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7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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Hey Did You
Go To TheGym?Cisc 492- Final Report
Jordan van der Kroon & James Bortolus
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Executive Summary
Hey Did You Go To The Gym is a simple app that helps users keep on top
of their gym dates. Users set their GPS location of their gym and the
times they want to go and if they dont we annoy them.
DevelopmentWeve completed mock-ups, prototypes, and beta testing. Weve
released our app to the Google Play Appstore and weve released our
first patch update. So far there have been 12 paid downloads at $2.99
from across the world (5 from Canada, 4 from Australia, and 3 from US).
The next large technical steps we need to take include adding GPS ability, Facebook integration, and
backwards compatibility with older versions of android. These should all be finished by December 22nd.
We have also brought on Andrew Heard (an experienced app developer) onto the tem to help get the
IOS Version of the app out by December 22nd in time for the New Years Launch.
In addition to changes to coding we are working hard to develop another 100 cartoon characters and a
bank of 200 sayings to match with our positive and negative notifications.
Customer AcquisitionNew Years Resolution; Possibly the one time of year when there is a huge movement by the general
population to try and get fit and keep on top of their fitness goals.
This is the huge deadline we are trying to line up all of our milestones to hit.
If we are successful, the New Year could be the point of time that will maximize our apps virality. The
trick will be if we are successful to make sure user experiences are amazing so it doesnt become a fad
download and peak once and never again.
We have put together a multi-medium marketing plan that can be seen later in this report including:
PPC/Preroll advertising, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, and media coverage. (See the sections
marked Marketing in the report for further information.
We hope to break 2000 users by the end of January.
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Table of Contents
Exec Summary Page 2
Table of Contents Page 3
Development Page 4
Next Large Coding Milestones Page 5
Feedback and Changes Weve Made Page 6
IOS Port Page 7
Customer Acquisition Page 8
Marketing Overview and Goals Page 9
Marketing- Facebook Page 10Marketing- Twitter Page 11
Marketing-YouTube Page 12
Marketing- Blogs Page 13
Marketing- Reddit Page 14
Additional Material from previous Reports Page 15
Value Proposition Page 16
Customer Segments Page 19
Original Projections Page 20The Team Page 21
Technology Page 22
Breaking down the Code Page 23
Risks Page 25
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Development
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Next Large Coding Milestones
Create LocationActivity
The next coding milestone is to give our app GPS capability. This means being able to handle both casesof user setting and checking their current location. This portion needs to be tested and tweaked quite a bit
as we have little experience dealing with gps location, we hope to have this working by the 2nd week of
December which will give us 2 full weeks of intensive testing before our main release.
Facebook integrationHaving the Facebook API integrated into our app will be one critical factor of our apps virality. Similar
to how the Nike Plus app allows people to post their running progress and distance our app will make
posts if the user has streaks of good or bad. This functionality will be programmed straight into the main
activity. We will make the Facebook integration an Opt In- and we will be sure to ask for permissions on
what the user wants us to post about.
GymPoints or Stat trackingWe are looking into using parse.com to store our users fit points for tracking and rewards. This will also
allow us to create things like friend leaderboards and get good data analytics about users gym habits.
Another piece of functionality we would like to add to the stat tracking functionality is the ability to check
in and out of the gym. This way we could measure not only if they went to the gym or not but how long
they went for.
Improvement of Scheduling UIWe are currently using the default android date and time picker. We are looking at other options to give
our scheduling UI a unique and simplistic feel that we can also port over to iOS and have the same look
and feel there. Another feature we want to add to the scheduling functionality would be whenever a user
completes their last scheduled gym date (i.e. they dont have any future gym dates planned) the app will
prompt them to schedule their next gym date.
Adding More Unique comedic lines and art assetsBy adding more positive and negative lines and custom art assets for the screens in out app that
correspond with users Going or not going to the gym, it will make their experience seem unique and
original every time they use the app. We hope to have 200 phrases in the app by January 1st.
Compatibility issuesLastly, we are working hard to make the app backwards compatible with android devices 2.0 and higher.
