This is awesome news (though it's been known for a while) for the top publishers who have: large download numbers, good AppStore SEO, and good screenshots.
While I think that this is bad on whole for developers/discovery as we knew it, it might just help users. Most of the time, users are either window shopping or looking for a very specific product.
Window Shoppers: "I want a photo editing app", chances are you are going to look at the first result and scroll down and see if a icon stands out. With the new model, you see the screenshots too. Could save time over, tapping into an app, tapping into reviews, and then tapping back twice. This means that the icon is downplayed in sales and the first screenshot has become extremely important.
Very Specific Product: "I'm looking for Gmail" It's quicker to just get the first result and confirm that it's actually what you are looking for. This however means that Apple has to be really confident in their search results (which aren't as great as they can be).
Net effect for developers:
1. App Store SEO is important. (It always was, but now I think developers will start to see it now in their app sales)
2. Your copy on the sales page should also grab users attention.
4. Also note, categories have been removed from the app tab bar.
5. Ratings seem to matter a lot for the search algorithm but not for Featured apps
6. This is the "Chomp" update, and Chomp has been known to get content from Blogs and various sources, so you should be mentioned off the App Store too.
7. Facebook Likes also help since those are displayed.
Just imagine for a moment that Google only offered one result per page. Do you really think this is going to improve the user experience? How often do you click "I'm Feeling Lucky"?
The ability of Apple apologists to rationalize bad behavior is astounding.
Absolutely crazy I agree. The app store is for two people, app makers, and people who want to download apps. For app makers it is unquestionably worse, not even remotely close, an infinitely worse experience. The OP seems to imply that this shouldnt matter, because the experience for the end user is better, and then goes on to give no real reasons and even says that "it will force developers to focus on seo" as if that is something ANYONE wants. It's like people's brains are now wired to defend anything apple does no matter what. Getting really tiresome.
Hmm, I don't think the app store is "for" app makers at all. It's for end users exclusively - the paying customers. That app makers are required to keep a fully stocked app store is an implementation detail.
You kind of just said "no you're wrong, its not for developers" and didn't really follow that up with any sort of supporting evidence, which is usually how these kind of exchanges go. If Apple designed the app store for the end user and 0% for the app makers than we would simply see the most popular app at the top and everything would be free. But we don't have it that way, why? Because if we had it that way developers wouldnt develop apps, which is why features in the app store, like actually having people pay, are built for developers.
Not far from the truth there. Apple loyalties seem to produce the same kind of psychological effect as religion or politics. Rationality doesn't enter into it.
Does anyone know if developers can track Facebook likes? Can you connect your App Store page to your Facebook page and track who shares it? Will iTunes connect show Facebook likes?
Ignoring the whiners, fanroids and Apple haters. Apple did this for a reason: to maximise revenue. If this encourages people to buy more stuff more quickly it stays otherwise it will change to something else. The "it's all different" whining is just like people complaining when Google tweaks their results presentation and suddenly a carefully SEO'd site is no longer on page 1.
Personally I never use the iPhone interface to the appstore, I hated the way it used to be, and I hate this.
However, Apple have announced an iTunes revamp for next month, I suspect this is a preview of what that will be like.
Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for you. This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lackluster icons, app designs, and screenshots of said designs. Many apps at the bottom of the stack will be neglected. This is a good thing. I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it.
This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. Ugly apps aren't always necessarily bad but more ugly apps are bad than ugly apps that are good. This isn't Android. On iOS, users tend to judge an app by its icon and screenshots and they use pretty apps more than they open ugly ones. I didn't make the rules, I just play by them. Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results.
While its bad for developers it's great for buyers. Guess what? There are far more buyers than developers on the app store. You may argue that if developers leave then iOS will die. Not so. Again, iOS users are a different animal. They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day. Screenshots are very important in the buying process and putting them front and center like this.
As developers we tend to think we're the center of the universe. We place far too much importance on our role than is deserved. Witness the outrage over Twitter's API. While developers were screaming about revolt the users barely noticed and kept tweeting away. Meanwhile Twitter pretty much gave us the finger because they know we'll be back because they have the users. Developers are like parents in a way. We raise a platform then the platform rebels. We threaten to cut them off but by that point the platform is all grown up and doesn't need our help anymore. iOS won't be hurt by developers leaving. If developers leave over not being found in search results then by definition they're leaving because no one's using the app. Who's going to miss an app that never gets used?
