If you have number of milliseconds since Unix epoch, for example 1724117711296, you can use the following Excel formula to convert it to date and time:
Here’s a quick update on how it’s all coming along.
Key Metrics
As a reminder, acquisitions is the number of people that installed the app. Activation count is how many of those people opened a walk in the app on the same day. Retention is the number of users that opened a walk in the app in 1 week or later.
Retention rate is still low – around 13%. I think I need to figure out how to make my app more “sticky”. Do you have any ideas?
Premium Subscribers
?This chart shows how many people started a free trial premium subscription, week by week.
In the end of November I changed the app to let people see their current location on the map without premium subscription. My idea was that more people would use the app regularly and more people would subscribe to premium. Then, for 7 weeks starting from February there was just one new trial subscriber. That’s when I freaked out and reverted the change.
Web Traffic
?The number of visitors to the Trail Navigator Victoria website is growing.
Orange columns are the number of visitors from Australia, week by week. For each week, the chart also shows how many of those visitors installed the app.
The majority of traffic is coming from Google search. Here are the top search queries for the past 28 days:
Query
Clicks
dandenong ranges loop
35
yellow gum circuit
26
red bluff lookout
13
yellow gum circuit track
13
canyon walk bright
10
mount beauty gorge walk
10
mount difficult
8
chute road and mount macedon circuit
8
gold heritage walk
7
camels hump and sanatorium lake
7
My goal is to increase the number of visitors and the install ratio. At the moment, about 6% of people who visit the Trail Navigator website install the app.
Here’s another update on how my business is doing.
Key Metrics
I noticed that I stopped learning from my clients so I stopped Facebook advertising. I was paying about $1.80 per install so it wasn’t sustainable anyway.
The app has about 40 daily active users and 30 premium subscribers.
I keep hiring writers for the Trail Navigator Victoria blog. I use the Airtasker website for that.
The number of visitors coming from Google Search is not growing, unfortunately. This chart shows number of clicks from Google per day:
My biggest challenge right now is getting feedback from my clients to understand how to make the app better. I sent a survey to 100 people using in-app support chat and got zero response. I also sent emails to people that installed the app and signed up for an account but nobody responded. My next idea is to talk to people I meet on the hikes – to understand their frustrations when it comes to planning and going on a walk.
On average, 150 people install the Trail Navigator Victoria app per week. Most installs are from Facebook and Google ads. Activation means that a person selected a walk after installing the app. Retention is the count of people that selected a walk in 1 week or later.
Premium Subscriptions
I also gathered subscription data from Google Play and Apple App Store. This chart shows how many people started trial premium subscriptions, week by week. It also shows how many people cancelled their premium subscription:
Trail Navigator Victoria has 24 premium subscribers at the moment.
The app started getting reviews on Google Play Store. Here’s a recent one:
???? 1.5x the price of Trailforks but less functionality. If Trailforks didn’t exist, I’d be all over this, it’s really not bad.
I asked that user which functionality he missed from the Trail Navigator Victoria app but unfortunately he did not respond.
I put my efforts into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I added national parks pages to the Trail Navigator Victoria website, for example Wilsons Promontory National Park. I also added pages for Melbourne suburbs and towns in Victoria. Each page has a list of walks in nature nearby, for example Ballarat Central. Traffic from Google is slowly growing:
I also hire writers for the Trail Navigator blog. Here’s a recent blog post by Sarah Thompson: Tower Hill Nature Reserve
I finally got around to track activation and retention for my Trail Navigator app. I was tracking acquisitions only before (number of people that installed the app).
I decided to define activation as someone opening a walk on the same day as he installs the app. Retention is the number of users that opened a walk in the app in 1 week or later.
Each group of columns represents a weekly cohort of users. For example in the week starting 30 January 150 people opened the app for the first time. Among those people 105 opened a walk on the same day (activations). 17 out of those people came back to the app in a week or more and opened a walk.
As you can see the retention rate is quite low. I’m not sure what to do about it yet. I made viewing the current location on the map (blue dot) and getting directions to the starting point (using Google Maps) premium features recently (end of January 2023). Perhaps people don’t see enough value in free features? I’m going to show my app to people that like walks in nature and ask.
