How to get your Android app featured on Play Store
Developers around the world are hard at work, trying to develop high-quality apps, and delivering an amazing experience to the users out there. Your app competes with 2.2 million apps to make it to Google Play Stores “Featured Apps”.
Everybody wants to get featured on the front page of play store – to achieve these, below are a few best practices to boost your app’s chances of getting featured on the Google Play Store.
- Follow Googles launch checklist.
Before you publish your app to the play store, make sure you follow Google’s launch list details, which would ensure that your app is launched successfully. Checklist’s tasks can be handled in any sequence and skip steps as appropriate.
- App Icon, Name, Description and keywords.
App Icon is the first place where most people will encounter your app. You have to stand out of the crowd. Being beautiful and instantly recognisable are the two primary qualities you have to
keep in your mind. When users see your app icon in the play store, they tend to start to build assumptions about the user experience, how intuitive will it be, and how well it would serve the purpose. If an icon looks great and is beautifully crafted, it is good enough to assume that the rest of the app will be equally crafted.
App Name should serve as a lighthouse for searching engines. It should serve, make a good and easy target to find. If you are a firm believer in the “First Impression theory”, then picking a “creative name for apps” story is without a doubt the brightest example of it. Clarity, Recognisability, Pronounceability, and No-Duplications should be considered as key factors during naming.
App’s Description can help you capture the essence of your offering in one line and drastically increase conversion. With great app description and proper usage of words – the app is serving, you will be able to create a favourable impression and entice people to download your app. The secret to instantly increase downloads is to localise your app and thereby reach more markets.
Example for App Description localised to the Indonesian language.
- Spectacular UI and UX
Visually appealing and intuitive UI can become the key to lead conversions. To the user, UI should be quick, seamless and responsive and that’s what good user experience is all about.
You have to make sure to design according to Google’s material design.
Also make sure that your user interface and user experience are elegant, sophisticated and polished. Try and ensure that its aesthetically pleasing and you don’t want your users deleting your app just because the user interface looks ugly.
- High Quality.
App Quality directly influences long time success of your app, regarding installs, user rating and reviews engagement and user retention. Google’s core app quality is a good set of guidelines to be followed.
The Google Play editorial team pay attention to user satisfaction before even considering featuring an app. Negative reviews and one-star ratings will definitely harm your app’s reputation and squash your chances of getting your app featured. So after building your high-quality app and with all of the above, make sure to keep your ratings and reviews high (above four is safe).
- Right Categorization
The dream is to end up on one of the Top Lists of All Time, but don’t forget these lists can be filtered by category. It’s through these filters that a lot of users discover new Apps. Try and use this to your advantage, make sure you have entered your app under the right category, choose one that best represents the strongest features of your app. Also note that certain types of games get a bit more exposure on the App Store than others, with regards to collections and promotions the App store puts together.
Categorization Example
- Social Media Marketing
One hack to get your app featured in the early weeks after going live is to optimise your launch timing. For instance, if your app depends on a certain specification in a particular phone that will be launched soon, play your start wisely. A well-known example is ColorNote. Its parent company, Social & Mobile Inc., capitalised on the fact that the Motorola Droid didn’t ship with a built-in note taking the app, so they developed ColorNote to be compatible and launched it in sync with the Droid. As phone sales boomed, the app boomed along with it and eventually reached 100M+ downloads.
- Conclusion
Keeping these tips in mind could help you get your app the attention it deserves on the Google Play Store. There’s so much competition out there that making every effort to have your app stand out from the crowd is key to success. It’s not something you can skip over, and after putting all the effort into making an app there no point falling at the last hurdle because you didn’t put effort into optimising your play store presence. It’s as important as SEO for websites, you’ve got to get your app out there and maximise its discoverability.
References:
- https://developer.android.com/
- https://blog.instabug.com/
- https://www.gamesparks.com/
This is a pleasant read.
Would you be able to share a few more instances on the section – Social Media Marketing?
That looks like a prominent way to benefit the app, any detailed tips for the same?