Weve had a few people who have wanted to purchase our app but couldnt, and
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Iterations and Customer Feedback
Although the first version of the app we released on November 19 th had the majority of the functionality
of our current app, it had minimal visual appeal and a number of bugs. These are the primary changes
we have made since then:
Patch 1.1 notes
Added colourful backgrounds Added vibration on alerts Added fit point system Disabled landscape mode Fixed some UI elements Added next gym time functionality and alarm
tracking
Since then the feedback has been relatively small and
mostly positive. We have 2 5star reviews on Google
play. We have tried engaging in a discussion with users on reddit who said they had downloaded the
app for constructive feedback. So far it seems difficult to get any customers to give us any sort of
constructive criticism on where to improve.
The number one complaint we have had that we are working on fixing right away is compatibility with
devices before 4.0 OS. This is something we were working on releasing with version 1.1 on November
20th. We were running into issues that were cau sing the app to crash on all devices which is why it was
not included in that patch and effort was instead put into fixing other bugs/bringing key features in for
that version. Along with porting our app over to iOS the compatibility issue is our number one priority
so we are able to reach as many customers as possible.
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IOS Port
In our technical analysis we mentioned a potential move for
the future would be to have an I-phone version of our app.
Upon releasing our first app on the android store we didnt
realize how important this was.
Out of the 75 people James approached in the arc in 2 hours to
pitch the app, only 2 had an android phone. Over 75% were on
IOS. Now this could simply have been the time and place I was
at the gym. (Around 1 pm and at Queens) but it did open our eyes
to the huge need to create a IOS version of the app.
As such we have recently brought Andrew Heard onto the founding
team to help develop the IOS version and manage some of the PPC
advertising.
Andrew has released 2 apps to the apple app store (Tunesify and
Vidsify) with great success and user adoption. He has also
developed a proof of concept WebSphere e-commerce application
for IBM while working there last year. He is an absolute baller and
were excited to have him on the team.
We have decided to split revenues equally 33% across the board
unless someone stops contributing to the app in the future if thecompany moves into perpetuity. In this case the persons share
would be reduced in accordance to a defined list of pre-set
criteria.(we will figure out at a later date once we actually start
making some real money)
Andrew has released multiple apps to the Apple Store and has strong experience in programming apps.
With his help we aim to have a fully functional version of the IOS version by December 22nd on the apple
app store (i.e. just in time for the new years push)
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Customer Acquisition
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Marketing Overview and Goals
Our main goal right now is to have a huge amount of PR and Buzz prepared
going into the New Year to take advantage of the huge New Years resolution
goals. To achieve this we have set some goals for ourselves.
Our Goals
Sales - 2000 app sales by January 30th.
Facebook - 1000 likes by the New Year, 5000 by the end of January.
Twitter - 1000 Followers by the New Year.
YouTube - Demo Video Up, and 3 Mini Commercials by New Years
Blogs - Contact 48 previously identified fitness blogs, get featured on at least 10
Reddit - Up voted to top of main page, dominate 10 motivation/fitness related sub-reddits
PR - Gotten in contact with 4 major news centers about covering our story
The Strategy
The ultimate goal is virality.
We want to execute our plan in a way that our app will spread quickly and widely across the world.
To do this, we have set the above goals in an attempt to co-ordinate one big swing at the marketing
and PR side. Similar to how six pack shortcuts grew from 1000 subscribers to 800,000 we plan to use a
lot of online advertising and social media to push our app into our users hands.
We realize that although we have to pay specific attention to customer acquisition costs (due to the low
price of our app) this is not as important for the first wave of users, because of the viral affect and wordof mouth we hope to realize through social media, buzz, and referrals.
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Marketing- Facebook
Address:http://on.fb.me/YdolnP
Managing the Facebook Group
Creating Content
The key to any good Facebook group is a continuous stream of
high quality content. To manage this we have put together a
plan to use a combination of inspirational/funny fitness related
videos, contests, questions, and polls as well as a daily blog.
