How to make iPhone Apps and Influence People Musings on the iPhone development process

The Commonwealth Games experement

One of the original catalysts for creating Delhi City Metro was the up coming Commonwealth Games. Prior to the opening ceremony I released a substancial update to the app that included all the competition venues and allowed you to use the route calculating mechanism to find your way to each venue using the metro.

CWG Venues on the metro map

It was a programmers attempt at marketing. I changed the app's name, all the iTunes screenshots and key words and spent a considerable amount of time wrangling the train stations and train lines code to fit around commonwealth games venues. I created a neat little count down at the top of the app and a few new views to handle the slightly different content and added the venues in their approximate position on the metro map.

Did it all pay off? Well it didn't sell a million extra copies leading up to the games, but the app did see a sales spike and a considerable usage spike.

Delhi City Metro also moved back into the top 100 over all apps, and back to #1 in Navigation over the period.

There's also been a number of favorable reviews posted since the 1.1 update, and I've been trying to follow up user comments through twitter (@delhimetroapp) and via email.

App Usage

If you look at the usage over the past few weeks, you can see the spike in usage for the Commonwealth Games. It's also interesting that the usage appears to be maintaining a higher level than prior to the games, but it might change in the coming weeks.

Delhi City Metro usage statistics since the Commonwealth Games