PicCollage is the #1 Photo App in Japan

We’re excited to announce that PicCollage has reached the top of the charts in Japan and is right now the #1 Photo App!  In addition, it is now the #7 top app OVERALL in Japan (for all free iPhone apps).  

We are pleasantly surprised by this sudden surge in the rankings and can’t fully explain it, but we’d like to share with you some things that we have done to try to increase PicCollage’s growth in Japan:

• We integrated with the Mixi social networking service, which is very popular in Japan, so that users can pull photos from and share collages to Mixi, just like they can do with Facebook.  
• We used the MyGengo service to get prompt translations of our iTunes description and app text, and then additionally had a native Japanese speaker review the resulting translations once we put them into the app. 
• We translated our iTunes keywords into Japanese, and made use of the AppGrooves ”APP SEO” service for optimizing the keywords.  Very cool!
• Also, we chose the title “PicCollage 写真コラージュ” for the Japanese version, so that the app would rank high when people search for “写真” (photos).
• We have also launched a Japanese Facebook page.

We believe that these efforts helped slightly, but ultimately, traction needs to come from the design of the app itself. Five-star reviews are probably the best form of marketing.