What's going on with Dress Measurement?

It has been a year since we launched our first iOS app, Dress Measurement. What has happened since then?

First, we have reached over 4,000 downloads, with no advertising (well, no advertising after the first week). This is also with no SEO, which is to my chagrin, because we are a company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization. This time last year, when we launched Dress Measurement, Aeeiee only had two employees, and of them, I was the only software engineer. Since December 2016, we have added a paid marketing intern to our ranks.

Though Dress Measurement is one of our own pet projects, the majority of our time, like 99% of it, is spent making and managing software for our clients. We have been swamped in new projects since September 2016, and entirely focused on building strong relationships with our clients. As a result, Dress Measurement has been our lowest priority. We have not had time to improve the app. We have not had time to market it, and we have not even had time to work on SEO. I have only just this week had time to update the look and feel of aeeiee.com.

But that is all about to change. We have some good news for Dress Measurement users.

We hear you

Over the past 12 months, dozens of users have given us feedback about which features they would like added to Dress Measurement to improve the app and make managing profiles and customers easier. Here is what you have all asked for, in order of popularity:

1. An Android version of Dress Measurement.
2. Cloud syncing for Dress Measurement, so your profiles can follow you around regardless of the device you use, and you can easily restore data to a new device in the event your phone is damaged or stolen.
3. The ability to add your own custom measurements, since many tailoring shops take very specialized measurements and what gets measured is very subjective.
4. A notes section for each profile, so that you can add custom information about that customer.
5. The ability to change the directory picture to a photo of a client, as well as the ability to attach photographs to profiles (front, back, and side).
6. The ability to edit the names of body parts measured, so that you can write them in languages other than English, or a multi-language update to the app (Spanish, German, Italian).
7. The ability to create folders or tag profiles so you can easily filter per customer, company, or department.
8. Create a child profile and avatar.
9. Add more color options to the avatars.

What comes next

First, Aeeiee is hiring. We are looking to hire 2 to 3 new software engineers, which will help us tackle more projects at once and afford us the time to make improvements to our app.

Next, we are improving SEO. Our app gets 10 to 15 downloads a day with us doing absolutely nothing. This past year we have averaged 11.2 downloads a day. Over the past six months, I have been training our marketing intern on Web and SEO and together we have been developing an organic marketing strategy for Dress Measurement.

We have one simple goal: have DressMeasurement.com rank #1 for the search “Dress Measurement” on Google. Right now we are not even listed on the first 100 pages on Google. Why, you might ask? It is because even though we have the perfect domain, and we have SSL encryption, and our site is mobile friendly, for the past twelve months it was still a single-page site. Quite simply, single-page sites just do not rank well on search engines unless they have thousands of backlinks. Moreover, on that single page, we had less written copy than on this blog post.

Due to the traffic the keyword “Dress Measurement” receives on Google daily, I believe it can bump us up from 10 to 15 downloads a day to 10 times that at a minimum. More demand for Dress Measurement makes a better case for us to dedicate development time to the app, and prepares us to push our updates to a wider audience.

After that, we will be updating the app. The next planned update incorporates the following features:

• Cloud syncing (2)
• Custom measurements (3, 6)
• Notes section for each profile (4)
• Attach photos to profiles, plus change directory picture (5)

So this means we are going to tackle items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 on your list. When is this going to happen? As customers have contacted us over the last 12 months, I was overly optimistic about when I would have time for continued development of Dress Measurement. I gave answers of 30 to 45 days, only to have new projects come up and responsibilities continue to overrule our app.

So here is what has to happen first. I need to hire the software engineers, and that will take time, probably a month or two to find the right people. Then after that, we will need to finish a big project we are working on right now. We have given one of our clients our exclusive attention for the next few months as we work on fulfilling their needs (meaning we are not accepting any new work for the next few months).

Once I have a good software engineering team, and once we are done with our big client project, we will get right back to work on Dress Measurement. So we are planning to be back on some serious iOS development by September this year. We appreciate your support and feedback, and we have not forgotten about you. When we start back up, we will let you know right on this blog.