Category: free music app

How to track Conversions for iOS App Sales

For the last version of Tessitura Pro 1.9.5, I created a short promo video and started a in-stream video campaign in adwords.

The most important aspect of a campaign is to be able to track conversions (how many views of the video turn into actual installations of the app)

Here are the steps I followed to make this happen.

  1. Create and Upload the video to YouTube
  2. Create a new Video campaign in google adwords
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    Make sure you choose Mobile app installs and find your app using the search in the Your mobile app drop down search boxtcmo2.jpgOnce you’ve selected your app, new options will appear.
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    Choose the Bidding, etc…
    I chose a specific Advanced mobile and tablet options since I want the potential viewers of my promo video to buy the app directly from within the video (actually it will take them to the App Store but on the same device they are viewing the video)

    Then name your Ad group name for the campaign (you could have many different promo videos or different setting for the same video in your campaign, each of those would be an Ad group which is linked to one video).

    And search for your video on YouTube.
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    Once you’ve selected your video you will have more options to choose from.
    I am using an In-stream ad which will appear at the beginning of some other video, but you may choose a Video discovery ad type that will appear as a recommended video on some part of the screen depending on the device.

    You will also need to name this specific ad in the Ad name box (since you might want to have the same video showing as a different kind of ad for example)
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    Then you will be shown the following page:
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  3. Click on the Conversions tool link
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  4. Find and click on the name of the conversion you’ve just created (in my case is Tessitura Installation, you may rename it as well)
  5. On the next page choose how you will setup up conversion tracking.
    I chose Put tacking code into the app
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  6. Download the Google Conversion Tracking SDK
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  7. Open your project in XCode, unzip the downloaded file and drag the entire folder into your project. Make sure you have the Add to target selected
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  8. The SDK library references the iOS AdSupport development framework which may not already be part of your project. To add this framework, open the Link Binary With Libraries dropdown under the Build Phases tab. Add the framework from the iOS SDK using the + button.
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  9. Also, you need to add -ObjC to the Other Linker Flags of your application target’s build setting:
    1. In Xcode’s project navigator, press the blue top-level project icon.
    2. Click on your target, then the Build Settings tab.
    3. Under Linking > Other Linker Flags, add -ObjC to both Debug and Release.
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  10. Finally you need to add the [ACTConversionReporter…] code snippet to your AppDelegate.m in the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions
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  11. Now when you run your project you should get a successful ping to Google in your projects console’s window
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  12. If you go back to the conversions pages in Google Adwords you will eventually see a change in the Tracking Status column saying Recording Conversions (google says it take a couple of days, it work sooner for me)
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  13. It is important that you add a Call-to-action overlay on your promo video.
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    So go to your video edit page on your YouTube account and choose the Call-to-action overlay tab. Add a headline, a display URL (I used my website mDecks.com), a destination URL (use the complete iTunes Store url for your app without the https:// itunes.apple.com/us/app/tessitura-pro/id1144493337?ls=1&mt=8 ) and your app’s icon as a 74×74 image
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That’s all. Now I am able to track every single Tessitura Pro installation from the promo video I’ve created as a conversion.

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iTunes Connect error -22421 solved!

Submitting and app to iTunes Connect without errors is not as simple as it should be, although the review process is now so much faster than it used to be. Back in 2015 app reviews would take almost a week before you knew if the app had been rejected or not. These days (and I am talking November 2016) app reviews take only one day before they are live on the App Store.

Today I tried uploading a new version of Tessitura Pro 1.9.4 to iTunes Connect from within XCode 8.1 and I got an error with code -22421

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Searching on the internet I couldn’t find any case that applied to mine. Apparently -22421 is returned as an error code for several different reasons.

Here’s the problem I had: On my previous (most recent) version of Tessitura, I selected 9.3 as the iOS version in Deployment Target. But for some reason after opening the project in  XCode 8.1 my deployment target had changed to 8.4

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I am guessing you can’t downgrade the deployment target on an app (although I don’t this for a fact). I changed it back to 9.3 and the new Tessitura built uploaded without any problems

In this new version I am adding a google adwords conversion tracking snippet to track installs on the app and I thought that was the problem. I still don’t know whether the tracking code will be accepted in the review process, but I will write a new post with my findings once it’s worked.

How to: In-App Purchase On Sale on the App Store

Changing the price of an app on the App Store is pretty straight forward. You go to the Pricing tab of your app in iTunes Connect and then edit it with the Tier you want. You must remember to set a starting date and an ending date. (Use Now to set the price change right away, and use None on the ending date if you want to keep that price indefinitely.)

If you have in-app purchases for a particular app, and you want to change the pricing for them, you must then go to the In-app purchase tab in iTunes Connect then click on the in-app purchase you want to edit. On the popup screen you will see the current setting for that in-app purchase but you have to click on the edit button to change any data including the price.  Then you can choose the new pricing exactly as you do with the app pricing, setting a new tier, starting date and ending date.

Pretty easy, eh? It took me five minutes to change all the in-app purchase prices on my 60 Top Hat Piano Grooves Vol. 1 app which is now ON SALE for $3.99 (was $4.99) and every single module is now $0.99 (were $1.99) except for the rock & pop grooves since there’s quite a few more of those.

Now you can buy 60 lessons with video tutorial & demo, compete piano score, metronome included in the score to practice all for only $3.99,

less than 7 cents $0.07 a lesson, how ridiculous (“amazing”.- I meant)  is that!

 

60 Top Hat Piano Grooves Free with in-app purchases ready for sale.

After 12 days waiting for review, 60 Top Hat Piano Grooves Free version 1.2 is now ready for sale.

The user has now the option of purchasing a preferred groove module. For example: If you’d like to access all the Rock & Pop grooves only, you may do so by purchasing only that module.

I think this will be a nice feature on the free version since the user already has access to two grooves for every single style. They can try them and choose the style they want to work with first and then when they are ready they can download the next module.

Apple does send you a nice email with all the details:

iTunes Connect
Dear Ariel Ramos,
The following app has been approved and the app status has changed to Ready for Sale:

App Name: 60 Top Hat Piano Grooves Vol. 1 FREE
App Version Number: 1.2
App Type: iOS App
App Apple ID:906262866
The following In-App Purchases are also approved:

In-App Purchase Reference Name: latinreggae
In-App Purchase Product ID: latinreggaepianogrooves
In-App Purchase Reference Name: rockpop
In-App Purchase Product ID: pianogroovesrockpop
In-App Purchase Reference Name: allgrooves
In-App Purchase Product ID: allgroovespiano
In-App Purchase Reference Name: contemporary
In-App Purchase Product ID: contemporarypianogrooves
In-App Purchase Reference Name: jazzbluesgospel
In-App Purchase Product ID: jazzbluesgospelpianogrooves