Posting Peoples Successes
Another thing we want to use our Facebook group for is to
share peoples successes. Our fit-points and Facebook API giveus a great opportunity to do this. Sending users personalized
messages when they stay on top of their fitness goals can be a
nice personal touch that could give us some positive PR.
Advertising
Goal
1000 Likes by December 1st and 5000 by the end of January.
Copy Writing and A/B Testing
This is our next beg step in our advertising campaigns. To do proper A/B testing on different copy writing
in our ads with rapid 3-5 day iterations.
Current Advertising Statistics
In our current social media marketing campaign we have achieved a total of 8,634 impressions for $9.76.
This has brought us 7 likes and 20 clicks or put another way a 0.9% click through rate. This has been to
an extremely limited target market (i.e. targeting only Queens Students) so it is possible these numbers
could change as we go for a wider audience (global) on a narrower scope of interest (fitness etc.)
Budget
Facebook ads have a general cost of $0.06 to $0.2 per 1000 impressions and are known to have varying
levels of success. Currently we have only put $25 into testing Facebook ads, but we plan to put a budget
of $500 in preparation for the new year.
http://on.fb.me/YdolnPhttp://on.fb.me/YdolnPhttp://on.fb.me/YdolnPhttp://on.fb.me/YdolnP7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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Marketing- Twitter
Address:https://twitter.com/HeyDidYouGo
This is a medium we definitely have to get more comfortable with, and fast.
Learning the MediumGoal
1000 followers by New Year
Our goals are to spend some time in the first week of December to study
the best Twitter groups/streams (most followers, most actively engaged,
funniest, best ranked) and examine how they interact with their user base.
We are specifically looking to answer 3 questions: What are they
tweeting? Why are people following them? And what can we take from
their strategy to implement into our own.
Content StrategyAside from what we learn in December some strategies we have
considered using include:
Inbound Content Curators
Things like RSS feeders and Google alerts that pull together new articles and blog posts on fitness or
motivation that we can simply tweet the bit.ly link to with a small description. This will give us a
continuous stream of high quality information we can pass along t our target market at little to no
additional stress.
Twitter Activities
Re-tweeting and Tweet-backs are common practices in the twitter-verse, both of which engage our
current audience and helps us grow our new audience. Re-tweets allow us to piggyback on the success
of others and allow them to be indirect spokespeople for us. We will be aggressively tweeting back and
looking for opportunities where people are saying their lazy or dont want to go to the gym. We also
plan to get a jump start on #newyearsresolutions and prepare tweets to respond to people saying how
they are going to stay on top of them.
Other Social Media
We will have a wealth of other content at our disposal between our Facebook, blog, YouTube Channel,
Points system, and Web Site. We want to use twitter as one way to disseminate this information.
https://twitter.com/HeyDidYouGohttps://twitter.com/HeyDidYouGohttps://twitter.com/HeyDidYouGohttps://twitter.com/HeyDidYouGo7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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Marketing- YouTube
Address:http://bit.ly/U5Ztpt
YouTube StrategyOur YouTube Channel has 3 main types of videos
that we will be showing;
Promotional
This includes our pre-roll ads, interviews weve
hosted, product demos, and interviews weve been
part of. These are simply look at how cool we are
videos. These are to show legitimacy to our target market. You can watch our preroll ad here:
http://bit.ly/YfP4Aa.
Fitness Regimens
An idea we have for building some consistent traffic to our site is to bring guest fitness instructors in to
teach a workout routine. The idea is to get the big names in the YouTube fitness world to teach a
workout regimen for us and in exchange we will both get more traffic.
Inspirational Videos
User success stories and motivation videos like Nikes How Much Do You Want It:http://bit.ly/pW8f9N
is another potential way for us to build traffic for our YouTube Channel.
AdvertisingGoal:
Get our ad in front of 30,000 people by New Years.