As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for.
I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going to be a happy buyer.
You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user.
For a community all about entrepreneurship and building things for others you'd think we'd figure out by now that we are not the customer (unless you run some business directed directly at tech savvy people but you get my point).
Also, I am astounded at the hubris people display when faced with minor annoyances like this. Don't like the new App Store design? Well then it's fucking broken!
We are all a bunch of nobody's trying to scream louder than all the other nobodies about how smart we are and how we'd do a better job but most of the time its all bullshit. It takes some balls to think you're smarter and can do better than the most valuable company on earth. Every time someone is annoyed by something someone inevitably comes out and says its the wrong way to do it. Well there's an easy way to test if you're right or not. If the App Store stops making money any time between now and, let's be generous, the next time they change the App Store UI then you'll be right. But as long as they're making billions off this thing I feel pretty confident in saying they're doing something right and I sincerely doubt they'd do anything to harm their baby.
Think about it: it you run a company and have a successful product why would you change it? You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do.
I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark.
And one more thing: did you notice it? Someone did. Something changed and then someone complained about it (even going as far as to say its broken). Of course. Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change. Because change is scary and involves learning a new thing and what if you're not good at the new thing and the cycle of anxiety provoking thoughts begins...
"Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change."
I really hope people just stop with this. Every single change to any website makes that website not allowed to be criticized at all because its just us sheep being afraid of change. Fuck giving evidence for problems, talking about design implications or anything like that. Just give the simple line that humans are scared of change, pretend like that is the entire cause and feel good that you were able to imply people aren't smart because they made well reasoned arguments and you had a canned line ready.
How this comment got a single upvote is mindboggling to me.
No, this sort of blindly pro-Apple bull shit is what's wrong with current conversation around Apple. Are we supposed to roll over and shut up because the almighty Gods at Apple decided this was the best way to do? This notion that we should get down on our knees and pray (or otherwise please) the overlords is just wrong-- is it really so crazy to assume that Cook & co. could make a mistake? Yes-- large, publicly traded corporations generally look into many options, accurately predict the outcomes of each, and then make an educated decision that is likely to have the best outcome-- but that doesn't make them infallible. Questioning Apple isn't hubris-- it's human.
Tangential: Why do I as a developer have to assume that users don't want what I want? Is it so wrong to think that a user might want to be able to see and evaluate 5 different apps at a time instead of 1? The past couple of years in tech have been spent wondering how to simplify UI for the sake of the user, to the point where we can't even trust them to have settings-- we need to know what's best for them before they log on to our websites or launch our apps, but is that really valid? It's easy to imagine that in 1983 when Microsoft Word was first announced, people needed total simplicity-- these "personal computer" things (probably a fad) were brand new and only available to the elite-- but this is the twenty first century and we have a whole generation of digital natives who will ask Google for an answer before they get in the shower-- and they're users too.
It's equally fair to say that there is a lot of blindly anti-Apple articles that make the front page here.
"Are we supposed to roll over and shut up because the almighty Gods at Apple decided this was the best way to do?"
No. But by the same token claiming something s broken within hours of it's release and without any measurable data is hyperbolic and at this stage in the game somewhat OTT. Much the same is true with mapping. As another poster has said, don'rt buy their products, or if you are developer, don't develop for the platform. Of course multinationals make mistakes. It's far too early to claim that this is the case.
"...this is the twenty first century and we have a whole generation of digital natives who will ask Google for an answer before they get in the shower-- and they're users too." And I'm willing to bet that they are still not representative of the majority of end users. It's not as if these users aren't catered for either - Android is an excellent mobile OS that is far more friendly to the end user that wants that level of control. No, the biggest issue we have now is the over inflated sense of entitlement that the many on the internet seem to have.
This is just an incredibly weak appeal to authority. Billion dollar companies make major mistakes all the time, in design and in every other area of business. In fact, Apple is a multi-billion dollar company precisely because of design and business oversights made by IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, and other billion dollar companies in the past.
