

Show HN: My First iOS App - Pro Golf Results, Stats, Trends and Comparisons - danenania
http://www.progolfscout.com/

======
Bud
I checked out the screenshots in detail. I like the concept of your app and
the implementation looks at least pretty good. I would love to see more data
density in situations where it's possible.

In my opinion, for the casual golf fan, you've set the price too high at
$4.99. I would go ahead and buy it instantly just for fun at $1 but I won't go
to $5 for something like this.

Have you considered a $1 or $2 price point? I think you'd make a lot more
money that way.

~~~
danenania
Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback. I'm not certain about the price, but
my thinking was that the app would appeal more to people playing fantasy golf
or involved in sports betting, and that price wouldn't be much of an issue for
them.

I'm biased of course, but I honestly think it's pretty powerful as a
statistical analysis tool, so I also want the price to reflect that. I'm open
to experimentation though, and I could see how potentially getting more
purchases from casual fans could offset the more serious ones who'd be willing
to pay more. Something to ponder...

Edit: By the way, shoot me an email at support@progolfscout.com and I'll give
you a promo code to try the app for free.

Same goes for any other HNers (up to some reasonable number) that want to try
the app without spending $5. Just let me know.

~~~
kleinsch
I think you have the right idea with the current pricing.

For hit-based entertainment apps that are going to sell 1M copies, you want to
go $0.99 (or free) to make the purchase decision easy. The consumer of those
apps is weighing that app against all the other entertainment apps available,
so price is a major factor. With games especially, I can buy 5 awesome games
for $5 (or even more with free-to-play), so why should I pay $5 for your game?

For a functional app where there's little competition (like yours), the
decision is more about whether I should buy the app to fulfill a need I have,
and much less about the price. Once you have someone convinced that they need
your product and willing to pay some amount of money for it, you're already
over the biggest hurdle. This is why many productivity and business apps are
priced at $5 and $10.

If I understand correctly, you're going after a small market segment of
passionate fans. In that case, the theory is that dropping the price isn't
going to get many more potential buyers, so you can make a lot more money by
charging each of them $5.

~~~
Bud
You might be right. But in my view, this isn't "a functional app where there's
little competition". It's not functional for very many people at all; it's
useful in a trivial context only. Also, it does have competition; you can get
all of this golf event and player data on Yahoo or various other websites
which are quite usable on an iPhone or iPad.

Therefore almost nobody would "need" this product, and so you'd really want to
try to sell this to guys who watch a lot of golf on TV, are golfers
themselves, etc. A fairly large group.

~~~
danenania
I see your point, but I think there is a fairly large niche of people who are
into fantasy golf and/or betting who take golf stats and results more
seriously than you might realize. The app was developed with constant feedback
from a few people in that category, so it definitely has more of a 'power
user' slant. That said, I do think it could be fun for casual fans to play
with too--I'm just not sure if I can find as much of a market by targeting
them.

~~~
Bud
I've downloaded the app using the promo code (thanks for that!) and what I
notice is, the data in the app is out of date. Tiger Woods, for instance, is
still listed as #2 in the world, even though he won at Bay Hill 8 days ago to
take over the #1 ranking.

This tells me that your app is not polling a server to refresh its data, or
that the server is not up to date at all. Either way, that's not going to be
competitive at $5, for a power user, with simply going to the PGA Tour site or
Yahoo or elsewhere for golf statistics which get updated within minutes of an
event ending. For free.

Do you have to update the app itself for the data to be refreshed?

~~~
danenania
Yep, there's an update server. If you have an internet connection, you should
be prompted to download the most recent data. Are you not getting prompted?
There should be a little blue bar at the bottom of the app that says "Latest
results are available". Click on the cloud icon to sync. If you have a decent
connection and aren't getting the prompt, then something's wrong and I'll get
on it asap.

------
qdog
I don't have iOS available at the moment, so can't comment on the actual app.
The screen shots on the bottom are off to the right of main web page for me in
Firefox, though. The buttons to scroll through the screenshot still work, but
I have to move inside my browser window to actually see them.

I do like you have lots of screen shots, lots of apps I see have 2 or 3 for
some reason.

~~~
danenania
Oops, I'll see what's up with that. Thanks for letting me know!

Edit: Should be fixed now. Thanks again.

------
rookadook
Did you have to jump through any hoops to get that PGA data?

