Forex Trading App – App Audit

In this app audit, we take a look at a Forex Trading app. We look at:
– Demographic targeting
– Customer avatar
– Unique selling proposition
– Engagement loops
– Driving to subscriptions

Download the app here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/forex-trading-alpha-economic/id1139711409?mt=8
See ya,
Carter
TRANSCRIPT
Yo, what’s up guys? It’s Carter in another day of audits. Sweet. I just noticed Christian, yeah, this post…to get popular, this is very exciting. And this is doing great. I hope this has been valuable to a lot of you guys.
So I’m going to pick another one. And honestly, I’m just going to completely biased and, Fred, I’m going to do yours because you signed up to come to the event so that’s a huge perk. So I’m going to do your app here which I have not looked at. But if I remember correctly, we did this or we looked at this app, we talked about this topic in Hawaii when we were together.
So, very cool to see you continuing to do this, taking action, all that good stuff. I’m also interested in this topic and in this field, not only with Forex but just in the greater market of financial markets. I’ve real interest in cryptocurrency right now. So hopefully, I can help you with a little bit.
Okay, so let’s see if you put anything. [inaudible 00:01:10]…okay, cool. So, Forex Trading Alpha Economic Calendar News. So for anyone who doesn’t know, just, Forex is the currency trading market, right? It’s where you trade, you know…hey, you buy British Pounds and then you sell them against the U.S. Dollar.
And it’s very, very small trades, but it’s also multiplied by, I believe, 80, meaning, that you can make an enormous amount of money very, very quickly. Similarly, you can lose a lot of money which attracts a lot of people that can and have made a huge amount of money.
The Forex market, for anyone who doesn’t know, is about 300 times bigger than the stock market. So, I mean, it’s trillions of dollars a day. And I’m just saying that just because that’s the mindset of people that are interested in Forex. So as you’ve seen in these other [inaudible 00:01:57], it always starts with the users, like who are we going after? Typically, a very male dominated field, things like that.
Icons, like I said, I’m not the best icon person. I do think this is a great icon. I like the background where it looks like a stock ticker which I’m sure you can blurt out. I love the dark colors with the blue. I think that this is something you see a lot of. So like we type in Forex trading, again, some of the pomodoro thing that I did, and we type in images.
You see a lot of these colors, right? So this makes a lot of sense to me and I think that this is probably why you chose to do some of the colors the way you did. I like the logo. I think that the logo, I’m assuming that that has to do with your business. I’m gonna suit your supporters but we want to help you conquer Forex market, bring the biggest financial market in the world, foreign exchange. To compete, you need to…as you have…Forex trading…Okay, cool.
So the first thing I would tell you is you gotta do, you gotta write something in here that explains how this is going to happen. So we wanna help you conquer the Forex market. That’s great. But everybody wants to do that, right? There’s no app out. There’s no service out there that doesn’t want to do that. So you need to say how you’re gonna do it and be very clear about that. So this is an economic calendar news tool, news and tools and things like that.
This is, I mean, I’m assuming this is for apps optimization. Again, I would try to get very clear about what is the one thing that you are really doing that makes the difference, right?
So with Forex, there’s a million different things, right, like there’s technical analysis, there’s alerts, there’s charts, there’s, you know, a lot of other things that I don’t even know. And so what, of all those things, what is the thing that makes the biggest difference and how are you making it really, really great? So that’s what I would do.
Potentially, in the title, that may be tough to fit all that in the title but really drill it right here, just really nail it. Because right here, this is everything you need. So what I would do is I would pick one of these things and I would talk about that specifically in here, like this is the thing that we do best because this makes the biggest difference.
This will make the biggest impact and we also have the Swiss Army knife that you need to support this thing crushing it, okay? So it’s like a subscription, which is great. And I’ll check out your website real quick, quantitative mobile media, data-driven apps, our apps…okay, cool. So it looks like this is more of like the developer page as opposed to the app page, very cool. Okay, cool.
So that’s the first thing, right? Take this, pick one of these and go big on it. Make it your thing. That’s gonna help all your marketing really, really well. Now, in terms of this, follow the performance of the entire market. Well, why do I care about the entire market? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but most Forex traders just trade like two or three currencies.
So why would I care about the entire market when I only really care about, you know, trading New Zealand dollars against Bitcoin, or whatever people are doing, right? So maybe something where follow the performance of your specific currency so you can blank. Like why do you want us to follow that? What about that is so important?