Even if these app store changes are a good tactical decision, in that based on user data, they are likely to increase immediate revenues (which shouldn't go without question simply because OMG it's Apple), it could still be a poor strategic decision if it begins pushing indie developers and the particular brand of innovation that they provide to other platforms. What platforms will the Angry Birds and Instagrams of the future build on first if it costs $250k in marketing get noticed on the App Store? Maybe Apple doesn't give a shit about that and is content to milk its money farm for all its worth, to hell with the long term consequences. That attitude has certainly been fashionable in American business lately, but that doesn't make it a wise approach. No company is immune to future innovation if it rests on its laurels. IBM wasn't. Microsoft wasn't. Apple isn't.
"I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons."
History is filled with stories of huge companies that have failed and no longer exist today. I wouldn't use your language 'total morons', but of course the people running them made poor decisions.
While I agree with your broader sentiment about this post being more change aversion than substantive debate the logic here is circular: if "multi-bazillion" dollar companies always initiate change because they "have the data that tells [them] it's going to make [them] more money" then any decision by a large company is self-evidently correct. This is false; the large company could have overlooked things, made a logical error, or have had an idiot on the web server team pushing changes he didn't realise broke iOS's WiFi capabilities. Your argument should push deeper than an appeal to Apple's authority.
Displaying Picasa HD Lite in front of Web Albums does no good to anybody. And frankly if the developers have to do SEO because the freaking title is more important than rank+description, than the search function is definitely broken.
The example here was searching on the search term "picasa" and the search algorithm returning two applications that have that search term in their name ahead of applications that do not.
It's certainly possible that Web Albums is better than Picasa HD Lite, but c'mon. If you do a search for "photoshop" you will find competitors to Photoshop Express with higher ratings, but Photoshop Express still shows up ahead of them in the search results. Even more shockingly, when you search on the word "twitter," the official Twitter app shows up ahead of Tweetbot, and you won't believe what comes up when you search for "angry birds!"
Maybe this means the App Store is broken, or -- going out on a limb here -- it means that it's prioritizing titles that actually contain your search term over titles that don't. Maybe you think it's just completely insane that titles take priority over keywords and description text, but -- again, maybe this is just my crazy crazy way of looking at the world -- I kind of see the logic there.
If Google Search worked like this, I wouldn't be using it. The title is definitely important, however on Google the title is less important than everything else combined, and that's how it should be.
Also, from your examples all the apps you mention are above 4 stars and have massive downloads. TweetDeck may be better than Twitter, but the official Twitter is not too shabby either.
Also I'm sick and tired about apps with title-SEO. Twitter is a known brand, however if Twitter were to be launched today as an iOS app it would be called "Short-message your friends" or some crap like that.
Google have a heck of a lot more data to go on. It's not just the title of Facebook.com, it's the millions of links to it that contain the word 'Facebook'.
The app store doesn't have that data, so has to rely more on titles to try and how you a specific app if you do a specific search. If I search for 'Facebook' there's a high chance I want the official app, so it should come up high no matter if it's not the highest ranked.
Of course, it's plainly open for abuse. I wonder if they do, or could, take usage stats into account as well as ratings. If everyone is using the official Facebook app despite the fact it's crap, the user is probably trying to find it when they search for it, but it no one is using My Crappy Picassa App then it shouldn't be ranked very highly, even on a search for 'Picassa'. But then you have the bootstrapping problem of new apps being hard to find, even with exact searches. Perhaps some sort of inverse relationship between age and active users would work.
Well actually, they should have more data. The description and reviews should be available to them without an issue. More importantly, they could mine backlinks for more context.
> You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do
This is Apple we're talking about. They pride themselves on completely ignoring what "the market wants" for what they think is the best.
I largely agree with your point, but I have to respond to this:
> I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark.
Many, many large companies do have morons taking shots in the dark, based requirements and data that have little-to-no basis in reality, coupled with broken bureaucracy and individual incentives that are not even remotely aligned with what actually matters to their customers.
MS build their platform on being nice to decelopers. Apple has consistently fucked their developers over and over.
That tactic works as long as we can wipe our asses with 100 dollar bills from their sales. If that doesn't happen, we might as well go where we are wanted.
> You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user.
