Hey, this the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, I want to talk
about Browsers and Searchers.
If I were to ask you to name a famous typist,
like somebody who's really good at typing, what name would spring to mind? I mean, somebody
who's world-famous, if you have to think of the best typist in the entire world, the fastest
typist or whatever, what name would spring to mind? I mean, would there be any name that
springs to mind? For me, it would be Mavis Beacon, and that's because of the game
Mavis beacon teaches typing. Which is like for as long as I can remember, we've had this software
package that has been, you know, Mavis Beacon- I don't know what version they are on now,
but it's always been out there. So, and it's been a computer game, I think it came out
in the late 80's or the early 90's, or actually it's the late 80's. So, you play
this little game, it has the balloons and everything, you just pick up your speed with
typing. I always know the name Mavis Beacon but I
don't know anything about her. And I used to joke, we came out with an Algebra game a few
years ago called Algebra Bubble Bath and we did a few other ones, and I used to joke that
we should come out with Eric Wroolie teaches Algebra because I thought, I knew that Mavis
- I didn't know anything about Mavis Beacon except from the games and I knew that whoever
she was, she's like the world's famous typist. And I used to think, she must've been- maybe
the Guiness Book of World record holder something like that or maybe she had a TV series, or
whatever. I really didn't know, right? So, I actually Googled it now - (laughs!) I know
this is sad, but I finally got around to do it. Who was Mavis Beacon anyway, right? You
know what? She never existed! That's a made-up name. It's not even a real person. So, basically
when it came up with a software back in 1987, and they came up- they made Mavis Beacon the
woman who's on the cover of the software box, where back then you had like a box of software
with floppy disks and it's like this big, this wide, this thick and you shake it, you
can feel the disks and a hundred-page manual that nobody one will ever read. But you
know, it was- so you would get that and the cover would have Mavis Beacon on it which
was Carribean model apparently. And they chose Mavis from Mavis and the Staple, some banners,
something like that. So, it's really interesting if you could check it on Wikipedia.
The reason I bring this up because when I read this I thought, "Hey, you know what,
I wonder if it would really help us?" Like if we have a character, like come up with
somebody, like you make-up a fictitious character who's really good at some sort of education
or whatever and then we'll name the game after- name one of the games after that person. We'll
do that kind of thing. I wonder if that would work or how that would work. And then I thought,
you know what, I would never do that. And you know why I would never do that? Because
I wouldn't want to give up the space in the title for the keywords. It's- I wouldn't want
to have like say Bob Johnson teaches Algebra or whatever because I wouldn't want to give away
that valuable- that valuable space in the title because it's so- it's just to valuable.
And then I started thinking, what's the deifference between now and Mavis Beacon? And I thought,
well, actually it's easy because I'm thinking about search and they weren't. I mean, back
then, back in the 90's when they were- when you'd go buy software, you'd go like BestBuy
or whatever, you would browse. You would look at the software that they had and there will
be things that leave out to you. So they have catchy titles and all this kind of stuff.
Now, we have unlimited shelf space. Now we have, if it's gonna be an actual shop, if
you'd actually went in to a physical apps store and each one of us has a little bit of
space, it would go on for miles. So we have to rely on search, right? And I started thinking
about the differences between browsers and searchers. A lot of times we were thinking
the titles or we're thinking about our applications, we're thinking in terms of browsers, like
we're thinking once they see this, then it will leap out of them. But in terms of searches,
we have to think how do you actually get in front of them in the first place. So, when
we think of a title, you have to think about how the keywords are gonna go in to the title,
how it gonna go to the description. If somebody go in to the app store, what are they gonna
be searching on? I mean, it's been so long in this industry now. I'm not naive enough
to think it's gonna be featured at the front page of the App Store or Google Play coz it's
not just realistic to think that way. You have to start thinking in terms of how are
people actually gonna find your apps. For me, this is one of the reason s why I don't
do a lot of games that don't have a purpose to. I like educational games because I know
than people want to learn something then they'll be going in and they will be searching for
something. As oppose to somebody who's just looking for some ways to spend a little bit
of time, they'll go browsing, they'll look at what's popular at the moment. And I'm just-
(laughs) I've never been popular. I don't expect my apps to get in those popular areas,
right? And I think the distinction between searchers and browsers is really important.
If I go to the library, I'm browsing. I don't expect them to have the book I'm looking for
coz they're just so small so I just look around to see what's there. If I go to Amazon, I'm
searching. Like I'm looking for a specific thing. It's huge difference, roght? If I do
a search for a specific book, or a specific topic, I want that book to come up in the
search results. In order for that to- in order for that to be ranked well, it needs to have
a title- it needs to be known for being that title whether or being that subject. So whether
it's in the title or prominently in the description or whatever, or in the reviews and everything
like that. And you know, that's a search algorithm. In order for purchases to be made on Amazon
or the App Store or anything else, they have to be optimized for search. But, when you
get those search results back, you also have to think about the browsers. You also have
to think about when I bring up search results in Google Play ot the App Store and I have
a fifty or a hundred examples in front of me, I could just be lazy and go for the first
one, but it's also been wanna leaps out in front of me. So it has to be the one with
the good icon and everyhting like that. It was just something I started thinking about.
It's something that's, you know, it's different. I mean, if you read a marketing book that
takes place before the internet, it's gonna be different than after the internet because
now we have- the rules are different. I know that somebody who's in Marketing might disagree
with me because I mean, what do I know, right? But when I put out an app, I have to think
about how are people gonna find this? And if you pay for advertising or if you pay for
acquisitons and everything like that, you dont have to worry so much about search. You
just get in front of people and then browsers. If they like it, then they click on it and
it'll go through. They're not searching for something specific. Which would be ideal coz
then we'd have a lot more creativity over the titles, the icons, and everything like
that. We could call our apps something- something completely unique and everything like that
because it's there as opposed to - Learn Mandarin Bubble Bath Chinese Learning App. (laughs)
That's such a terrible title! So, anyway, those are just my thoughts today. Let me know
what you, guys, think. When I talk to people who have trouble with their apps being found,
one of the biggest reasons is because they don't have the right keywords in the title.
And they haven't thought of how- they are not taking on the search mentality like how
are people actually gonna find this when it comes to search. They have the browse mentality
where, "Hey, this is really good. When somebody sees it, they'll gonna like it." Which is,
in order for you to get to that column, the browse column, you have to be really good
at the search column. Anyway, I hope that makes sense. That's it for today. I'll talk
to you, guys, tomorrow.