Premium subscription is $4.99 per month or $44.99 per year with 1-week free trial. Right now I have 12 premium subscribers.
I’m working on a new mobile app now – Trail Navigator Victoria. It helps people that love walking in nature to explore the best walks in Victoria, Australia.
This is how the idea for the app was born: we would go for a walk with our children. We would often miss a turn or take a wrong turn and would have to go back. Also, kids would ask me all the time ‘How much further?’ and I didn’t have the answer.
Initially I wanted the app to help to create a route and then follow it but after talking to some potential clients I noticed that people are interested in good, pre-defined routes. So I created an app that shows a map of Victoria with walks as pins on the map:
I released the app in November 2021.
I’m getting about 150 downloads per week:
I’m running ads on Facebook and Google to get those installs.
The app is free but it has an optional paid premium subscription. It allows you to:
Use the app offline
Get an alert if you stray away from the route for more than 100 meters
Get rid of ads
At the moment I have 6 premium subscribers. The ads brought just $3 for December.
My goal is to bring the revenue from the app to at least $100 per month by the end of 2023.
I like to keep images that I upload to blog and websites small and free of metadata (EXIF etc). PureJPEG and PngCrush are two tools that help me to reduce image file size without affecting quality.
I invoke them from Far Manager using F2 user menu:
Here’s how to configure it:
Press F2 to open user menu.
Press Insert key. Select ‘Insert Command’.
Enter ‘j’ as hotkey, ‘PureJpeg’ as label and the following as command: “C:\Small Programs\PureJpeg\purejpeg.exe” “!.!”
Press OK to save
Far Manager replaces “!.!” with selected file name in double quotes.
I keep small apps and tools in ‘Small Programs’ folder. You might have them somewhere else.
Follow the same procedure for PNG Crush. Use this command:
You can quickly jump to your favorite folders in Far Manager by pressing right Control + 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on.
Adding a shortcut is very simple:
Go to your favorite folder in Far Manager
Press Ctrl + Shift + 1 (or 2, 3, 4, 5, …)
Now you can press right Ctrl + 1 to jump to that folder.
You can view all your folder shortcuts by pressing F9 to open the top menu, then C to open Commands submenu, then D:
I have right Ctrl + 1 assigned to my temp folder, I gave it 1Temp name so that it’s always on top and also to remind me that it has 1 as shortcut. Usually I put there files and folders that I’m going to upload somewhere. I train myself to delete everything from that folder from time to time.
You can assign more than folder to a single shortcut. In this case Far Manager would show you a menu with all folders when you press that shortcut. I have folders that I use from time to time assigned to right Ctrl + 0 (zero). Typically they are so deep in the file system that it would be too long to navigate there the normal way:
Beyond Compare is an excellent tool for comparing files and folders. I use it most often during software development.
My weapon of choice for file operations is Far Manager so I decided to make launching Beyond Compare fast and painless. After some experimentation I settled on creating bc.cmd in C:\Program Files\Far Manager folder:
Note the empty string as the first argument to the start command: it wouldn’t work properly without it since the full path to BComp.exe has double quotes.
Now I can compare files from Far Manager by typing
bc file1.txt file2.txt
Usually I use Ctrl+F shortcut to insert full path to the selected file in Far Manager.
Comparing Folders
My next idea was to use some keyboard shortcut to compare Far Manager’s left and right panels. Both Far Manager and Beyond Compare have 2 panels so it’s natural to open and compare folders:
Here’s how to set it up:
Press Ctrl+. to start recording a macro
Type bc, then space, then press Ctrl+[ to insert path to the left folder, then space again, then Ctrl+]
Press Enter. This should launch Beyond Compare. Close it and go back to Far Manager.
Press Ctrl+. to stop recording the macro
Press Ctrl+B to assign a hotkey:
Voila! Now you can press Ctrl+B to launch Beyond Compare and compare folders that you have open in Far Manager. Normally Ctrl+B turns on and off the key bar at the bottom of the window but I never do it. You can still turn it off by opening Options menu, then Interface settings:
Don’t forget to save settings by pressing Shift+F9. Happy comparing!