Budget
YouTube preroll advertising is bid on similar to how a
Google PPC would be. Cost per impression is much more
expensive though at approximately $0.06 per view up to
$0.25 per view. Similarly to Facebook ads we have only
put $25 into testing, but we are budgeting between $500
and $2000 for advertising in preparation for the new year.
We have chosen to place these ads on the top 25 fitness
channels on YouTube. (i.e. Six pack Abs, Athlean-X, Insane
Home Fat Loss, BeFit, Live Strong, EHowFitness, Ask the Trainer.com, Runners World, Turbulence
Training, Diet Health, Vince Del Mante, etc.)
http://bit.ly/U5Ztpthttp://bit.ly/U5Ztpthttp://bit.ly/U5Ztpthttp://bit.ly/YfP4Aahttp://bit.ly/YfP4Aahttp://bit.ly/pW8f9Nhttp://bit.ly/pW8f9Nhttp://bit.ly/pW8f9Nhttp://bit.ly/pW8f9Nhttp://bit.ly/YfP4Aahttp://bit.ly/U5Ztpt7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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Marketing- Blogs
This is another large part of our Go-to-Market strategy.
We have identified the top 48 fitness blogs by volume, subscription, and reviewsand have begun contacting them for a review of our product on the 1st or 2nd
week after New Years.
Of the 12 we have contacted in the past week, 3 have responded. 2 of the 3 said
theyd be interested in featuring us while the third said he charges a $300 fee for
any sort of review post. (He was one of the larger blogs though).
In the next week, we hope to contact the remaining 36 and line up at least 10
guest blog posts for the first few weeks.
The goal being, if we have traction, buzz, and PR it will be much easier to get some coverage in print
media (given were university students) and really make a name for ourselves.
One thing we wanted to make sure though is that each blog doesnt have the same story about us.
These are 10 potential blog post ideas we could use to get some sort of coverage for our app:
- Top 10 ways to stick to your new years resolution- 5 ways you wouldnt think of to Stick to your new years resolution- Hey Did You Go To The Gym- A fitness app you should check out- The mobile Age of Motivation- When an app can be your gym buddy- Review of top 10 fitness apps for the IOS- A New Fitness app that has us Whipped- Losing those last 5 pounds- a few tips and tricks- Mobile Insults and GPS Locating- The new era of Gym Buddy- New Player in the Mobile Fitness world- Can your phone keep you fit? A fitness app that keeps you going to the gym
The other thing thats important in contacting these bloggers is to offer a story and an excerpt of the
blog post so its easy for them to feature you. As such we are going to take the first week of December
to write these up as we approach more bloggers.
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Marketing- Reddit
On our big release he had made 3 separate posts to reddit in different fitness and motivational sub-
reddits. From here we were able to engage in a back and forth conversation with users who expressed
interest in the app. It also gives us a chance to gauge interest as users can vote up or vote down a post
and all 3 of our posts received a positive score.
On the sub-reddit /r/getMotivated our post did the best with a net score of 30 (36 upvotes, 6
downvotes) which had our post sitting in the top 10 for over 24 hours. We received lots of positive
feedback on the concept and the idea of the app from users on this sub-reddit as you can see here:
Out of our 10 total sales so far, 4 of these sales have come from Australia! I think this proves that the 0
cost advertisement strategy on reddit lets us reach customers worldwide that otherwise would be very
hard to reach. It is also a great chance to get feedback or bring early adopters into our social network
community.
As the app continues to grow we could reach out to these reddit users about possible opening up our
own sub-reddit /r/heydidyougotothegym. A community of people who are motivating each other to go
to the gym and give us feedback on the app would be a very strong asset to us moving forward.
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Additional Material
From Previous Reports
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Value Proposition
1.1 The Pain
Getting fit is hard; not particularly because its complex (thousands of studies have shown eating betterand consistent exercise will lead to muscle gain and weight loss) but because keeping yourself motivated
to go to the gym is hard.Heres a scenario nearly as old as time itself.
Joe Shmoe comes off his Christmas break. Hes stuffed his face for the past 2 weeks and has put on some
love padding around the waist and he makes a new years resolution to go to the gym twice a week for
the rest of the year.What happens next probably doesnt even have to be explained.
