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Reading the App Store description I was 110% interested in this app's features until I
1) questioned why a RAW app would be free, until I saw this was subscription based
2) didn't see how long the trial period is for and whether any features continue past then
3) didn't see how much the subscription costs
4) saw two very fake looking reviews
5) screenshots don't really show any features; if anything they make it look far less "powerful" than your competitors
Yes photographers are a paying niche, but we're technical so don't treat us like we're stupid! I feel like it shows a lack of respect for prospective users and potential influencers. Transparency goes a long way.
@tombielecki Hey Tom! I'm sorry you feel the lack of transparency. It seems to really stem from lack of upfront pricing from this product hunt page or a clearly spelled out description that there does require a subscription to use the app.
I wonder if the main problem is the "FREE" badge on the App Store page that's creating the initial confusion. Our app does not bait people in, instead it's paid up front subscription, we just cannot do so without allowing a free download first because of the limitations of the App Store. I think the "FREE" badge on the App Store makes it feel deceiving. We have taken as many best practices and examples from other subscription based products as possible, including our IAP experience with our other products, and I feel the subscriptions have been the hardest to keep from feeling unfair.
I don't quite understand how we're treating users here as stupid, but I'd love to know how we can improve. Here's my thoughts on your individual points:
1) It's out of our control, the "free" badge is required on the app store. We put subscription pricing in our description, but yeah, who reads all that? And we put in all the subscription info and pricing in the first couple steps of the app, so there's no baiting, just an informational set of screens instead of just starting with the paywall and no information
2) We didn't mention the redemption code periods! That was not intentioned to get you to pay more. It's a code to redeem the monthly subscription.
3) It's on the subscription screen in the app. If I'm understanding correctly, you'd love to see that BEFORE you enter the app most likely. A couple reasons why we didn't put it in the description: 1. currency is all different in every territory for all the different App Stores. We rely on Apple's own calculations so that we can be as accurate as possible, but in the description we cannot make that dynamic, and need new app submissions for every text piece we change. It's just not feasible for us to do that for all 155 territories, so we mention there is a subscription, and the first part of the app literally tells you all you need to know. We never trick you into buying anything. If it comes off that way, we need to fix it.
4) we launched a few hours ago. I don't know what to tell you? Can we really ever even trust reviews these days? I'm not trying to be competitive on this point, but it's really hard to get any reviews this early in the game. If you check our other apps' reviews, you'll see a lack of "fake" looking reviews. I hope that gives you a bit more confidence in our track record. Believe me, i wish we could do something about the reviews we get.
5) What kind of screenshots do you hope to see? We definitely didn't show off the speediness with still images, we try to visualize what the A.I. does when analyzing the photo but there's no way to show that happening (it all happens in a handful of milliseconds really), and we show a resulting photo with some simple text. I think you have a good point here, just seeing if you may have some insightful thoughts into it. Of course you might not, since these seem to be more quick observations than deeply thought out for months (obviously).
I really appreciate your first impressions. It really helps us understand te nature of how people react. It's pretty intense the differences in launching a subscription based product.
Overall, if you've followed our company in the past, we try to be as transparent as possible. We interact with all our users on a daily basis, though to be fair a lot of these great photographers are close friends, and we really have no secrets. We blog about company decisions, we have community events, and we always invite people into our office to chat. Maybe we need to do a better job here on the product hunt comments!
Thanks again, I hope to gain more insight into your thoughts if you have the time!
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@art_chang If I understand correctly from the other comments on this thread, there is no "free trial" in the app before the user is asked to pay the subscription fee? Honestly, that's even worse, because I have no idea if my RAW files will work with your app! (and Apple doesn't do refunds). Why not use the auto-renew subscription and provide the first (3 days / 1 week / 2 weeks) as a free trial? Super simple.
0) "We have taken as many best practices [...] from other subscription based products". I'm sorry, but your app store description does not convey this at all. It appears as an option that unlocks features and supports the developers, not a core requirement of the app. The 'Bear' app mentioned in another comment shows the bare minimum that a subscription app should say (bottom of the description: cost and features of pro account). Your app doesn't even have a free period, so it should be the FIRST LINE in your description. "Priime requires a monthly subscription"
1) Again, "subscription is in the description" is not enough, it seems more like an afterthought that you were required to include... versus a core aspect of the user experience.
2) Again, requiring a code to try the app is user hostile, and misleading from the app store description. Get users to the "aha" moment before they have to pay for it. You need an internal "north star metric" to get as many people to this "aha" moment as possible.
3) As the 'Bear' app description shows, you can give a USD subscription price in the description and it will be less vague to users than no pricing info at all. Us international users are accustomed to seeing USD pricing, and it at least gives us a ballpark figure.
