【51CTO编者按】Evernote（闻名笔记软件）开发者Phil Libin同享了Evernote在苹果新运用商铺Mac App Store跻身抢手运用前五强的一些感触：1）走精英化道路（Macbook用户的装置需求）2）途径才是开发者成功的要害 3）跨途径的效能好（如和iphone) 4）绝不让用户体会大打折扣。

Evernote

1.精英道路很正确

我在80年代前期上高中那阵子，读过一篇关于计算机的文章，里边有一项针对咱们这些书呆子的读者查询，“你会为自己的电脑购买软件吗？”便是其间的第一个问题。答案选项分别是：A）经常会购买；B）偶然会购买；C）很少，我甘愿自己编程。C答案对那时的软件消费职业来说是一个很可行的挑选，但这现已是曩昔的工作了。

在随后二三十年中，大都软件开发者都已在商场上站稳了脚跟，并且对后来者设置了很高的准入门槛，但随着手机运用的许多出现，开发者的这种好日子总算到头了。

上一年有70%的Evernote新用户是从手机运用商铺过继而来的，大都人是iOS和Android手机用户。这种现象让咱们意识到，对独立开发者来讲，手机是一个极富吸引力的产品投进途径。咱们产品在上星期的商场体现更是印证了这种观念，但咱们的观念也有一些奇妙的改变，那便是手机并非最要害因素，最有价值的应该是手机运用商铺。在一周曾经，简直一切不错的运用商铺都登陆到了手机途径，刚得到Macbook的用户想装置最抢手运用的火急心境，一点也不亚于iPhone新用户。

对开发者来说，面向一个没有牢靠运用商铺的途径开发运用软件，实在是一个巨大的应战。假设要在这种途径上获得成功，开发商除了在产品开发环节上不能迷糊，别的还得在拓宽途径、后勤工作、事务合作和广告营销上投入许多时刻和金钱。只需一个运用商铺在某途径上获得权势了，这个途径的软件商场就会向出现精英化的开展趋势。这一点很难做到，但专心于针对某个运用商铺创立超卓的运用，这倒确实是最好的战略。在曩昔两年中，各种类型的软件开发者获得了了空前的开展机会，也直接形成各种手机运用和服务的数量飞速胀大，是时分让台式电脑也参加战局了。

2.桌面运用软件从头获得权势

咱们花了几个星期的时刻，颇费了一番曲折才把原有的Mac版别运用投进到了这个新运用商铺。其时咱们的开发周期十分严重，12月份也并不是个抱负的发布时刻，但苹果工作人员为咱们供给了许多协助，运用审阅流程也组织得很合理。

Evernote's new user registrations per day

这一尽力所收成的成果便是，Evernote首周在Mac App Store出面，就获得了32万次的下载量。其间有12万的用户之前从未运用过Evernote，这次下载都创立了新的运用帐号。也便是说，Evernote上星期的新注册帐号增加了50%以上。Mac新用户注册人数之前还排在iOS、Android和Windows途径之后，但现在现已升到了第一位。

现在咱们才知道，一个具有超卓运用商铺的途径，才是第三方开发者获得成功的要害。假设你要说一个运营杰出的第三方运用软件商场是这个途径取胜的条件，那也行……

我期望Windows也能迎头赶上，在该途径打造一个杰出的运用商铺。

3.跨途径用户数量最为可观

Mac App Store新店开业不光为咱们带来了更多客流量，也为咱们原有的用户发明了更多价值。 Evernote在该运用商铺第一周的32万下载用户中，新用户就占了12万人。别的还有8万人是从咱们直接下载版的Mac客户端转过来的，或许说是他们下载了这款运用但并没有完结注册流程。还有10万人是本来的用户，他们之前在其他途径运用过Evernote（注：他们大都为iPhone用户），这是他们初次增加Mac版别的运用。

这种成果很值得玩味。它的风趣体现在两个方面：1）大部分用户都现已具有Mac电脑；2）这些用户之前现已触摸过Evernote的Mac版别，但一直到Mac App Store上台了才装置这款运用软件。它的重要性则在于，大都经过不同途径运用过Evernote的用户都喜爱先试用一阵子，但终究都会掏钱购买付费版别。这就阐明，在免费形式的前提下，大都用户会挑选购买自己需求的内容，他们在越多途径上运用过Evernote，就越简单对它发生依赖性。