For the first two weeks Joes on top of his shit. Hes excited about his to-be new sexy bod. He buys
new shoes and a workout bag. He marks his calendar. He preps his gym bag the night before. And he goes
to the gym! For two weeks everythings going great!
Unfortunately the following week something comes up and Joe has to cancel one of his gym dates. Its
not a big deal right? Joes been so good so far! Joe justifies that it wont happen again. Unfortunately 2
weeks later, it does. Perhaps its the series premier of Gossip Girl Joe so avidly follows or a big
assignment assigned by the man thatgets in the way, but Joe doesnt go.
The rest of the story is downhill. Weeks go by. Joe gets less and less motivated and within 2 months he
stop going entirely.What did Joe do wrong? Why is he still chubby? Why cant he get a girlfriend? Whyare millions more like him?
One simple fact of human nature- Although people want to be attractive, they are inherently lazy.
As a result, keeping to a gym schedule is hard without some external reinforcement.
1.2 The SolutionWe are the swift kick in the arse that keeps people like Joe on top of their shit. How?We give Joe an appthat hounds his ass if he doesnt go the gym.
Through the app Joe sets the times he wants to work out and the location where he will work out and
locks it in. If he doesnt show up to his gym location the app will remind him. But it doesnt stop there.
Each hour on the hour, after Joe misses a gym day, Joes phone will vibrate and buzz and ask Hey. Did
you go to the gym?. Unfortunately for Joe, if he wants to make the messages stop he has to copy a
paragraph word for word on his phone and if he makes a mistake it will erase everything he wrote and
make him start over. So he has to be really committed to not going to the gym.
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But why would Joe put himself through this misery? Wont
he get pissed and just delete the app? Possibly, but we want
to try and walk the fence. We want to play the role of a
good best friend and be a little smart-assy about reminding
him about his gym goals.
Phrases like, Really? Youre not going to the gym?
progressing all the way to, You might as well get some
cake too, because at this rate, you can kiss your fitness
goals goodbye. Enjoy your extra hour of Facebook, I hope
its worth it.
The goal is to be more than a glorified alarm clock. We want to give our app a personality. And we want
our customers to know what their buying.
We want Joe to commit to getting in shape and understand the potential harassment hes going to inflict
on himself. We also understand this has to be balanced against creating barriers to exit so the person
although feeling slightly pestered or insulted sticks to the program and in fact does get fit.
Humans at our rudimentary nature are no different than Pavlovs dogs, they can be conditioned by
positive or negative reinforcement. Consequently, if we can get Joe to keep the app, it will only take so
many buzzes for him to get it and eventually he will go to the gym.
1.3 The GainThe REAL value we provide is in the comedy and annoyance factor of the app. The idea is to lock
someone into barriers to exit within the app so they cant cancel their workout times without significant
annoyance.
By having a constant reminder that travels everywhere with you in your pocket, we hope our customers
will act upon our nagging (as Its most likely at some point they will default) and go to the gym. By using
technology such as GPS tracking and Facebook integration we hope to give users the extra nudge in the
right direction to encourage an active lifestyle and discourage laziness.
What we are really selling is confidence. We give people confidence that they can stick to their gym
schedules (an extension of their quest to make themselves more attractive). We solve their pain by being a
constant reminder to go to the gym. Putting it off can result in facebook posts being made on your
wall. Snide comments being made. Going to the gym will result in supportive/funny comments. The app
is to be seen as a funny/pain in the ass gym buddy that is always encouraging you to get off the couch andgo to the gym.
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Customer Segments
2.1 Addressable Market size
There are 107.4 Android and IOS users in North
America. 16 Million of which are in Canada1 and 91.4 of
which are in the states.2
Of these 46.3% reside in our target demographic of 15-34
years of age.3
On average 21% of all phone and tablet users pay for
apps for their devices.4 We will assume this holds
constant across all demographics of smartphone users
(although it is likely its slightly higher for our demographic given their engagement with technology).
