@Mobile 2.0 Ilja Laurs CEO GetJar on ranking applications and search

Following on from the panel this morning I sat down with GetJar’s Ilia Laurs to find out about more about mobile ranking and search. He said in the session that volume was essential for sales and money.

As some background, I first met Ilja before he got 6 million investment in the business from Accel in the US… and I met him on the plane to CTIAas we sat next to each other. Since then GetJar has grown and I meet Bill Scott a lot more at conferences -but speaking to Ilja again shows determination in the space and how you can do well and keep your feet on the ground.

Anyway, I wanted to explore what he meant and what GetJar was doing to improve the search criteria.

Ilja: In short, 2000 unique users to an app store will support one application. This means that if you want to have a catalogue of 10,000 application you will need to have a user base of up to 10 million people.

So, in any app store you need traffic to make money. If you don’t get traffic the application will fall to the wayside and it will not be sustainable.

Traffic and distribution is vital and the ration needs to remain to make the application sustainable.

Bena: OK – so what is the reward for developers when they get traffic?

Ilja:Each developer can benefit from rewards and it’s not only money. Basically Facebook is not selling the application but its payment is based on the units distributed and monetisation can occur later on. The same for Google Maps. They want volume and can pay for traffic but after that they can build services and business.

What can I earn?

Ilja: So I would say if you have 10,000 applications downloaded on GetJar you can make about 5K dollars. Or 10K applications will mean a 5K repeat users which means an increase in ad revenue as well.

Bena:OK – so you can make money if you get volume but you mentioned ranking before – what are you doing to improve ranking on GetJar.

Ilja: What we have now is a ranking based on the number of downloads as the more downloads we have the more popular you are and we thought this made you deserve to be visible.
But after some time we have realised the complexities of an app store and it’s not so simple. We have been failing developers and users with this system as the type of apps that get to the top of GetJar are the volume apps that work on all mobile phones. This means they are thin and not rich apps but compatible game apps.

To solve this we are developing a new vertical search engine that works on clusters.

Bena: Interesting so how will that work?

Ilja: the best applications might not be the ones at the top of the application stream so with a vertical search we rank all the applications based on platform. This will benefit the developer as he or she can be a guru in one phone or one in one OS only.

This benefits the consumer as when you download an application you can choose what you get for your device. This
The vertical search solution is vital for regional breakdown as well. 10% of GetJar traffic comes from India and 7% from the US. US users don’t want an Indian wedding iPhone application so this is vital to give users the right choice from the onset. Local apps are recognised by the search and then ranked by country. This kills two rabbits with one shot.

Bena: OK.

Ilja: So the developer strategy is changing the strategy is now to build better applications to go deeper in to the service to get back to the consumer. To deliver what the consumer wants. If you know where your traffic comes from then you can react.

Bena:Yes. I suddenly got 13% traffic increase from Bing so I optimised forBing.

Ilja: Exactly. That is it. We provide a distribution channel but also traffic and this knowledge to the consumer is vital.

Bena:OK. Ilja how do you make money?

Ilja: 90% of the traffic is paid traffic. You give Y amount of money for this many downloads.

But we also have an in game application product for people to do a revenue share. If the application is worth 1 dollar we as GetJar get 55 cents. This is in BETA. But we welcome third party advertisers to do this better than us as the more the sale or the bigger the demand the greater the payment and return for us.

Bena: OK – so what is the new model?

Ilja: So, moving forward we are going to give users a billing API. So they can charge for services immediately.

Bena: So you get a revenue share?

Ilja: Yes.

Bena:OK Ilja that is really interesting but everyone is opening an app store now – do you think GetJar will be sold to an operator?

Ilja: We are a successful business and here for the long term not just to be sold. But creating an app store is hard and takes a lot of work to get it right. We have 15 million users and this shows our success.

Bena: It has been a pleasure to watch you grow since meeting you on the plane!

What we think?
After the interview I had lunch with Ilja and I probed him saying that he was in mobile but really an online app store and not on mobile. He spoke about how GetJar’s traffic on operator decks has been a dissapiontment (3K visitors or less daily - I think). He said that at the top spot on 3’s portal he got a minimum number of hits compared to online.

This summed up mobile for me. I didn’t go into great detail at the time -but mobile use is still low. The first phase to really driving mobile is driving traffic from within the mobile web. Who ever can do this is the winner.