your project. That said, clients are welcome to speak directly with any individual team member as is needed.

Are projects priced based on “time-and-material” (i.e., hourly) estimate or a “fixed-price” quote?

Projects are priced on a “time-and-material” basis. With 7 years and 250+ apps of experience to our credit, we are able to produce very accurate estimates. We do our best to stay within budget or provide you ample warning if we think we may exceed our initial estimate so we can coordinate how to move forward together with you. Prior client references can vouch for the accuracy of our estimates and can be provided to you upon request.

Is Blue Label Labs able to guarantee that our app will be published in an app store?

Unfortunately, no application can be guaranteed for app store approval. However, Blue Label Labs has successfully built and deployed over 250 apps for the Google Play and Apple iTunes stores. We have a solid understanding and insight into what these stores will typically approve or disapprove of. We will warn you well in advance if any particular aspect of you project poses an approval risk. We have had a handful of instances where an app store has rejected an app for publication; not due to technical issues, but due to legal/business/terms of use issues; however, we successfully appealed ALL of these rejections and these very same apps are now in the app store for download today. We led these appeals on behalf of our clients at no extra charge. If your app is rejected due to technical reasons, we will make all necessary corrections needed to get approval at no extra charge. We are happy to connect you with some of our clients who did face some app store pushback to tell you about the rejection and our successful appeal.

What is Blue Label Labs’ policy regarding correcting defects and publishing an update in the app store?

We provide our services at a blended hourly rate of $120/hour for ad-hoc updates or at blended hourly rate of $100/hour at a mutually agreed upon set number of hours over a 6-month retainer. For example, a retainer of 20 hours a month for $2,000/month guarantees expedited service vs. ad-hoc requests. Ad-hoc requests are handled on a first come, first serve basis across all of our clients and development is based on our team’s earliest availability. The monthly retainer of hours functions much like an extension of the warranty period; issues are addressed within 24-48 hours and development will start as soon as the scope of the issue is defined. For those clients wanting a guaranteed 24 to 48-hour turnaround time on maintenance issues, a 6-month retainer is suggested.

What level of Quality Assurance is included and provided by you in your proposal?

A Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer is assigned to every project and builds a custom test plan for every project during the Discovery, Planning & Design Phase. During the Development & Testing Phase the QA Engineer continually tests the app using functional and regression testing. We test on a wide array of physical devices as needed for a given project. If we are building a backend web service and databases as part of the project, we will also have a set of automated unit tests that are run regularly to verify functionality.

What is Blue Label Labs’ quality assurance (QA) and testing methodology?

We believe that Blue Label Labs’ QA and testing methodology is part of our competitive differentiation. The fact that we dedicate resources to solely this function is something that sets us apart from other development shops for whom testing is simply an afterthought. At Blue Label Labs, QA is handled at all levels of development. There are generally 3 layers of QA/testing that happens for every project: 1.) Internal Development Team Testing Each Development Team has an internal QA Tester along with the Developer Lead who perform basic validation on bug fixes prior to builds being released to the broader Project Manager and QA team. Their validation is to ensure that items within JIRA, which we use alongside Trello, to coordinate team efforts and communicate with clients—are properly remedied according to their descriptions prior to “checking-in” or committing code. When items are resolved by the Development Team they are pulled into the “Testing Done by Dev Team” stack of Trello cards and/or within JIRA. When developing new projects, the Blue Label Labs Development Team will also be responsible for creating “unit tests” for our code so that we can quickly run a basic set of verifications. The dev team does the majority of their testing using iOS and Android app simulators. 2.) Dedicated QA Engineer Each project has a dedicated QA Engineer who sits independently from the Development Team who is responsible for: a.) Drafting a milestone based test plan which outlines a list of black box scenarios to verify and the expected results; b.) Performing smoke and full test pass runs against weekly and milestone builds; c.) Verifying and closing bugs that the Development Team has marked as complete; d.) Working with the Development Team to report issues and regressions; and d.) The QA Engineer takes items from the “Testing Done by Dev Team” Trello stack and verifies whether it is actually fixed. If it is, the Trello card is moved to the “Done (Verified)” pile, or sent back to the “Weekly Priorities” or “Product Backlog” stacks, as appropriate. The QA Engineer will generally perform their tests on 2-3 devices, depending on project requirements. 3.) Project Manager (PM) Testing The final QA gate is the PM who is responsible for quality of the entire product. They will also work with the QA Engineer to verify items have been fixed properly in addition to triaging new issues coming in from the client and the QA Engineer. The PM will appropriately schedule issues to be resolved based on their severity and importance. The PM’s testing is done on actual devices.