Finally 15-20% of the people in the USA work out on a somewhat consistent basis5. We will assume this
is constant at approximately 17% across all of North America.
This Computes to:
107 Million * (46.3%* 21% * 17%) =
1,757,154potential app sales from people who work out on a somewhat consistent basis who might buy
fitness related apps in North America.
2.1 Target MarketOur customer wants to get in shape but either 1) in the past has failed and wants wants something to keep
them on track or 2) Is trying for the first time and heard our program works. Our primary market (at least
initially) will focus on university students because of the higher engagement with mobile technology and
potential for viral expansion. These customers are inclined not only to be more likely to pay for the app,
and be more engaged but to tout its usefulness to their friends when it works.
This group is not to be confused with the aspiring athlete who has more motivation either internally or
externally and is already has some success in their gym ventures. These people feel less pain from the
problem and probably done have the same level of social pressures that would warrant a binge buy of an
app as easily.
1http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-
fastest-technology-growth-in-history/2http://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/3http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/10/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone.php
4http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/pew-65-percent-pay-digital-content/
5http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sports
http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/http://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/http://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/http://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/10/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone.phphttp://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/10/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone.phphttp://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/10/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone.phphttp://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/pew-65-percent-pay-digital-content/http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/pew-65-percent-pay-digital-content/http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/pew-65-percent-pay-digital-content/http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sportshttp://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sportshttp://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sportshttp://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2008/sportshttp://techcrunch.com/2010/12/30/pew-65-percent-pay-digital-content/http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/10/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone.phphttp://ansonalex.com/infographics/smartphone-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/08/28/there-are-16-million-ios-and-android-devices-in-canada-among-fastest-technology-growth-in-history/7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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Original Projections
Our first customers will be purchasing the app because they are looking for some sort of support to keep
them going to the gym, but the vast majority of people will see the app as an aid to help keep them on
track through their fitness goals.
We want our first customers to be what Steve Blank describes in the Startup Owners Manual as
EarlyVangelists.
An EarlyVangalist is a person who is not only willing to pay for your
minimum viable product, they are so excited about your idea that they are
willing to champion it and tell their circle of influence. Generally this crowd
pertains to avid bloggers or techies but it can refer to casuals who become
passionate about the idea who have large social networks.
To discover these first customers we have conducted a primary experiment totest initial demand for our product. Over the course of 2 days we distributed
1000 flyers (seen on the right) that had a call to action to download our app
either through the use of a QR code or by visiting the website.
We printed equal portions of 3 different flyers that each redirected to a different website:
www.heydidyougotothegym.com, www.heydidyougotothegym.net,www.heydidyougotothegym.info.
Each site hosted a launch rock landing page and vouched a different potential price for the app. (.COM
was 99 cents, .NET was $2.99, and .INFO was $4.99).
We did this to separate our two hypothesis tests, the first hypothesis we wanted to test was with regard to
the demand for our app. We wanted to ensure we could get at least 1% conversion on our 1000 posters.I.e. 10 hits to our 3 sites over the 1000 posters. We felt if we couldnt hit at least that, we have a serious
issue with either our basic value proposition or our targeting. The second hypothesis we wanted to test is
if people who thought they might be interested in the app would pay for it. For this reason each of our
landing pages included a price, this way we could have a general idea if the pain was large enough that
people would pay for a solution.
