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/YdolnP
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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/HeyDidYouGo
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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/U5Ztpt
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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/
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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/
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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.html
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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.