2013 has been a great year for Voyage Travel Apps. We've become more sure of who we are and our values as a small independent shop and our technical and design skills have, I think we can all agree, vastly improved. This has allowed us to take our flagship app Trail Wallet in a new direction that people seem to appreciate.
Like everyone, we've had our share of challenges (I love how it's always 'challenges' and not 'major league fuck ups', which is often closer to the truth) but our users have generally been very patient and supportive as we navigate these waters. Learning a craft like software development is a long, never ending process full of tiny incremental improvements and it's only when I look back over a longer period can I get a sense of how far we've come and, looking forward, how far we still have to go:
So pleas'd at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But, those attain'd we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Says it all, really.
Major milestones this year include the introduction of the much-requested Trips feature and the new 2.0 redesign. It also saw the release of 2.1 which saw us embrace the Freemium model where we offer Trail Wallet for free with an In App Purchase to unlock the fully featured version.
It's a little too soon to say whether this experiment has been a success or not but we've certainly increased our downloads significantly and the money is still flowing in so we're tentatively hopeful that this was the right move.
Our Year In Numbers
In 2013 Trail Wallet saw:
- 10 new versions released (a mix of major feature and minor bug fix updates)
- 3775 downloads of Trail Wallet
- 61 reviews
- An average rating of 4.4 stars on the App Store
The most exciting number for us is the reviews and our star rating which, although an imperfect measurement, serves as an indicator of how much people are enjoying the app. We've put a lot into it so it's heartening to see that work being appreciated, even if we don't get it all right every time.
On the website we saw:
- 15,592 pageviews from 9,096 unique visitors
- 30% of our traffic coming from non-desktop devices
A big part of this interest in the site came from our Trail Walleteer of the Month feature, where we interview Trail Wallet users about travel expenses and budgeting on the road and we hope to continue this series into 2014.
It's also worth noting to see how much of our traffic is now coming from non-desktop devices, although I suppose it's a little unsurprising given that we sell mobile apps. Still, that's almost a third of people using the website on tablets or phones and this looks set to grow again in 2014.
2014
Trail Wallet has been our primary focus for the past year but it's reached the point where it's ticking along nicely by itself so in 2014 we're looking to increase our roster of apps and we already have a number of ideas that we're contemplating.
Don't worry, we're not abandoning Trail Wallet and we have a range of features that we hope to implement over the next year.
We love creating apps for the iOS platform and Erin and I thank you for all of the support and interest in 2013 which has allowed us to spend so much of our time doing this and we wish you all the best for the new year!
Simon
Voyage Travel Apps