5) Apple probably does the best marketing images of image quality, if you want some inspiration... otherwise, you might need to resort to text or composite images to convey what needs to be shown.
If it's fast, show a badge saying "4x Faster than Lightroom". Also I hope you have seen Arsenal on kickstarter for inspiration on your messaging and imagery.
Personally, things I'd like to see in your screenshots:
• that your app's intelligence utilizes most of the features of my RAW images (noise reduction, sharpness, histogram, curves, lens distortion? any of these). I shoot RAW because I know the power of it, so just showing brightness control etc is not enough.
• that I'm given adequate control of the result (one slider setting falls short)
• that I have powerful export control (show a loupe on a 120MP photo, saying "Full Res up to 120MP!")
• if quality is a selling feature (it should?) then a simple before/after screenshot (all of them?) would be a good way to show that. On that note, your website landing page should definitely have more before-after images/animations and information about the app.
• show someone using the app next to a DSLR at a shoot to show this is a powerful tool for professionals, not "just another filter app". I'm surprised none of the images on your app or site have a photographer/camera in them.
Do I understand that you take the contents of an image into account, as in SCENE detection? If so, you could do wayy more to show that off in the screenshots and description. There's a story to be told there.
I understand you are a small startup that has accomplished a LOT to get to this point, it's very impressive, and I'm just frustrated that the landing page(s) don't effectively communicate to me--your intended userbase--what this app is and does and why I should trust you to pay for an app I haven't understood. I'm glad many others in this thread have touched on the same issues, and I urge you to consider why so many people were motivated to comment on the payment model/transparency.
@tombielecki Hey Tom. We took your feedback and just released 1.1, that lets users kick the tires a bit with the full-featured editing tools. We still have a paywall, but at least users can get a trial run first. I hope this helps.
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Reading all the comments, I am curious why you guys chose to do subscription instead of selling your filters like you did in the iPhone app. It seems given the marketing and the pricing, this app was initially developed to help your existing power users, and as such is getting some backslash.
@kirillzubovsky Hey thanks for the question! It is something we've deliberated on a lot. This app is mainly focused on serious hobbyists and pros who shoot RAW. The tech behind making this possible, while not taking any less time than what we've built, is actually extremely complex to make RAW editing viable. To continue supporting the tech, innovation on new tools, etc., we had to find a better way to support the company on an ongoing basis.
We haven't actually gotten any backlash from existing users, as they understand and have experience with our products already. Most of the backlash is from new users and especially because of where the paywall is. We had plans at some point to run a dynamic A/B test on where to place the paywall, either up front or with some tangible trial before. This was purely for conversion, but we knew that no matter what, requiring payment would have some kind of backlash.
All of the products will eventually tie together into one subscription, and that will make a lot of sense in the near future. As a tiny team of 5, we have to slowly get there.
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@art_chang Right on. All legitimate. It's insanely hard in 2017 to make a product for which people would actually pay real dollars to support the team, best of luck!
@kirillzubovsky Thanks Kirill! Yup, I think it's always been hard to make real dollars to support a team. You either have to have insane growth (pokémon go numbers at this point), fit in a market that's really trendy, or make some money. The last being hard, but a good proof point. If your product is quality and needed enough, you'll make enough to keep pushing. Unfortunately, the App Store is a difficult beast to be distributed on, but we're trying our best.
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Well, how much is the subscription? I don't find any page named "Pricing" or "Subscription" on your website. Also, not on iTunes.
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The more amazing RAW photo editing apps on the iPad like this and Affinity that become successful the better! I'm excited about this. I have Priime for desktop and it's got some great presets. Can't wait to download this!
@iamjmw Hey Joseph! Thanks for the kind words, and glad you like the Priime Styles app. Please let us know what you think. If you haven't already, grab one of the promo codes we posted in the (currently) first comment above.
This looks real cool I'm all about photo editing and if I can do it smarter I'm in. We are talking about this in our Product Hunt channel on Pinguin App today!
@bryan_o85 Very cool! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it after you've tried it. If you haven't gotten it, grab a promo code in our first comment ;)
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First of all, thanks @art_chang for support above and beyond the call of duty over on twitter. I finally got up and running after downloading the latest iOS beta which supports my EOS-M6.
My view is definitely that I could use Priime in the real world to process RAWs from my camera, however, it's still the huge array of filters that would win it for me. The actual RAW processing controls seem somewhat limited. To truly be the most powerful iOS RAW app, I'd suggest you need to add:
- Black and White point settings
- Clarity and/or Microstructure
- A Histogram
- Curves
- Lots more B&W presets (I'm biased ;-) )
All criticism intended constructively.
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