This week I bought some new dishwasher tablets online that happened to be on offer. When they arrived, their packaging had a banner at the top saying ‘switch & see the difference’ which got me thinking about app competition.

I noticed it today when I loaded the dishwasher after breakfast. Where I usually rinse the plates, I instead put them straight in so I could test if these tablets really were any better. When I unloaded the dishes and found them not as clean as usual, I immediately thought not to buy those tablets again. The strange thing about the above is that it was a totally subconcious decision both to forgo rinsing and to blame the new tablets rather than my change of habit.

This relates to app competition as it shows something which is hardwired in us; a competitor must be much better in order to affect a change. If your app is competing by having the same features or slightly more features, that might not be enough to make your competitors customers switch.

When I look at competitors for WallaBee, the main one is PackRat, a collecting game that runs on Facebook. Whilst we have better artwork and features, it is still a struggle to make people switch as there isn’t necessarily a killer reason for them to make that switch. That’s the task I’m focussing on now. I need to go that extra mile to get players to change to my game; I need to wash their non-rinsed plates.