And I would also encourage you as you get specific up here, really drill that in here. And I’m saying drill that a lot, but you see what I’m saying, right? So follow the performance using our proprietary converter calculator, or whatever, right? Like convert in real-time, faster than any other app can do. And then same with these, keep track of all the latest economic data.
So I would just get really specific and I would go to all the other Forex trading out there, right? So like let’s just look at what your competitors are doing, and what do they do that you could do better, that you can get more specific about? Because I think this app looks awesome, looks great. If I traded Forex, I’d be interested. But what about this is unique?
I think one thing you should really think about is this Bitcoin cryptocurrency thing. I think that…I mean, not just because selfishly, I’m interested in that stuff, I think that this is something that a very few people are really nailing home. So that might be something.
But you wanna just get really specific because people have seen this before, and while it does look great, you got to just give them a reason, like this is why it’s different, this is why it’s worth downloading this, okay? So that looks good.
And now, let’s do a quick…what do we call it? Facebook ads…I’m gonna do a quick audience insights thing, which we’ll talk about this in the webinar tomorrow for anybody who’s going to be on it, you know, what this is all about, start anything on Facebook. U.S., I’m actually just gonna focus on U.S. because I think that…Forex, Forex Signal, InstaForex, Forex Bank, iForex…I’m assuming that’ll be big enough.
Yeah, okay, so let’s just take a quick look, 95% men, not surprising there. Okay, so this is an older demographic. The other day, we looked at the pomodoro technique and you noticed that the demographic was actually 35 and below. Now, the demographic, that’s between 25 and 45 so you’ve got an older demographic.
You have a lifestyle, savvy single, so the person is typically a single living in a city. What’s cartoons and carpools? I’m not sure what that’s all about…city mixers. So just, at first glance, I would say, let’s say it’s a 35, 37-year old guy living in New York, who’s making some good money and, you know, he likes going out, he likes dating, he likes going to getting drinks, he’s doing well, he really would love to buy a sick car, things like that.
Job title, this is interesting. Okay, look at this, construction, extraction, production, I’m not sure what that means but it looks like they…someone here might be more of, you know, in the kind of blue collar education background, right, but they live in the city and maybe they want to move up. So maybe they’re not the most, you know, analytical cerebral types but they’re attracted to the money, into the excitement, into the dopamine of it all, as opposed to the technical science of it all. So this could be interesting. I’ll have to drill into this a little bit more. What pages do they really like? No surprises here. The Wealthy Investor, Events Read [SP], MarketWatch, Nasdaq…okay, so that makes a lot of sense.
Location, now we’re in the U.S. If I click on that, it’s just going to be the U.S. This is interesting in terms of when you get into your marketing, Michigan is gonna be really…looks like it could be an interesting place to go after…Georgia, Alabama. Now, what’s interesting about this is that all of these states statistically are relatively lower-income states.
Like you don’t see New York, you don’t see California, you don’t see Flo…I mean, not Florida but like the states that have more money, right? Like Michigan, I don’t know where Dearborn is, but Mississippi, Georgia…these are not high-income states.
So if you’re living in a city in these states, your real income, your relative income might not be that high. So while you can make a lot of money in Forex, you’re actually maybe going after people that don’t have a lot of money.
And so that really changes the way that you’re gonna…who you’re gonna appeal to. Maybe it’s not necessarily the sophisticated person, but more the person who’s just, like I want to leverage this marketplace to make more money. It’s a kind of get out of where I am. So that’s something to think about, too.
Activity, this is…I had a feeling this was going to be high. Typically, when you have people that are, you know, they’re not grad school educated, this is higher, right? The higher that this is…I use this as a proxy for how interested they are in, you know, how discerning they are in themselves, right, like the more cerebral they are.
People that are very, very analytical, this is very, very low. And so it looks like the people that are interested in Forex actually maybe more, less analytical, not a far…I’m gonna correct myself. I think that they may be more interested in the money and less interested in the analysis and all that than previously thought.
Device users, that’s less important. And you look at household income. So look at this. Okay, wow. This is totally…I didn’t realize this. But the amount of money people make is actually pretty low. It’s not the highest spending people that I may have thought, people that are renting. They don’t have homes and all these good stuff. Now, all of this is available for U.S. This is why we didn’t do it in the other side. Wow, but this is really good for you.