I want search results that let me find what I'm looking for while minimizing the amount of junk I have to deal with along the way. I didn't realize that wanting search to do a good job at finding things was a sophisticated HN-user desire, out of touch with the common man. I guess that does explain all those times I've heard ordinary people exclaim while searching, "Dang! I found what I wanted too easily. I wish this thing was harder to use effectively!". :-)
I do agree that people here scoff at things because they don't like it personally, I do think multi-bazillion dollar companies can easily be wrong sometimes. Take Buzz, Ping and the Kin for example, all three were winded down.
The icon and name are a first filter. For example, suppose I'm searching for "star chart".
When I see "Horoscope" in the name of a result, I skip it.
When I see the name is "Potty Chart" and the icon consists of a toilet with the seat up and a star hovering over the seat, I skip it.
When I see the name is "iAllowance" and the icon is a piggy bank, I skip it.
When I see the name is "Vinmeen Lite" and the icon shows a constellation, I think "what the heck is a vinmeen" and click. :-) (It turns out it is the Tamil word for "star").
I judge them by screenshots and then icons. It's certainly easier than downloading them all. Ratings on the app store don't tend to be very accurate for my tastes.
If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry.
I believe this redesign is a small step backward, and some sort of step forward. Showing a screenshot is a good idea but users are notoriously lazy and won't venture past even a few results so it creates a feedback loop where only the best performers get rewarded, further fueling that performance.
> If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry.
Possibly. But it does mean he's more qualified to view the App Store from a user's perspective, instead of a developer's. The App Store is designed for users, not for developers, which was his whole point.
OP is thinking he can enter the app store and have his app somehow be better than all the apps that came before it to the point where it'll rise to the top in iOS 6's listings.
My app (KEYBOX) has been on the app store for over a year and in magazines and whatnot and I've ASO'd it to quite an extent where the sales have stabilized but penetrating the first few pages for most searches in various languages still proves challenging.
Users fall into roughly 3 categories...
1. Actively looking for your app (be it by name or function) and will buy right away.
2. Not looking for your app but may buy if they stumble upon it.
3. Not looking for your app and and wouldn't buy even if they stumbled upon it.
We developers don't have to do much to get users from group #1, and #3 is simply not interested. We want to be in front of the eyeballs of members of group #2. Apple's rankings are still a black box but the higher up our apps appear in the listings the more likely they are to be seen and therefore purchased.
The app store is designed to make money above all else and if Apple wants to keep it that way it needs to make sure apps aren't hidden in the catacombs of the app store. This redesign my end up doing just that.
It's a nice thought but there's just one catch. This new interface makes it difficult for new applications to be 'discovered', especially if they're not chosen by Apple to be shown near the top of the stack.
Yes, it will force developers to do better App store SEO, but that's not what we want. We want users to be able to use apps that have better design. To me this new layout makes it harder for users to compare apps, and thus makes it harder for them to find the ones that are the most well-designed.
If, as you say, the users naturally gravitate toward using more well-designed apps, then what's wrong with the current system? If I were you, I would worry that your new app -- even if it's revolutionary, even if it's the prettiest App in the App Store -- would be stuck at the bottom of the list, because Apple chose to dedicate more space to the flashy apps that are already ranked first.
You missed the important part about the broken nature of App Store SEO. It isn't good for buyers or developers to show less results when search results are very poor. The quality of your design will not matter at all if no one sees your icon. You need much better quality results for good usability with 1 result per page.
This is bad for developers and users. Users see less results and will miss out on quality apps. And do you really think it's good to reward app store SEO??
>> "This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO"
How is this a good thing? Would you not rather spend time developing a great app. This just creates an opportunity for people to become more successful through gaming the store.
Trust me, after you've released your app to the store and you see the importance search ranking has (and how difficult it is to acquire the things you need to rank high) you will change your opinion on this.
I'm sorry Bill but I am going to have to respectfully disagree. The App Store is broken and Apple is doing it wrong. The point of search is to find new interesting apps. With over 700,000 apps on the App Store, search is the only way most indie devs get sales. And with the new changes, even the best devs cannot rank high on search.
We do not think we are the center of the universe. However, we are an important park of Apple's ecosystem. We helped build the App Store to where it is today.