Fortunately, our findings were very promising. Over the course of the 2 days of our promotion we had
151 unique visits to our site from the postcards and of those 17 left their e-mails to download our app
after knowing it cost money. Below is a summary of our conversion rates and throughputs
30,
83%
6, 17%
.Net Conversion Rates
Bounced
Visitors
Converted
to Sales 56,
92%
5, 8%
.Com Conversion Rates
Bounced
Visitors
Converted
to Sales 39,
87%
6, 13%
.Info Conversion Rates
Bounced
Visitors
Converted
to Sales
http://www.heydidyougotothegym.com/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.com/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.net/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.net/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.info/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.info/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.info/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.info/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.net/http://www.heydidyougotothegym.com/7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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The Team
James Bortolus
James Bortolus is a 4th year commerce student enrolled at the
Queens School of Business. Through working in the Queens
Business Consulting Firm and running his own start-up
businesses, James experience lies primarily in Entrepreneurship
and the strategic/financial analysis of start-up ideas. In 2011
James was awarded Vaughans Youth Entrepreneurship award for the and was chosen from over 650 of
the Ontario Governments Summer Company program to be featured as one of the top 16 student
entrepreneurs in Canada. James is a Shad Valley Alum, and has also received first place for both the
Queens Advancing Entrepreneurship Case Competition. In addition to HeyDidYouGoToTheGym, James
is currently compiling a course on the best practices on Startup businesses which will be online in late
December.
James experience in past marketing campaigns and cold calling will be key in the success of developing
a strong user base and finding key aspects missing in the app that can be passed along to Jordan for
implementation. With regards to this project James will be focusing on the marketing, and customer
development for the app.
Jordan van der KroonJordan van der Kroon is a 4th year SODE (Software Design)
student enrolled at the Queens School of Computing. Jordanjust came off his 16 month internship at Research in Motion
doing mainly software development on the BBOS Middleware
team. After working for and seeing some of the issues of a big
corporation like RIM, Jordan is excited to explore the
possibilities of working for a smaller startup and having more
creative control.
While working at RIM Jordan had quite a bit of experience
writing apps in the still underdeveloped BBOS development kit.
As well as learning new languages/app SDKs such as adobe air
and cascades. Bringing that experience to the forefront in this project will allow him to quickly pick upand learn all that is necessary to build an android app.
Jordan is responsible for development of the app as well as any technical responsibilities that may go
along with releasing an app to the public. Jordan will also be working closely with the initial customers to
debug and add functionality where needed.
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The Technology We Are Using
NotificationManager
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager.html
NotificationManager handles any outgoing notifications for our app. It sends or
cancels any notification, this is useful if we run into the situation of handling
overlapping notifications. This could occur when a user has scheduled a gym
appointment and has snoozed a previous appointment to conflict. Rather than spam the
user with multiple notifications from one app we will give priority to a scheduled
appointment over a snooze. Since we give each notification a unique id this is easy to
do. Also if a user has not checked their phone for a week we do not want to fill their notifications. So
before a notification is sent out we always cancel any previous unchecked notifications
that are pending.
AlarmManager
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.html
The AlarmManager handles kicking the notificationManager into action at the correct
time a user has set. We use store the time a user wants an alarm to go off in a calendar
object and use the function getTimeMillis to get the correct input for the
alarmmanager. After that this process takes care of the rest to make sure the notification will fire at the
correct time.
LocationManager
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.html
LocationManager is an API that handles retrieving and comparing GPS location data.
This will be called whenever a user is confirming their location is the gym. Need to
make sure to clean up and stop once we are done as constant pulling of GPS data can
be draining on the battery.
Facebook SDK
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/android/build/Software
Once we have signed our app we can give facebook our apps signature so that it can
ensure that the app is accessing facebook securely. We will be using the Single-Sign-On
functionality which actually signs the user on through their authentication already stored
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.htmlhttps://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/android/build/Softwarehttps://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/android/build/Softwarehttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.htmlhttp://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager.html7/28/2019 Jordan Van Der Kroon & James Bortolus Final Report
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in the android facebook app. This is the preferred method over OAuth 2.0. Once we have authenticated
we will need to ask the user for permissions such as posting on their wall.
Programming Languages
Java (JDK 7u9), for the Android application
XML, for the Android interface
Development Tools
Eclipse Juno Software Development Environment with Android SDK Android Development Tools [(ADT) (Advanced Development Tools),] plug-in for the Eclipse
integrated development environment
Android Virtual Device (AVD) Manager, for emulating device configurations Samsung Galaxy S3 Personal Phone and test device
Breaking down the Code
About Activities
In android activities help break down the user experience, when a
user enters a new activity which is normally accompanied by a
new view or screen of the app they always have the option to use
the native android back button to return to the previousactivity. By having key transitional activities we can have our
app look and feel like most other android apps out there.