Look at that, they love…they’re big subscription spenders. So that’s really good news for it’s…I mean, the fact you’re doing subscription app is huge. So that’s gonna work out really, really well in your favor.
So anyway, let’s get away from that. And now, let’s fire this app up. So Forex, that’s not what I want. Forex trading, Forex trading, oops, alpha…there you go. I’m not going to do a big competitive research thing right now because I think the market research really nails it. So first thing, one, nobody’s bidding on your key word yet, which means that app for the Apple search ads, which means if you’re not doing it already, I would go in there and see what the deal is.
I can tell you that the Apple search stuff is still a huge mess. Most people aren’t seeing a lot of impressions or results yet, but that’s something to really think about, and just for my own sake…Forex trading. How generic can we get and still get ads? Okay, cool. So Forex trading is getting some ads but I think, maybe, if you get more specific.
So you might be able to just really drill it or really nail it on some exact match keyword stuff. Oops, what happened there? There we go. And so we’re gonna wait for that to kick in. While that’s downloading, just look at what else comes up, [inaudible 00:13:29] Alpha, Vision Alpha, Alpha Pro. And I’m also just gonna look really quickly because all these apps look very similar.
And so I’m just going to see what the top Forex app looks like just so that we know how these other guys, that are the people, I should say, that are doing the best. All right, Forex…loading. Forex [inaudible 00:14:02]…Forex trader, so this is interesting because these people are actually…you can trade, I believe, on the phone. So look at this, learn Forex, play it real-time, Meta Trader. All right, so it’s all…it really focuses on the trading itself and the trading game.
Investing.com, okay, well, that’s interesting. I mean, we could go into that for a very, very long time. It’s still loading. Look at that. I’m gonna see what this is all about. Forex trading for beginners, go Forex, learn Forex, play in real-time.
So I like this idea of the virtual game. I’ve always been really fascinated by that. The fun quiz, there are more than 130 questions, trading hours, eight languages. Okay, cool.
So I think I like the first slide the most, right? Learn Forex, that really caters to the market research we just did of people that may be in a lower income and they’re attracted to the money side. So maybe, you put in your first slide, you know, make money trading Forex.
That’s getting into the great area in terms of good marketing. You don’t wanna mislead anybody but if you can bake in a way where you can show people how they’re going to make money with Forex and you’re going to facilitate them making money with Forex, that could be a huge win for you.
Okay, let’s open the app up. Forex trading…Forex alpha trading. Okay, it would like to send me notifications. Why am I getting notifications, right? This is similar to what we talked about before. You should prompt me before I get this, to say, getting notifications allows you to get real-time updates so that you can make the best possible trade.
This is how people make the most money, is they have the best, they have the fastest speed. Give them a very, very good reason before you prompt to this. But I’m going to click “Allow” and then I get dropped into this market data. So this is great.
Okay, as it stands, the way you are presenting this on your app store, this makes sense because you’re saying, “Hey, look, get all the data,” right? And same with the ticker, I’m assuming that this…Yeah, so just as like Australian Dollars versus Canadian Dollars. Here is news which is probably just playing some RSS feeds from somewhere else and then calendar. Okay, so that’s…I like the calendar a lot. I think that this is really cool. This is something you don’t see very often.
And then I’m going to click on the menu, markets, alerts. So what does alerts to let me do? So if I click the plus, enter amount…Oh, I see, put the amount in right here. One thing I think you should do is, on the alerts, the first time they open this, have a video and explain what alerts are, how to use it and why it’s important. Really get into that and show people, go through an alert, “Hey, look, this is what happens when you set up an alert.”
Show somebody getting an alert on their phone and then show them what to do about it once they get an alert and then drop them in the add alert area and say, “Hey, go set up your first alert. This is key.” Because I can almost guarantee you, when you talk about the subscription thing, there’s going to be a 500%, 600% increase in the amount of people that do subscriptions who have done at least two or three alerts.
All right, the engagement levels, once they do one alert, I’m sure, will be so much higher. So for you, you want to drive them into completing something in this app as soon as possible. So maybe it’s the watch list, maybe it’s the alert, maybe it’s the portfolio, maybe it’s calculator, I don’t know.
But when they get dropped on here, the first thing that I would do is I would move them into the area of the app that is going to lead them into the highest engagement that would be the hardest for them to lose when they lose the subscription. And then that’s what also goes on your iTunes page, right?