As of right now, it feels like Apple is kicking us to the curb, Just read some of the app dev forums around the web. A lot of us lost money over Apple's decisions last summer. And we will continue to lose money.
Please come back and comment when you have released you first app. If spending thousands of marketing dollars on my already popular apps did not decelerate my sales freefall, then most new apps on the App Store have very little chance at succeeding.
A new paid app will never rank high on search. That's the state of things right now. For some reason, Apple's new search algorithm prefers free apps over paid apps and older apps over newer apps.
> They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day.
I am not sure I am parsing this correctly - but I would guess that iOS users care a lot more about indie apps than Android users do. (iPad and iPod touch users even more than iPhone users) Is there any data on this?
As an iOS consumer, the indie developers are indeed the center of the universe for me (or at least the center of the App Store). But then I'm also considering an Xbox 360 for XBLA only :)
>This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. [...] Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results.
Good comment, but I don't agree with this part. This does very little to help "good app developers" or encourage competition.
The app store is very strongly biased towards the first few hits for a given search result. As a small to medium developer, if you're not in the top 5-10, depending on the keyword, you may as well not exist. And that ranking depends first and foremost on your ability to drive downloads to your app, and a distant second on your app quality.
This change will make the bias that much stronger towards the first 1-3 apps. They'll tend to stay there, while other apps will have that much harder a time to move up.
I LOVE that screenshots are more visible. It's great for users, and it's great for quality apps. I have a great app currently ranking in the lower range of top 10 for my targeted keyword, and slowly moving up because - in my opinion at least - it's higher quality than the apps above. Great icon, great screenshots, app looks and behaves great. So you'd think I'd be ecstatic about this change.
Actually, I'm worried this change will stop my app dead in its tracks, and further consolidate the top 1-3 positions. Can you explain to me how that's good for either of users, developers, or competition?
"I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it."
You are like a virgin trying to give advise to prostitutes on the street corner on how to improve their game. You literally have no idea what you are stepping into.
what you don't realize since you are just starting is that Apple just changed the search results to weight time on store and number of downloads more heavily. That means your SEO isn't going to put you in the front right away. this change is going to have the effect of less total apps seen which is going to make it even harder for new apps. I just had an app that got covered by several major blogs, good reviews, and had hundreds of downloads for the first few days. After a month I'm now getting between 0-2 downloads a day, and I'm 8 for the search of my app name.
1) Have a long title with keywords in it: "Super Task: The todo organizer time management for agile"
2) Pick good keywords. Repeat them in your description copy.
3) Get everyone you know to give you a 5-star review when you launch.
That's about it. There's not much more you can do.
Actually this could be bad advice in the new model. You see the App Store search is still at its core just a Lucene index. In which case the weightings are likely to be similar:
As you could see just stuffing keywords will guarantee you appear in lots of different searches but not necessarily ranked highly in any of them. Really depends on the type of app you sell.
When searching for apps, do you guys usually immediately jump through the whole list? This is something I never do.
However, I will look at apps one at a time and decide which one is best. On iOS 5 this meant clicking on each list item one by one, waiting (forever) for the app page to load, and eventually picking one. Allowing me to browse through apps one at a time and see all the information I need without ever leaving the screen seems like it would encourage discovery, not hurt it. I can even download the app right from the search screen AND I don't get thrown out of the App Store when I start the download so I can just download all the apps I want to try at once. This seems like a huge win to me.
I browse the same way. And this new layout is a welcome change for me. Finally I don't have to drill down every app I'm interested in to see screen shots and comments.
Of course! There's no possible way to promote your app other than telling users to search for it in the App Store. If having users stumble upon your app is in your critical path, you have other problems.
The search results have always been less-than-stellar whether you could scroll through 25 results in 1s or 11s.
Why hasn't Google jumped on this? If I search for "todo app" in Google, I get mostly blogs (SEO experts) and one app that apparently was the first to ask for the name Todo.
Shouldn't Google trigger a special view like they do when you search for "CITY_NAME weather" or "MOVIE_TITLE showtimes"?
You mean platform dependent results? If the person is accessing from Web then web apps, from Android then playstore results etc... Sounds nice actually!
While I disagree with the linkbait hyperbole of the article title, Apple have taken a misstep here. What they should have done is allowed the user to flip between a list view of results or a card view when introducing this new view type, rather than just replacing the list.