Can Blue Label Labs help me with Marketing and PR?

Absolutely. We aim to be your full-service app partner. Our Marketing & PR Offering is designed to help you launch your app and gain marketing exposure. Learn more about our Marketing & PR Offering here.

App Marketing and Business Trends

Increase App Downloads With These 6 Tactics

The whole point of having an app is to acquire as many users as possible – those searching for techniques to “drive more users to my app” should know there are tricks that allow businesses to increase app downloads. You might offer great software but without some additional trickery, it will feel like your app is invisible and thus, not pulling its weight.

Unless you’re doing ad hoc distribution, meaning you only make the app available to select users, the end goal for any app is to get as many users as possible. Your app is a tool for generating revenue and, in other cases, supplementing some other service, so making sure your app is in as many hands as possible is key to positive growth.

More users equal more revenue

Recently, we’ve discussed a few techniques that allow businesses to improve earnings through their mobile apps. You should take care to implement these tactics as each provides a method outside to generate revenue. Further, it’s a good idea to thoroughly analyze how users engage with your app and figure out how to upsell portions of your app to maximize your earnings.

Underneath it all, you need to have users who will take advantage of your earning strategies whether it’s IAP, IAS, or outside earning methods, where appropriate. You should have these kinds of things in place but you’ll need to be prepared to tweak these portions once you start building a diverse user base.

So, let’s take a look at some of the best strategies that we’ve uncovered to get users to download your app.

6 tips to increase app downloads for your app

Once you have the right tools in place for your app to earn, it’s a great idea to explore options that will increase app downloads, thus expanding your userbase and earning potential. The following provides a good mix of methods to organically grow your userbase as well as some direct marketing tactics with great success rates.

1. Build a website under the same domain your app is marketed under

If you’re familiar with SEO and all that’s involved, you know that it takes a good length of time to get results. It’s daunting to some but ultimately, it’s worth it the end of the day. You’ll need to invest in curated content building initiatives to establish relevance and work to get backlinks to your site from high-authority domains to get your site well-ranked.

For an app, this helps drive traffic when you use the right keywords for your most viable landing pages. To start, anyone looking to launch a new app should start with a landing page and blog long before any code is written. The idea is that by the time the app is released you have already built a following online and have credible links for keywords you want your app to target.

Over time, you’ll want to further develop your site with static landing pages and blogs with great content (more content makes Google happy) then engage other publications to get backlinks.

2. Promote your app on high-traffic mediums

You’ll want to ensure that your app is dispersed around the web on as many applicable social channels as possible to increase app downloads. The thing is, it depends on the nature of your app – in some cases, you may want to explore using Instagram but for some apps, LinkedIn or Facebook might be the most appropriate.

In one example, the founder bopdrop (an app that we built and released earlier this year) made a great TikTok video to promote his music discovery platform. Though many seem to think of TikTok as a platform for people to share entertaining lip-syncing or dancing videos, it proves to be useful for business as well.

You should have an idea as to whether your app will perform better on more professional channels, mediums that are used for entertainment, or somewhere in between. Otherwise, you’ll need to engage in testing to figure out which platforms get your app the most attention.

3. Develop paid relationships with celebrities or social media personas

While it sounds ambitious, you’ve certainly seen this tactic in action and for products far less popular than mainstream brands like Nike. Think about times you’re watching a YouTube video like this one from this vlogger, Lennon the Bunny – she’s not a celebrity by any means but her channel gets a lot of views from rabbit enthusiasts because she makes interesting content. In her video, she promotes her sponsor, Skillshare, which is an online learning platform for creative outlets.

