Johannes is the co-founder of The new Android Market is still arriving. Some things have changed, here’s what’s essential for app developers:
The new Android Market Design
- No more Just In: The Just In tab always gave developers the change to boost their apps visibility for a short time. This is gone now. If you have an important update, publish it now, as long as some people still have the old version of the Android Market.
- Top Grossing, Top New, Trending: Instead, there are some new categories: Top Grossing shows the apps bringing in the most money over the last time. It’s interesting to see the rise of In-App Billing here as some of the apps listed are free. Top New Free amd Top new Paid shows the best performing newest apps. Trending shows the apps that are gaining big download numbers. All these new categories are already available on the web interface for a little while.
- New Featured Categories: The Market now comes with a Staff Choices and an Editor’s Choice category. While the latter is describet as “Here are some of the best apps on Android Market, as chosen by our staff.”, I don’t know what the difference is (yet).
- Promotion Videos: Your promotion videos are now also shown on the device (Got to make some videoss soon).
- Five lines of introduction text: That’s important for the way you structure your Description. You now have five instead of three lines to tell the user what your app is all about.
- Comments: Are now a mixture of old and new comments.
- Two apps in a row: As you can see on the screenshot, the Market now shows two apps instead of one in a row. This gives the user a faster overview over all the apps out there (I like it).
- Changed search algorithm: It seems that the search algorithm has changed again as some of my apps are now ranked quiet different.
I know, there are also books and movies now, but that’s not important for developers, especially when they are not living in the US (like me).
Some of you already knew this, but if you didn’t, I hope it was helpful. Please feel free to leave any comment you want, twitter, plusone or like it.
2011/07/18 at 16:48
Then I’ll better hurry and upload the update this evening. Thanks for the hint ;)
2011/07/18 at 16:59
You’re welcome.
2011/07/19 at 14:13
Thanks for the info, google can’t even communicate on its own forum about the updates and what it means for independent developers. The removal of the just in list pretty much ensures you need an advertising budget for
decent application exposure.
2011/07/19 at 14:21
Yes. I’ll see whether it’s necessary to invest money or if time is enough when publishing our next app. I’ll let you know then.