Figuritas App — World Cup Russia 2018 & Qatar 2022
A simple solution for a simple problem
EDIT: the 2022 version has been downloaded 2+ million times. Currently working on a new post with the updated story.
If you just want to take a look at the app, follow this link. If you also want to hear how this came about, take a look into the story.
Like everyone in Uruguay, I am a soccer fan. I mean, crazy soccer fan.
Since I was a child, every FIFA World Cup I collected the Panini album. As we call it in Uruguay: "Figuritas", a stickers collection of every soccer player in the World Cup.
Last March I bought my first stickers of the upcoming World Cup and started to manually maintain a list of them. First it was on a piece of paper and then I did it with an Excel spreadsheet. After some days, I realized that for a Software Engineer that was kind of stupid. Then I though to myself:
"Let's build an app that helps me and my friends manage the album".
After an evening of coding, the first version was ready to be launched. It was a really simple app. Again, really simple, but quite useful.
Pushed the app to the store and traveled for the weekend to Buenos Aires. I was walking around the city when a friend from Panama texted me:
“Did you build this? My friends and I are talking about an app that it’s under your name in AppStore”.
I was impressed. Opened the AppStore Connect app and saw the ~500 organic downloads in 1 day. Crazy. I didn’t really know what was going on.
One more day, 500 more downloads. After a week, every day 1000 organic downloads until the end of the World Cup, when the number of downloads went up to 55K+.
The app even reached #1 in AppStore in the Sports category for Uruguay and Argentina. It was top #5 in Panama and Peru and top #10 in Colombia.
After getting the app to the store, many users reviewed the app, the average rating is 4.4 out of 5 (143 reviews). Received some feedback and feature requests like:
- Manage other version of the album (some countries like Mexico had a different number of stickers)
- Capability to add a a stickers swap list (when they have a sticker more than one time)
- Share stickers list (missing stickers and swap list) in social media apps
After some days, a new version of the app was available with all the new features.
To download the app follow this link. Please take a look and let me know if you have any feedback or feature request for the upcoming Copa America 2019.
Learned lecture
- App Name
Before pushing to AppStore I was thinking about a name for the app. Many weird and cool names came to my mind. I wanted to get that original name that will catch the eye but I decided for a simple one: “Figuritas”. People won’t look in AppStore for your weird name, they will look for what they want and need. Choose a simple name. - Localization
First version was only in Spanish. Then I understood that I needed to localize the app, both app content and AppStore stuff (description, screenshots, etc). I even changed the app name for Portuguese speakers. The number of downloads increased a lot. - UX/UI
Keep it simple. Each album section was mapped to a section in the used UI component, using the same album order and behavior. - Don’t require unnecessary sign up
Sometimes people don’t want to sign up so they just stop using the app. New AppStore Review Guidelines establish that “if your app doesn’t include significant account-based features, let people use it without a log-in”.
This will increase the number of people that download + use the app.
Next steps
A new version was released a few days ago. This version contains the Super Liga Argentina album and the Brasileirao album and it also allows the user to maintain multiple albums at the same time. Next big events are Copa America 2019 and the World Cup Qatar 2022.
Social Media
Take a look at the App and let me know if you have any feedback.
If you speak some Spanish, you can listen to this interview on Radio Sarandí or check out this article that was published by Telenoche.
Reach out to me on Twitter: @mjurfest or @figuritasapp.
