App Stores and Monetization
Carolina Milanesi (via David Barnard):
It became quite clear early on that while searching for an app might not be that different than searching for a song, recommending an app was undoubtedly not the same. Suggesting a song based on genre or an artist did not translate into suggesting an app based on its type or a developer. I always remember getting suggestions to download subway maps in several different cities after downloading the London Tube app. Shame was, I did live in London, not in Moscow nor Paris and I was not even planning to visit those cities any time soon. It just does not work like that.
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Interestingly, when it comes to paid apps, the leading drivers remain the same for both groups but only after the price of the app itself. I find this point interesting because it would suggest that smartphone users are not assessing the return of investment they would get from an app but they might, instead, be putting a limit to how much they are prepared to spend before they look beyond the price in what the app has to offer. In other words, great reviews, feature list, screenshots, and app description do not matter if the price is already beyond what the user perceives to be the right price for the app.
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iOS panelists also seemed to keep developers at a higher standard asking that paid apps would be regularly updated through some additional payments but without having to require a subscription.
It’s interesting that, despite the App Store’s poor reputation for search, the Android panelists did not seem much happier with searching their store.
Previously: App Store Revenue Nearly Double That of Google Play.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
Search in the App Store seems to be the part of the general problem: Apple just sucks at search.
Apple Maps search is bad, Apple support site and knowledge base search is bad, iTunes library search is bad, Spotlight search is bad and so on,
I can't think of anything that Apple does with search is not bad, and because of that App Store's poor reputation for search is expected.
The ONLY way I have ever even tried to use the App store is to Google for the kind of app I want, and then once I have found a well recommended app using the web, to search the store for that specific app name. And even in that use case, the app store's search function often leaves much to be desired.