So let’s say the alerts is the example. After they get the push notifications, you say, “Hey, welcome to Forex Trading Alpha. This is the ultimate real-time alert Forex. Here’s how you set up your first alert, click here.” And you click here and it’s a deep link and it drops you over on the alerts and then it shows on the video. “Hey, great, I’m gonna show you how to set up an alert.
I’m gonna show you why it’s important. I’m going to show you how to do it the first time. You gotta do this.” And then just move them through all of these things on the left here, the watch list, the portfolio, the calculator. Just get them to do each one of those steps so that they’re invested in the app. That is going to make the biggest difference of the store, okay? And then upgrade to…Okay, so the store.
So I haven’t used this app enough to get prompted. I don’t know how much you’re upselling that. But what you wanna do once they fill out everything, the alerts, watch list, portfolio, calculator, is then you create like a ticker at the top of this, right? Maybe it says something like, “29 days left for your trial, enjoy it while you have it,” or whatever it may be.
I think you should also do something where they get a score, like, “Hey, you’re one for four, or one out of four right now.” And if they fill out alerts, it’s one of four. If they fill the watch list, they get two out of four. And show them how to complete the app, how to create a complete tool set so that at the top of this, it’s like you have complete the Swiss Army knife we talked about.
All these features are now working for you. You have an app that is no longer an information hub. This is now an asset. This is now fueling your ability to make money in the Forex market. And I think that by doing that, by having people fill out all that information, you’re going to get really, really engaged with them, watch list and all that, right?
And so I think from the UX standpoint, you don’t necessarily need as much of like a hardcore onboarding experience because I think for you, all you really need to do is just move them to the different parts of the app and systematically have them fill out the information. Because that way, the subscription also becomes valuable because they’re invested, they care about this.
And then the next thing, the next step is to create a way for them to see how this could make them money, which is why I think the virtual trading is a potentially big win for you. If you say, “All right, now you do a virtual trade. Do this for seven days.”
It’s a seven-day virtual trade challenge where they have every…but you have to set up everything to unlock the virtual trading. They start doing the virtual trading and they see that they can make money using this app, using this tool. That’s when your subscription is going to become just such a no-brainer. And, I mean, they’ll pay you whatever you want. If you’re showing them that, hey, you can help them make better trades and make [inaudible 00:21:02] be better informed, that’s going to be huge.
So I think that that’s what I would do, man. There’s a lot here. There’s a lot of opportunity. I can tell you on the new side, the biggest thing you want to do eventually is to curate this news feed. So the first time they click on news, you ask them what topics they’re most interested in, right, because right now, this is not going to be meaningful to people.
But if someone is interested in commodities or if they’re interested in Japan Yen or Japanese Yen, I should say, then certain things may be meaningful to them. So you wanna be able to curate this the same way you’re curating everything else. Eventually, if you can create an algorithm so that you see their watch list or their portfolio and you automatically curate this, that would be the best, but that might involve a lot of tech.
And then the calendar, same thing, it’s really going to come down to how do you make this meaningful, right? How does someone know what Japanese Yen, PPI, [inaudible 00:21:56]? What does that mean? Why is that important? How is that going to help the guy in New York City who is making $40,000 a year, how is that gonna help him make an extra $500 a month using this app, using Forex and all that?
So I think you’re definitely on to something, man. There’s a lot here. I think we should definitely talk about this at the San Francisco event when you come here. I’m pumped that you made this. I think it looks great. I think the dev work is awesome.
I think I would consider dropping the AdMob banner and putting in like the house ad, right, your own graphic, or putting in something here that is that…have you filled out all parts of the app? I would focus way more on keeping people inside the app and just using that real estate to move them through the app in a better way.
Be like, “Hey, you know, Forex tip of the day, click here,” and it opens up the YouTube videos that you’re putting on your YouTube channel or whatever it is you’re doing or even some text that you’re parsing out from a web page that you can just update. You can have some VA update that every day, or whatever it may be. But make the…that’s great real estate and honestly, you’re going to make a lot more money getting people to buy subscriptions and then eventually selling affiliate links to Forex trading stuff like Tim Sykes program.
You got yourself affiliate links to Tim Sykes program through this and you show it to people that have already filled out all four of four. So I would consider getting rid of the AdMob, right, like don’t focus on the pennies when you could be going to getting $20-bills type things.
Cool, man, hope that was helpful. I’m stoked on that. I love the stuff. I’d be more than happy to check this out when you get to San Francisco. And, everyone, thanks for taking the time. I’ll catch you guys soon.