Our client is a psychologist and chose a good format for working through psychological problems — meditations. She used to simply sell mp3 files, but many people forgot to turn them on, and they could not be sold as a subscription — the files were handed over forever.
She came to us. We suggested a mobile app where people could listen to meditations comfortably, and a push would arrive telling them to set everything aside and put their thoughts in order. A monthly subscription would move her from one-off purchases to keeping clients.
As of 26 Oct 2024:
The app is already more than a year old, our client has earned money from the meditations, and we keep developing it: journals, wishes, offline listening, bundles, new categories, payment methods, DRM to protect the mp3s — we have built a great many new, useful, and interesting things!
Platforms: iOS, Android, a site for phones and for desktop, Telegram mini-app
How we built it
The challenges we had to answer:
- Sanctions. Our client holds a Russian passport:
- Apple Developer turned off payments for Russian accounts
- Google Play does not let Russian citizens create accounts
- Four different platforms:
- iOS, Android, the site (phone and PC), and a Telegram web app — each has its own quirks
- Development must not become expensive or take forever
- A lot of extra material had to sit under each meditation without overloading the listening screen
- The app should calm people down and remind them of itself gently, on every channel: phone pushes, and messages in the Telegram bot of the web app
Stack
For all four platforms we chose a single stack:
- Vue 3 + Vite + Capacitor for the frontend — it lets us keep four platforms at once without rewriting the code, and it makes support much faster and cheaper. We used our own template for extremely fast development.
- Yii2 REST + nginx for the backend. They hold excellent performance, and the app stays quick to respond.
- For fast layout we used Tailwind, SCSS, and Pug.
Brand
While branding we kept a mostly female audience in mind, and the first design draft was in the bright tones of a light Japanese room:
We were told it was too bright, and they wanted a gold-and-dark brand, like the landing page they already had. So we carried that into the current version, taking the main elements from the landing page and inventing the idea of a dimmed room, which they accepted very well in the end
Getting around the Apple and Google Developer Program sanctions for Russia
The simplest thing would have been to register a company outside Russia, but the business runs in Russia and they did not want to do that.
Android
For Google Play, which does not accept Russian app authors even at the door, we decided to create an account on RuStore. Most of the audience is in Russia, and imported Android phones are required to have it, so everyone would have it. That was the simplest solution.
As of October 2024 you can sell there freely, they had not introduced a commission, and moderation approval took half an hour.
Apple
Apple did register our client's developer account normally, but the monetization agreement is closed for Russian accounts: you cannot sell anything inside the app in any way, redirect people to other platforms, or mention paid content at all.
After a careful reading of the documentation and hours of talking to moderation, we found the only workable option:
Reader application — an app like Netflix, which may show digital goods already bought outside (for example, play meditations), but nothing can be purchased inside the app. You must not mention payments, and there is a separate ban on registration.
That is exactly what we did: we removed registration and payments, and started the funnel on the website, where people signed up — and later in the Telegram web app.
Telegram Web App (Mini app)