Re searches I'd expect a simple search for picasa to return apps with picasa in the name before other apps, no matter how popular they are.
The frustration I have with the App Store is that it doesn't
have enough control over subcategories and filtering so it's hard to filter results or browse effectively as the categories offered are so broad.
As an iOS developer I'm not too thrilled about this. However as a mobile developer I'm actually happy to see this. And I'm glad that Apple's review process is pissing off developers. And I'm glad that Apple took an awesome, frequently used app (Google maps) and just removed it. And I'm glad that the new devices' taller screens make developers' lives harder (at least in some cases). Why am I glad? Because all these screw ups provide incentives for developers and other companies to stay in the game and compete with Apple. So as mobile developers I believe it's in our best interests to have a diverse ecosystem that's not dominated by a single company or at the very least where there exist incentives for multiple organizations to compete and innovate.
I saw the new style search directly after I upgraded to iOS 6. I just opened the app store again after reading this post and now I am getting search results in the old list style. I wonder if Apple decided to switch back? Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wl7w37pwuti87en/2012-09-19%2021.08...
If you view the details of at least half of the apps in your search results up to the one you eventually buy, this change means it takes less effort to find the app you want to buy, and you get more information in the process.
If I buy the sixth app in the search results and only care to review two of the earlier ones, the old method was 5 touches before the one I'm buying is in front of my face, while the new method is 5 swipes, and with the new method I get more information about the three I previously rejected based on icon/name alone.
I'm pretty sure my own experience is that the item I am looking for is usually in the top 3 results, and I pretty much always review the top 3 results, so this feels like it will make it significantly easier for me to get to the apps I want to buy.
I'll have to try it out to know, though. One thing I lose here if the 3rd app is the one I want is the confidence that the one I really want isn't somewhere in 4-10. It will take some usage to know if the new design is better for me or not.
Yeah, the premise about user behavior in this post feels wrong. I never browse the app store by searching. I search for a specific thing by name and it's normally a top result.
I've purchased about $1000 worth of applications on the iPhone/iPad in the last 4+ years, about 350 or so in total. 95%+ of the time I chose the very first app in the list. I don't recall the last time I was looking for an App that I didn't know the name of - but perhaps others use the App store differently.
Of course, this is negative for publishers who are trying to leverage the search field with "like names" and, for those publishers who get business from people searching for random apps in a particular category.
But, in general, this is good for people like me - who heard about a great new app by name on a podcast, and just want to try it out - having the extra data around the screenshot is useful.
Pre-iOS6 I would often go through and tap on each search result to look at the screenshots, assuming I didn't already know exactly what I was looking for, so this saves me a couple extra steps there. If I know exactly what I am looking for the search suggestions allow me to go directly to it. The one thing I do not like about the iOS6 App Store is the amount of horizontal scrolling on the iPhone. Not enough space for that to work well.
>"No offense to the makers of “Picasa HD Lite”, which ranks #1 in a search for “picasa,” but Web Albums’ 5-star average from 483 ratings should be ranked higher than a 2.5-star average from 30 ratings."
No, if I search for X I want to get X, not a better rated app in the same category as X. If I search for "photo album" or something to that tune this argument would be valid.
@JumpCrisscross what you missed here is that "Web Albums" is the official google Picasa app for iOS. Picasa HD Lite is a low-rated knockoff optimized for appstore SEO. The author's point stands, the official Picasa app (Web Albums) should rank first.
Thanks Timothee, you're right. Google's name for their Picasa albums product is "Web Albums" and the one the author in OP is talking about was by Pixite (not Google). But still, it has much higher user ratings and should rank higher.
reference: http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
It's not "optimized for App Store SEO". The way the App Store works is that it ranks items by total downloads, as long as you have a certain keyword (in this case, "picasa"). The reason that "bad" app comes up first is because it's a free app, so of course it has way more downloads than a paid app would.
But everyone who submits an app has to choose keywords. When users search, you either match a keyword or you don't, that's it. Sure, you could call it SEO, but that term makes it seem way more complex than it really is.