Mac App Store带来的另一种效应是，许多新用户是经过Mac App Store了解到这款产品，并将其下载到自己的手机上。在Mac App Store上线的同一个星期内，咱们在iTunes的iOS版别下载量竟然上升了54%，要知道这个iOS版别其时并没有进行更新，也没有进步任何曝光率。

4.绝不让用户体会大打折扣

假设Evernote的台式电脑版别客户端是用Adobe AIR编写的话，我就会有所忧虑。但Mac App Store以及iPhone App Store的超高人气，让我愈加坚信，用户在面对多种挑选的时分，他们会更喜爱那种供给全方位用户体会的产品。依据极不一致的技术标准开发跨途径运用软件真的很难，而让这款运用面向不同途径供给与原版别无异的用户体会，更是难上加难。

作为一家软件公司的CEO，我真期望这不是实在的说法。我其实很愿意创立在任何途径都能有用运转的运用软件，但咱们实际上仍是挑选了针对Windows、Mac、Desktop Web、iOS、Android、BlackBerry、HP WebOS和Windows Phone 7等各个途径，开发不同的原版运用。这么做是因为这种战略能够有用确保产品质量，这一点对咱们来说最为重要。假设咱们挑选一个一致的跨途径客户端，就有或许节约70%的开发本钱，但一起也极有或许丢失80%的用户。这样一来，咱们就有或许被大部分运用商铺拒之门外，就得开端忧虑产品出售途径的问题了。

Mac App Store的面世是否意味着网页运用现已走到了终点？彻底不是，但我以为最成功的网页运用应该是那些具有杰出功用，可同享信息、促进交流、集成内容，一起还能无缝植入网页的产品。趁便说一下，咱们的下一个规划方针便是开发Evernote的网页客户端。

手机运用商铺的鼓起当然打破一些旧的职业常规，但我很快乐咱们并不选用那种制止用户仿制内容、出售现成软件、定时更新收费的运营形式。假设是在三年前，像Evernote这样的公司底子无法获得堪比现在的成果。但运用商铺、云服务、跨途径用户和免费形式让这些都变成了实际。Evernote的下载量在第一周今后肯定会有所下降，但现在的状况还比较稳定，我只想说，Mac App Store必将耐久地谋福开发者。

注：原文来自 techcrunch；全文如下：

Four Lessons From Evernote’s First Week On The Mac App Store

Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, which is currently the No. 5 App in the Mac App Store. It also didn’t hurt that the app has been prominently featured by Apple.

We just finished our first week on the Mac App Store and it might have been the most important week in Evernote’s history. Here’s how it went and what we learned:

1. Meritocracy is sweet

I remember one of the first computer articles that I ever read (maybe it was in Byte Magazine in the early 80s while I was in junior high). It had a little survey aimed at my fellow nerds. “Do you buy software for your computer?”, was the first question. The choices were, “A) Yes, frequently. B) Yes, sometimes. and C) Rarely, I prefer to write my own.” The fact that C was a viable choice pretty much sums up the early euphoria of the consumer software industry. You just had to make something great and the rest would follow. That was a long time ago.

The following twenty or thirty years brought us monopolies and barriers to entry and this happy state of affairs became a dim memory. Then came the mobile app explosion.

Over the past year, about 70% of Evernote’s new users came from mobile app Stores, mostly iOS and Android. This led us to the understandable conclusion that mobile was the crucial thing that made a platform attractive to independent developers. Last week made us realize that the reality is a little bit more nuanced. It isn’t mobile that’s overwhelmingly important, it’s the app store.

Until a week ago, all the good app stores just happened to be on mobile devices, but someone with a shiny new Macbook is just as eager to get the best apps as someone with a shiny new iPhone.

