Posts Tagged ‘App Store’
|New iTunes App Store design
Friday, December 11th, 2009
I was checking as usual how my apps were doing in the store when I notice that Apple just released a redesign of the application pages in the App Store. I definitely think this is a great improvement and I think it will improve sales for everybody. Here is what’s new:
- They got rid of the huge link to your company name. Nobody was clicking on it to see your apps so it was just a waste of space and it was confusing people.
- Simple horizontal scroll to see the screenshots. This means that if you have a decent size screen you can actually see more than one screenshot at the time.
- Excerpt of the description. Developers will have to make sure that the most important stuff are written in the first part of the description.
- Links to the company site and support page more prominent.
- More importance to the “What’s New in Version…” section.
- An area with the links to few other apps from the same developer. This is great to help cross promotions of your apps. Even after they get old, this is a good way for people to find the.
- This is also helped by a new big “Customers Also Bought” area at the bottom. Of course this won’t help you on your app page, but it will help you when your app will appear on your competitors’ page
Overall I would say this is a great update by Apple, that seems doing a lot of things lately to please users and developers as far as iPhone OS apps.
Tags: App Store, Apple, Applications, iPhone application
Posted in iPhone | No Comments »
What will change with the new App Store?
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
With the introduction of iTunes 9, Apple also presented a new version of the App Store.
A lot of people complained, for a long time, about the App Store structure, and how it was driving the developers to price their applications as low as possible in order to appear in the top 100 lists, which is the only way to be easily discovered in the store.
I’m uncertain whether or not this change will help solve that specific problem, but Apple added a new chart in the home page, “Top Grossing.” This chart shows pricey apps that did well and cheap apps that did extremely well. Aside from that, the number of apps featured in the App Store’s home page is still the same, and the application categories are relegated in a drop menu – a menu that I didn’t even realize was there until after 10 minutes. My guess is that with this change, the number of visits in the category pages will slightly decrease in favor of the Top 100s from the home page.
Another disparity is that only the apps in the home page top charts can take advantage of the sharing feature to post a link on Facebook and Twitter, while the others are still stuck with only the e-mail sharing feature.
On a positive note, Apple increased the top 100 for each category to top 200, giving visibility to a few more apps (and I’m glad to see that some of my apps may take advantage of that).
The “genius” feature on the iPhone version of the App Store is an interesting concept, but except for gaming, I don’t see a great use for it. It probably will take a while before it will collect enough data to be reliable (for me, it’s suggesting to use Grocery iQ based on Qik and Xbox Achievements based on DukeMobile). Also, it often offers you replacements for apps you already have; what’s the point of suggesting another to-do list? To help me find a better substitute for what I already have? And how are they going to pretend to do that, by offering me apps with a lower average rating than the app I already have?
Do you want the secret to be successful in the store now? Market outside the store, and if you happen to end up in the home page charts, you’ll bank even more than before.
What’s your opinion on the new App Store?
Tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone application, iTunes, Marketing
Posted in iPhone | No Comments »
My take on Apple’s ban of the 3rd-most prolific iPhone developer
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
As most of you might have read on several blogs, Apple banned the 3rd-most prolific iPhone developer, Khalid Shaikh, from the App Store. Khalid has published 943 applications in less than 9 months. That’s an average of 5 apps per day, every day, for 250 days.
From reading the comments on these blogs, you can easily divide them into two different typologies: “thanks, Apple, for removing part of the cancer from the App Store” and “why is Apple banning applications they approved in the first place.” I won’t hide that I agree with the former.
There are few considerations I’d like to make:
- Having an abundance of apps is not a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with publishing 100 apps if you have the content for them. I know, it would be ideal if all the travel guides and similar apps would just release a $0.99 “container app,” and then sell all the different variations inside that app, especially now that that’s possible thanks to the iPhone OS 3.0’s in-app purchase feature. Because having more apps increases your visibility in the App Store, I can’t see that happening anytime soon, unless, of course, Apple forces them to do so.
- Apple isn’t at fault. At least in this particular situation. Yes, more than 900 apps should have raised a red flag, but Apple can’t afford (and honestly, as developer, I can’t either) to thoroughly check every single application; it would take forever! When we signed up for the developer program, we agreed not to publish applications we don’t have permission or the right to publish. Just to give you an example, I partnered with PetMD to publish all their PetMD applications. If instead of creating an ad hoc developer account, we decided to use mine, how could Apple have possibly known whether I had permission to use PetMD’s content?
- iPhone developers are very rare. This case just confirmed my theory that iPhone developers don’t exist in large numbers; good developers are even rarer. This one guy basically owned approximately 2% of 50,000 apps in the store.
- It’s time for a few significant changes. There are two things that can be changed: the way people look at the App Store (as a distribution tool and not as a marketing tool) and the way in which people find apps (or the App Store in the way it showcases these apps). There absolutely has to be a more effective way to ensure that the better apps rise from the masses of
crappynot-so-great apps than Apple’s current system, which is based on user ratings or average number of recent downloads.
I’d like to hear from you. What’s your take on this?
Tags: App Store, Apple, iPhone application
Posted in iPhone | No Comments »
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