Keep in mind that a lot of things that seem unrelated intersect. In the case above, Skillshare fits well as bunny enthusiasts tend to be a unique demographic of individuals so it makes sense for them to work with the Lennon the Bunny channel.

Manual outreach is one way to do this however, there are platforms like OpenSponsorship that’s goal is to connect users with well-known athletes. For best results, take some time to figure out where your product or service intersects with other interests. Too, for lesser-known content creators, you can use tools like HypeAuditor to calculate the “integrity” of an audience to determine how many of their followers are real people versus low-quality bot accounts.

4. Get good user reviews

Managing user reviews on the App Store or Google Play is a process that can be a real pain. However, if you’re getting a ton of reviews then it’s likely because the app is doing well which is a good problem to have. When you’re still up and coming, it’s important to understand that bad reviews, especially those that appear early, can damage your chances of to increase app downloads.

The main reason bad apps hurt is the same reason that great reviews help: the typical end-user is lazy. We’re also subject to our own confirmation bias so when we tend to believe information that aligns with our notions.

Getting good user reviews helps circumvent the possibility of this cognitive bias coming into play when bad reviews surface that might deter a potential user. Too, this same notion comes into play when users are already predisposed to liking (or at least, wanting to like) your app. Users that are on the fence or unfamiliar with your app are more likely to spend a little longer researching your app by reading at least a handful of reviews.

If you’re reading this, you likely need a little help in getting more downloads so it’s safe to say that your app isn’t a popular commodity. Take care to address both the good and the bad user reviews and make sure to include reminders for users to review your app with the intent of getting the highest possible rating.

5. Use pricing trickery: temporarily lower the price

The idea here is to release your app as a paid version then in, say, a week make it free or heavily discount it. There are a ton of sites that watch for price drops on apps which is essentially free marketing.

We used this same tactic for the product we developed, Word Hack Puzzles. Doing so shot this product to the top of the charts for a short time.

6. Send your website viewers to the marketplace to use your app

One thing you can do to get users to download your app is to create an overlay on your site that detects and offers to redirect the view to the respective marketplace for their device. This is ideal when your app is a view for your site but it has other features that are only available through the app.

A great example of a site that does this is Newgrounds – they don’t offer an official app themselves but they do promote a variety of apps from other publishers. When you visit certain games on the site, you’re prompted to go to your respective marketplace to download the app. In other cases, there are highly visible links that you can tap on to visit the store associated with your device then download the app.

Blue Label Labs can help you increase your app’s visibility

At Blue Label Labs we believe in using the most sophisticated tools on the market to leverage our successes and deliver the best product possible. Throughout the lifecycle of an app, we may implement a variety of strategies to ensure that your app gets the most possible downloads. Get in touch to learn more about our process or ask how we can help you leverage your existing app to be more successful.

+ posts

Increase App Downloads With These 6 Tactics

More users equal more revenue

6 tips to increase app downloads for your app

1. Build a website under the same domain your app is marketed under

2. Promote your app on high-traffic mediums

3. Develop paid relationships with celebrities or social media personas

4. Get good user reviews

5. Use pricing trickery: temporarily lower the price

6. Send your website viewers to the marketplace to use your app

Blue Label Labs can help you increase your app’s visibility

Get the latest from the Blue Label Labs’ blog in your inbox

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Are You Using AI In Your Job?

Increase App Downloads With These 6 Tactics

| October 27, 2020

More users equal more revenue

6 tips to increase app downloads for your app

1. Build a website under the same domain your app is marketed under

2. Promote your app on high-traffic mediums

3. Develop paid relationships with celebrities or social media personas

4. Get good user reviews

5. Use pricing trickery: temporarily lower the price

6. Send your website viewers to the marketplace to use your app

Blue Label Labs can help you increase your app’s visibility

Get the latest from the Blue Label Labs’ blog in your inbox

Subscribe

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