Interview with the creators of Botany Buddy
Posted by Eric Mills on Sun, Nov 29, 2009 @ 10:44 PM
AVAI partnered with Botany Buddy and the Botany Buddy app was release two months ago. If you are thinking of developing an app, check out what these guys have to say about the experience.
What does your app do?
As an app, Botany Buddy is essentially an interactive reference book for identifying trees and shrubs or selecting them for use in your garden or landscape. It also allows users to compile the information into collections, add photos of their own, and share it with other app users. Each plant has 25 fields of information that are coded to an advanced search engine that allows users to search and browse the information through a number of different filters. What our app has done for Botany Buddy, is allowed us to launch and build our larger brand before it goes live on the internet. It has also provided us with valuable feedback about where we are going from our users before we take it to the broader market and next level. Most importantly, the app has allowed us to put what will be a predominately internet (vs. native app) based platform and brand into people’s pocket and become a household name.
How did you come up with the idea for the app?
Oddly enough the idea already existed in something that I had built two years earlier for a consulting company I owned. Having been in the landscape profession for over twenty-five years, I have grown up with the traditional reference sources as well as the new technologies as they emerged, and having this type of reference “tool” in your pocket is something I have always dreamed of. I was already providing similar technologies via the internet with a hybrid of several different software and communication tools and this consolidation was a logical next step. As a whole the horticulture industry has always lagged electronically and once I researched it I was shocked at the time we started this there weren’t any really good gardening apps out there already.
Why did you choose to do an iPhone app?
Opportunity knocked and all the stars aligned. The iPhone opportunity was the first to arise, and all the partners to make it happen saw the potential so we made it happen. Once we started we realized that we were onto something far greater than “an app for that”, but the app gave us a clear, reachable attainable goal that we could all get our hands around to provide a solid starting point for everything else we wanted to do. In the future, I will be more apt to use apps to extend rather than launch a brand. In the meantime, it has provided an ideal testing ground and launching point for where we are going with everything else.
There has been much written about Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T and how it has limited their market share. After having this experience I am convinced this was intentional with Apple in that it limited the damage that could be done to their reputation for customer satisfaction while they perfected their technology. It also tied them to someone that people already didn’t like so Apple could always be the good guy. Being in the app store has been somewhat like that for us. We know from our user feedback, followers and inquiries that currently only about 10% of the people that want to buy Botany Buddy’s services have an iPhone. Being able to perfect what we are doing in the safety of the app store will only benefit us when suddenly we are available to ten times as many people. The iPhone and Touch are definitely the best devices for a mobile internet experience, but AT&T’s limitations have protected us and bought us time that we needed to get everything just right just like it has for Apple. In the end, the product will be even better for Apple users because it is still the best device.
What has been the response to the app?
The response has been great. Over 3/4 of the hits that now come to our website everyday are direct name searches for Botany Buddy. There is only one thing that can create that kind of traffic and it is one on one referrals from happy customers. Our ability to market ourselves is directly related to the app and the image of the icon that it is burning in people’s heads. The constructive criticism has been great too. As a direct result of the feedback our web based product is going to have about ten times the information and search capabilities. It will also improve upon several areas of the interface and flow of functionality. Without the feedback on the initial app we would not have near the product we are going to have.
How are you marketing and promoting the app? What is working and what isn't?
We are marketing in several ways. Our main focus has been on getting outside of the traditional iPhone market as the horticulture industry is predominately on Verizon. This has lead us to work with the press to get unbiased reviews from several national and regional garden magazines and getting people who don’t even own iPhones to push the app for us. We also use our Twitter account as kind of a running periodical of botany related links and info as a way to create an identity for the brand that isn’t just selling it. One of the whole concepts behind Botany Buddy was to be a “Buddy” to botany as well as a way to bring botany lovers together by not only giving them information but allowing them to share it.
The absolute best marketing we have is our customer service and that we have a quality product. We have a very diligent program set up to make it easy for people to find us with suggestions or questions, and we make a point of responding to every inquiry timely, personally, and honestly. The whole concept behind Botany Buddy is to create a “Growing Community” and we are definitely creating a community users who are helping to promote us. We have watched other apps launch with lots of glitches and simple proofing mistakes and it has killed them in the long run. We have also watched big names like Audubon launch with soaring numbers, but their apps are getting reviews that aren’t living up to the quality of their existing brands and they start falling fast. The worst thing we have seen that anyone can do is think that apps don’t require customer service. In twenty-five years of selling products and services I have never seen more go into a single dollar earned than does with an app.
Opening ourselves up like this has been our greatest asset. Between our demo video, the fact that we list our entire library contents on the web page, and that we encourage the use of our forums to keep customer concerns in the open, we only leave one thing left for people to wonder about, and that is the one thing we have complete control of; customer service. On that same note, our blog says everything you need to know about Botany Buddy, who we are, and the efforts we try to support. Overall, I hope and am pretty certain that many of our customers really do think of Botany Buddy as a person, and not just an app for that.
What advice would you offer someone thinking about doing an app?
Three Rules:
- Building: Be patient, be thorough, know what you want to deliver and it do it, because your customers expect it.
- Branding: If you are going to use the app to extend a brand you had better live up to your brand expectations
- Delivering: To succeed in the app store you had better be prepared to do retail sales because that is what it is.
To sum it up remember that app buyers are real people. I think some developers and the people that hire them often flock to the app store thinking they are going to get rich and never have to deal with people again. Too often it is thought of as a place to sell a widget and hope it makes it just because it is there. The bottom line is the iPhone and Touch are amazing tools and the people that are loyal to them are smart, educated, and expect the best. There may be 100,000 apps in the store, but less than 5000 are actually made for people who use their apps and the operating system to its fullest. The rest people collect and throw away daily and frankly it seems like most are just made to satisfy someone’s own desire to have an app in the store rather than a customer’s desire to use it. Realize that you are dealing with real people, and start thinking of the people who are going to buy it that way. Even more importantly once the app is in the store treat your users like real people because they are.
What does the future hold for you?
You will have to wait and see. Botany Buddy Online is coming out in the VERY near future and it will change everything for us, the way we build and use apps, and hopefully an industry.