A platform without a well-formed app store presents a huge challenge to developers. To succeed on such a platform, the developer has to spend as much time and money on channels, logistics, partnerships and advertising as on actually making a great product. Once an app store takes hold, the software market on a platform starts moving towards a meritocracy. This is imperfect, of course, but focusing on building a great product is the best strategy for succeeding on an app store. This is a huge boon for software nerds of all types, and has resulted in the explosion of mobile apps and services in the past two years. It’s about time that desktops joined the party.

2. Desktop software is viable again

It took a few weeks of non-trivial effort to get our existing Mac application ready for the app store. There’s never a convenient time to take a few weeks out of a busy development schedule, and December is as inconvenient as it gets, but Apple’s developer relations folks were helpful and the approval process itself worked reasonably well once we’d worked out the kinks.

The results speak for themselves. About 320,000 people downloaded Evernote in the first week of the Mac App Store. Of this number, about 120,000 had never used Evernote before, and created new accounts. This represents more than 50% of all the new Evernote accounts created last week. The Mac platform—which used to be in fourth place for new user registrations behind iOS, Android and Windows—has now jumped to first.

It’s obvious in hindsight, but the presence of a well-formed app store is the single most important factor for the viability of a platform for third party developers. If you want to take this a step further and say that a robust third-party software market is the most important factor for the success of the platform overall, well…

I hope Windows gets a good app store soon.

3. Multi-platform users are the best kind

Not only is the Mac App Store getting us new users, it’s making our existing users more valuable. Neat, but how?

So 320,000 people downloaded Evernote in the first week and 120,000 of them became new users. What happened to the rest? Well, about 80,000 people were either switching their Mac client from our direct-download version to the app store version or had simply downloaded the app and didn’t complete registration. Another 100,000 people were existing users who had previously used Evernote from other platforms (mostly the iPhone) and added the Mac version for the first time.

This is both interesting and important. Interesting because the vast majority of these people must have (1) already had Macs, and (2) known about our Mac version from previous interactions with Evernote but hadn’t bothered to install it until the Mac App Store appeared. Important because people who use Evernote from multiple devices are much more likely to stick around and to eventually pay for the premium version. This makes intuitive sense and the data is clear: in a Freemium model, people choose to pay for what they love and the more devices they use Evernote from, the more likely they are to fall in love with it.

The Mac App Store effect works the other way as well: many of the new users who first found us on the Mac App Store went on to also download Evernote on their mobile devices. Our iTunes downloads for iOS devices were up by 54% during the same week that the Mac App Store came out and that’s without any new versions or noticeable change in iOS app visibility.

4. A strike against lowest common denominator

If Evernote’s desktop clients were written in Adobe AIR, I’d be worried right now. The immediate popularity of the Mac App Store, and the iPhone App Store before it, reinforces my belief that in a world of infinite software choice, people gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience. It’s very hard for something developed in a cross-platform, lowest-common- denominator technology to provide as nice an experience as a similar native app.

As the CEO of a software company, I wish this weren’t true. I’d love to build one version of our App that could work everywhere. Instead, we develop separate native versions for Windows, Mac, Desktop Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, HP WebOS and (coming soon) Windows Phone 7. We do it because the results are better and, frankly, that’s all-important. We could probably save 70% of our development budget by switching to a single, cross-platform client, but we would probably lose 80% of our users. And we’d be shut out of most app stores and go back to worrying about distribution.

Does this mean that web apps are doomed? Not at all, but the most successful web apps will be the ones that emphasize unique benefits—sharing, communications, integrations—that are better implemented on the web than in native code. This is the main design goal for the next version of the Evernote web client, by the way.

Lost among all the gloomy economic news of the past few years is the fact that there’s never been a better time to be in software. Sure, the emergence and inevitable dominance of app stores will permanently disrupt existing industry practices—I’m glad we’re not in the business of preventing people from making copies of bits, shipping shrink-wrapped boxes or charging people for periodic upgrades—but a company like Evernote simply could not have attained a fraction of our current momentum even three years ago. App stores, cloud services, cross-platform users and Freemium economics made it all possible. The download numbers are certain to decline a bit as the excitement of the first week finds a sustainable steady-state, but the launch of the Mac App Store will have a major, and permanent, positive impact on developers.（source:techcrunch）