For a lot of people I think SEO has a shady sound to it... and referring to how people optimize for ranking in the appstore by using brand names or official product names (even when they are not that brand) seem like shady SEO tricks. In this case it was about Picasa Web Albums, with unofficial apps having names like "Picasa Web HD" or "Web Albums" etc., all for ranking but no doubt leading to customer confusion.
the very first assumption of this post is fragile "Although Apple doesn’t make these numbers public, I bet most people search instead of browse through the App Store categories to find the apps they’re looking for"
1. This is really far from certain. actually the reality is that most apps who get massive downloads from the app store got featured or from the top charts when they reach the top 1. I never heard a developer who had massive growth because he was "searched"
2. The App store has been redesigned mostly for visual discovery and not search. Explaining the streams, big stickers, card browsing
If you want to be discovered in massive volume in the app store the only way is to get promoted or top ranked
The other cases are edge cases and frankly do not justify complaining about how such results are displayed.
I'm pretty sure that when it comes to apps linked to a well known brand (e.g. Picasa, Twitter, Flickr) or solve some kind of specific problem (todo, email, finances) do have downloads primarily from search.
Discovery by being promoted or top ranked only works for apps where downloads are impulse-driven, games being the primary example. Searches on the other hand are intent driven, initiated by users that want to get something done. And I don't think developers of such utility apps want massive downloads, they just want to make a profit.
Also your argument about discovery needing top ranking is circular. To get top ranking you first need discovery. This is where iTunes fails its customers - as it focuses on the new and the shinny, creating an environment where apps that build a reputation slowly have no place, which is why most apps in the app store are released in a fire and forget fashion.
Aside from the design issues of layout and information density, for me the new store doesn't work half the time, I click links for reviews and nothing happens, or I click more reviews (because its shown me just one for some reason) and again nothing. Without some clue as to what is clickable (this is basic design stuff) it's hard to know what is supposed to work and what isn't. I'm sure the store will go through some rapid evolution in the next few weeks and there are likely some very stressed devs down in Cupertino right now, but for the moment this just looks like that were nowhere near ready to ship iOS 6. Of my dozen or so friends that upgraded their iPhones about half of them had stalled upgrades and needed to hard reset at least once.
Since the App Store search algorithm update in June, my apps have seen a 60% drop in sales. Before the search changes, two of my apps steadily made me around $40k a year for three years.
The drop in sales concerned me so I paid for external advertising and marketing. It did not help.
One of my apps was featured by Apple twice. Now when you search for it by its exact name, some free spam app shows up above my app.
I am expecting another huge sale decline starting this month thanks to the new iOS6 App Store.
I'm not sure how anyone can see this change as being rational. This change is as bad for customers as it is for developers.
As for me, I had a good run on the App Store. But the world is not ending. It's just time to look into other income streams.
I agree that iOS 6 layout is ridiculous and far from usable.
However, if you are building an app for Picasa, it better have "Picasa" in its name. The results are probably sorted by relevance (whatever that might be) and not only by ratings.
Sounds like Apple's algorithm for the App Store is pretty horrible and primitive. I wonder if most of the success stories came mainly from the fact that Apple was picking them for their feature lists.
I'm not sure how much they had to do with this but they actively have people trying to solve "app store discovery". 95% of Apps I've ever purchased have been due to personal recommendation or web review. I don't think I've ever browsed the app store for purchase. (I know I'm in the minority)
It's unlikely that Apple will fix this any time soon. I can't think of a single time when Apple gave one of their pre-loaded apps an overhaul except when releasing the next major version of iOS.
App Store is basically just a web browser, so easier for them to upgrade. They do make changes over time that don't require software updates. One big one I remember is forcing people to have bought an app to be able to rate it. But you are probably right that a major overhaul in short time isn't their style.
I think you could be right to a point for people that have quality apps that are already ranking, but I think this is going to make fewer total apps seen and therefore make it even harder for new apps to gain traction. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid any app outside the top 5 search results will have sales go to 0.
'With this new layout, people will be less likely to try out apps that aren’t at the top of the results.'
I wish I could try out apps in the App Store, that feature has been missing from day one.
I agree, however, that it remains very difficult to find apps directly in the App Store. I mostly go to the App Store via recommendations from friends and on websites since looking myself for an app, recently for example for a clock and timer app for my iPad (no longer necessary with iOS 6), has almost never been a success.
