【51CTO編者按】Evernote（著名筆記軟件）開發者Phil Libin分享了Evernote在蘋果新應用商店Mac App Store躋身熱門應用前五強的一些感想：1）走精英化路線（Macbook用戶的安裝需求）2）平臺才是開發者成功的關鍵 3）跨平臺的效能好（如和iphone)  4）絕不讓用戶體驗大打折扣。

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Evernote

1.精英路線很正確

我在80年代早期上高中那陣子，讀過一篇關于計算機的文章，里面有一項針對我們這些書呆子的讀者調查，“你會為自己的電腦購買軟件嗎？”就是其中的第一個問題。答案選項分別是：A）經常會購買；B）偶爾會購買；C）很少，我情愿自己編程。C答案對那時的軟件消費行業來說是一個很可行的選擇，但這已經是過去的事情了。

在隨后二三十年中，多數軟件開發者都已在市場上站穩了腳跟，而且對后來者設置了很高的準入門檻，但隨著手機應用的大量涌現，開發者的這種好日子終于到頭了。

去年有70%的Evernote新用戶是從手機應用商店過繼而來的，多數人是iOS和Android手機用戶。這種現象讓我們意識到，對獨立開發者來講，手機是一個極富吸引力的產品投放平臺。我們產品在上周的市場表現更是印證了這種看法，但我們的觀點也有一些微妙的變化，那就是手機并非最關鍵因素，最有價值的應該是手機應用商店。在一周以前，幾乎所有不錯的應用商店都登陸到了手機平臺，剛得到Macbook的用戶想安裝最熱門應用的迫切心情，一點也不亞于iPhone新用戶。

對開發者來說，面向一個沒有可靠應用商店的平臺開發應用軟件，實在是一個巨大的挑戰。如果要在這種平臺上獲得成功，開發商除了在產品開發環節上不能含糊，另外還得在拓展渠道、后勤工作、業務合作和廣告營銷上投入大量時間和金錢。只要一個應用商店在某平臺上得勢了，這個平臺的軟件市場就會向呈現精英化的發展趨勢。這一點很難做到，但專注于針對某個應用商店創建出色的應用，這倒確實是最好的策略。在過去兩年中，各種類型的軟件開發者獲得了了空前的發展機遇，也直接造成各種手機應用和服務的數量飛速膨脹，是時候讓臺式電腦也加入戰局了。

2.桌面應用軟件重新得勢

我們花了幾個星期的時間，頗費了一番周折才把原有的Mac版本應用投放到了這個新應用商店。當時我們的開發周期非常緊張，12月份也并不是個理想的發布時間，但蘋果工作人員為我們提供了很多幫助，應用審核流程也安排得很合理。

Evernote's new user registrations per day

這一努力所收獲的結果就是，Evernote首周在Mac App Store露面，就獲得了32萬次的下載量。其中有12萬的用戶之前從未使用過Evernote，這次下載都創建了新的使用帳號。也就是說，Evernote上周的新注冊帳號增加了50%以上。Mac新用戶注冊人數之前還排在iOS、Android和Windows平臺之后，但現在已經升到了第一位。

現在我們才知道，一個擁有出色應用商店的平臺，才是第三方開發者獲得成功的關鍵。如果你要說一個運營良好的第三方應用軟件市場是這個平臺獲勝的條件，那也行……

我希望Windows也能迎頭趕上，在該平臺打造一個卓越的應用商店。

3.跨平臺用戶數量最為可觀

Mac App Store新店開業不但為我們帶來了更多客流量，也為我們原有的用戶創造了更多價值。 Evernote在該應用商店第一周的32萬下載用戶中，新用戶就占了12萬人。另外還有8萬人是從我們直接下載版的Mac客戶端轉過來的，或者說是他們下載了這款應用但并沒有完成注冊流程。還有10萬人是原來的用戶，他們之前在其他平臺使用過Evernote（注：他們多數為iPhone用戶），這是他們首次添加Mac版本的應用。

這種結果很值得玩味。它的有趣表現在兩個方面：1）大部分用戶都已經擁有Mac電腦；2）這些用戶之前已經接觸過Evernote的Mac版本，但一直到Mac App Store登場了才安裝這款應用軟件。它的重要性則在于，多數通過不同平臺使用過Evernote的用戶都喜歡先試用一陣子，但最終都會掏錢購買付費版本。這就說明，在免費模式的前提下，多數用戶會選擇購買自己需要的內容，他們在越多平臺上使用過Evernote，就越容易對它產生依賴性。

Mac App Store帶來的另一種效應是，許多新用戶是通過Mac App Store了解到這款產品，并將其下載到自己的手機上。在Mac App Store上線的同一個星期內，我們在iTunes的iOS版本下載量居然上升了54%，要知道這個iOS版本當時并沒有進行更新，也沒有提高任何曝光率。

4.絕不讓用戶體驗大打折扣

假如Evernote的臺式電腦版本客戶端是用Adobe AIR編寫的話，我就會有所擔心。但Mac App Store以及iPhone App Store的超高人氣，讓我更加確信，用戶在面臨多種選擇的時候，他們會更青睞那種提供全方位用戶體驗的產品。根據極不統一的技術標準開發跨平臺應用軟件真的很難，而讓這款應用面向不同平臺提供與原版本無異的用戶體驗，更是難上加難。

作為一家軟件公司的CEO，我真希望這不是真實的說法。我其實很樂意創建在任何平臺都能有效運行的應用軟件，但我們實際上還是選擇了針對Windows、Mac、Desktop Web、iOS、Android、BlackBerry、HP WebOS和Windows Phone 7等各個平臺，開發不同的原版應用。這么做是因為這種策略可以有效保證產品質量，這一點對我們來說最為重要。如果我們選擇一個統一的跨平臺客戶端，就有可能節省70%的開發成本，但同時也極有可能流失80%的用戶。這樣一來，我們就有可能被大部分應用商店拒之門外，就得開始擔心產品發售渠道的問題了。

Mac App Store的問世是否意味著網頁應用已經走到了末路？完全不是，但我認為最成功的網頁應用應該是那些具有突出功能，可共享信息、促進溝通、集成內容，同時還能無縫植入網頁的產品。順便說一下，我們的下一個設計目標就是開發Evernote的網頁客戶端。

手機應用商店的興起當然打破一些舊的行業慣例，但我很高興我們并不采用那種禁止用戶復制內容、發售現成軟件、定期更新收費的運營模式。如果是在三年前，像Evernote這樣的公司根本無法取得堪比現在的成就。但應用商店、云服務、跨平臺用戶和免費模式讓這些都變成了現實。Evernote的下載量在第一周以后肯定會有所下降，但目前的狀態還比較穩定，我只想說，Mac App Store必將持久地造福開發者。

注：原文來自 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）