Activities
MainActivity
This is the home screen of the app. From here the user can see
when their next scheduled gym appointment is. By having a
centralized main activity we allow the user to use the native
android back button to return to this screen from any of the otheraccessible screens.
ScheduleActivity
ScheduleActivity is started once a user presses the button to
modify their schedule. This is where the AlarmManager and the
Calendar API come into effect. When a change on the schedule
is evented out we create a new Calendar object for the given day
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and time. We then use calender.getTimeMillis to get the correct parameter to be used in
Alarmmanager.set.
The AlarmManager needs intent, we give each intent a unique id so multiple alarms (and snoozes) can be
set and tracked. We set our intent to our NotificationActivity, which is where we
use the notificationManager.builder to create the notification.
Once we have our calendar object with the set time in milliseconds and our
intent object pointing at our notification builder activity we can set the alarm
manager to build and fire the notification at that given time.
NotificationActivity
This is where we create Notification objects and handle our
NotificationManager. We build each notification with a Title, text and an icon.
We only enter the NotificationActivity and build a notification when the
alarmManager has evented to do so. For now all notifications are built the same
way. We could look at customizing the text to keep the experience fresh. The ID
and intent are handled by the scheduling activity so this is a dumb activity only
meant to build and fire notifications when it is told to do so by the
alarmManager.
NotificationReceiverActivity
The user enters this activity when they select the notification on their phone.
They are brought to a screen that allows them to confirm their location being at
the gym. Or hit snooze/cancel gym appointment.
This is more of a transition activity. If the user confirms they are at the gym wemove into the locationActivity to check their GPS location.
If the user wants to snooze we call that function from the scheduleActivity in the
background without changing views to create a new calendar object 30 minutes
from the current time and set it as an alarm.
LocationActivity
A user can enter a location activity in two ways. From the MainActivity a user can
set their current GPS location and store that location as their gym.
From the NotificationRecieverActivity we call a get function on the previously
stored location and compare it to the current one. If there is no stored location we
prompt the user to set one now.
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Risks
Competitors
The two competitors mentioned above (gym-pact and gympush) already have an established system
for encouraging people to go to the gym. It hardly seems likely they would do a quick 180 on what
they already have to go to a reminder based system. It is possible that gym-push could add a
scheduling/reminder system to their app, but it seems unlikely that they would compete with us in the
comedic encouragement angle. By taking this angle we have secured ourselves against anyone who
doesn't come out of the gate this way as it would seem too much of a drastic shift from the serious
money saving point of view of the other two competitors. With that being said we are not ruling out
the ability for anyone else to come out with a scheduling app that offers reminders in a comedic way.
The barrier for entry in this sort of thing is very low. To execute well we need to hit the market hard
and fast.
Reaching Our Customers EffectivelyThere are two major potential risks with regard to reaching our customers effectively. One is that we
cant reach them. There is a potential that our viral push wont work nearly as well as our physical
roll out, in which case we will have to focus on starting promotional activities across Canadian
universities. The second issue is with regards to cost. With so little margin on each sale, it is easy to
spend away your bottom line in promotion and marketing. To mitigate this we will be sure to do
much A/B testing using smaller budgets before we spend any significant amount on advertising.
Market RiskAs with just about any new product, there is risk there wont be a demand for our product. This risk
of lack of demand can be minimised through proper agile development processes and lean customerfocused development on the front end. Pivoting and iterating as needed. There is also risk with
regards to the virality of the app, both with regards to it not catching on at all as well as sustaining
growth and sales past the initial takeoff if it does. The real key is establishing ourselves as the top
app for fitness and keeping ourselves there.
Choosing the Appropriate Revenue Model
There is a chance this app would do better as a freemium model (to increase the virality of the
product) or as a multi sided market using Ad based revenue. Alternative revenue models will be
explored during the customer focused development phase.