I know most apps are not expensive but neither online nor offline do I like to spend money for things I don't use, i.e., I need a possibility to check an app or any other product in advance. Reviews could replace such a check but there are not very helpful in the App Store either. In my case – living in a relatively small country – most apps, even popular ones, have no reviews at all …
Just searched for "picasa" on my (iOS 6) iPad. First two hits were apps that actually had picasa in the name, (the ones he mentions) followed by his apps.
What exactly his he whining about?
Search for a competing app and his doesn't come up first?
Does he also complain to google (irony) about his page ranking?
Why is this on the front page, let alone #1?
Okay. I wanted to see the App Store in action; and ... I'm confused. Is there any sort of YouTube video that has the more recent app store? I was watching this review http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO-vcmBjN50 which is allegedly about iOS 6; and ... that App Store doesn't look bad at all. I mean, I prefer up-and-down scrolling over horizontal scrolling when I'm looking for things, but that's nowhere near what was shown in the article. ... Help?
There is, however, an official YouTube application, which was hit number 10 for the search "youtube", after a bunch of shady video downloader apps. If I hadn't known there actually was an official application I would've given up after swiping through the first five.
It is indeed broken. A fun daily ritual for me has been to surf new releases using the 'release date' tab. This is how I find my apps. Some of my favorites have never been on the 'new and noteworthy', 'editor's choice', or 'top...' Charts. I don't give a rat's ass what some crap algorithm or hipster-douchebag-cubicle-jockey-apple-employee considers worthy. Maybe this is a good thing as I spend way too much money in the App Store.
Google doesn't owe you anything, it's their service and we use their search engine for free. They'd scoff at every single lawsuit, if it ever got that far. It might be a bad product decision.
And organizing the app store based on app-store SEO is wise, opens up a new market and forces devs to reconsider their app design.
I wouldn't say that the App Store is broken, but that it is terribly hard to use. For instance, after you've searched for something and paged through you want to view more information so you tap on it. After tapping to go back to the results, you're placed at the beginning of the results. If you want to compare applications that are deep within the results it's going to take quite some time.
I was very excited when I saw early versions of the new app store that eliminated the need to page through search results five apps at a time and replaced it with a scrollable list. Then at the last minute though, it seemed like Apple had a change of heart and added the screenshot-centered design - very disappointing from my perspective as both a user and developer..
I like the new App Store layout. One of the first thing I look for in an app is how intrusive the ads are - and looking at the screenshots shows me exactly that. This new layout is perfect for this app search strategy.
I'm looking at it on an iPad that I just upgraded, and it doesn't look like that. I can see 4 full products, and the top of two more in 2 vertical columns.
the search function in itune or app store is so primitive and inaccurate that you want to bite your own head off. i have tried a while now to figure out the logic behind their search and so far its a dead end. on which planet you search for sudoku and you find hangman 44 k as the result number 24 on the list?
While I think that this is bad on whole for developers/discovery as we knew it, it might just help users. Most of the time, users are either window shopping or looking for a very specific product.
Window Shoppers: "I want a photo editing app", chances are you are going to look at the first result and scroll down and see if a icon stands out. With the new model, you see the screenshots too. Could save time over, tapping into an app, tapping into reviews, and then tapping back twice. This means that the icon is downplayed in sales and the first screenshot has become extremely important.
Very Specific Product: "I'm looking for Gmail" It's quicker to just get the first result and confirm that it's actually what you are looking for. This however means that Apple has to be really confident in their search results (which aren't as great as they can be).
Net effect for developers: 1. App Store SEO is important. (It always was, but now I think developers will start to see it now in their app sales)
2. Your copy on the sales page should also grab users attention.
3. Your first screenshot is very important. Your screenshots should be good. (Link: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mobile-design-tutorials...)
4. Also note, categories have been removed from the app tab bar.
5. Ratings seem to matter a lot for the search algorithm but not for Featured apps
6. This is the "Chomp" update, and Chomp has been known to get content from Blogs and various sources, so you should be mentioned off the App Store too.
7. Facebook Likes also help since those are displayed.
Here's a cheat sheet that seemed useful: http://www.apptamin.com/ASO_Cheat_Sheet-v2.pdf