Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of

00:00:04 ◼   ► note, iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm an independent

00:00:08 ◼   ► iOS and Mac developer based in Virginia. This is show number 180. Today is Friday, April

00:00:13 ◼   ► 11th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:17 ◼   ► All right. So first off, I'm probably worth mentioning how I fared in the WWDC lottery.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it did not go great for me. I was not selected, which makes me a little

00:00:27 ◼   ► bit sad. It makes me a little bit, you know, a little bit down. I think this would have

00:00:32 ◼   ► been my sixth in a row, something like that. I really enjoyed every time I've been out.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'll still be out in San Francisco this year. And I guess I'm still hopeful that there's

00:00:40 ◼   ► a small chance that there'll be a second round on Monday after the initial round of people

00:00:45 ◼   ► get the opportunity to finalize their ticket. You know, some percentage of those people

00:00:48 ◼   ► probably won't. And so there might be a second round. And if that's the case, you know, fingers

00:00:53 ◼   ► cross, maybe it'll work out for me then, or who knows, either way I'll be out in San Francisco,

00:01:00 ◼   ► you know, ticket ticket or otherwise.

00:01:02 ◼   ► So moving on into probably a more positive topic, or at least a more constructive one

00:01:07 ◼   ► other than me just moping about not getting a ticket, I'm going to wrap up my series on

00:01:13 ◼   ► thoughts for improving the App Store.

00:01:15 ◼   ► And this is I think part five of the series.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And I'll probably be doing kind of a big combination post shortly once I get some feedback back

00:01:23 ◼   ► on this last issue.

00:01:24 ◼   ► My goal for this series-- and I've

00:01:26 ◼   ► gotten a lot of good feedback that

00:01:27 ◼   ► tends to sort of jive with this-- is my goal

00:01:29 ◼   ► is to try and have thoughtful, constructive, actionable things

00:01:33 ◼   ► that could be done to the App Store to make it better.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Better for customers, better for developers, just better

00:01:38 ◼   ► in general.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And by and large, I think a lot of the things

00:01:41 ◼   ► that I've hit on-- I mean, most of them are fairly obvious.

00:01:43 ◼   ► It's not like I'm coming up with these incredibly

00:01:45 ◼   ► novel and genius things.

00:01:47 ◼   ► A lot of it's just sort of these obvious things that areas

00:01:50 ◼   ► where the store just hasn't scaled gracefully, hasn't gone from something that was relatively

00:01:57 ◼   ► small five, six years ago to something that it is today where it's millions of applications.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And these are some of these areas where I think it could really be improved.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And today I'm going to be closing that series out by talking about ratings, by talking about

00:02:10 ◼   ► the editorial coverage that we get in the app, and about categories.

00:02:13 ◼   ► All right, so let's get going.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Let's dive into this and start off with talking about ratings.

00:02:18 ◼   ► So ratings I'm talking about are obviously

00:02:20 ◼   ► mostly the star ratings that we see in an application.

00:02:22 ◼   ► And to some degree, the customer reviews--

00:02:25 ◼   ► though honestly, I don't find those quite as important

00:02:27 ◼   ► or relevant in my own experience.

00:02:28 ◼   ► They're useful for me sometimes to read and get

00:02:30 ◼   ► kind of general ideas about my application.

00:02:32 ◼   ► But the thing that really is important,

00:02:34 ◼   ► probably more than in some ways, probably

00:02:36 ◼   ► is the most important aspect of your application sales

00:02:38 ◼   ► experience that's outside of your direct control

00:02:40 ◼   ► as a developer, is how many stars you have in the App Store.

00:02:44 ◼   ► It's shown everywhere in the App Store.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Everywhere you go, you're looking at an application.

00:02:48 ◼   ► It's going to have the number of stars next to it.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And it's just pervasive.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And I think as a result of it being so pervasive,

00:02:54 ◼   ► I think customers probably put a lot of value on that.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And fair enough, because it is one

00:02:59 ◼   ► of the few things that isn't controlled

00:03:01 ◼   ► by Apple or the developer.

00:03:03 ◼   ► It's controlled by customers.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It's a reasonable expectation that that's

00:03:06 ◼   ► an accurate representation of the quality of the application.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And that's great insofar as it's potentially

00:03:13 ◼   ► communicating useful information to our customers.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But where things, of course, get problematic

00:03:17 ◼   ► is how we as developers seek to take control of that experience.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Because it's the only thing that we don't have direct control

00:03:24 ◼   ► over, we seem to dive into that and try and find

00:03:26 ◼   ► ways to improve our star ranking in the hopes of improving

00:03:29 ◼   ► our sales.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And some of these can get potentially dubious and tricky.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And I'm not to bring up the whole sort of tempest

00:03:35 ◼   ► we had a couple of months ago about ratings prompt dialogues.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But there's a lot of things that really aren't great

00:03:40 ◼   ► for customer experiences, really can get kind of dubious

00:03:44 ◼   ► in terms of the experience and the psychology

00:03:46 ◼   ► that we're applying to our customers.

00:03:48 ◼   ► On the flip side, there are also some really solid, positive,

00:03:51 ◼   ► thoughtful things that you can do to accomplish the same goal.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I'll link in the show notes to an article by Dan Council, who

00:03:56 ◼   ► is talking about some really thoughtful ways of prompting

00:03:59 ◼   ► for app reviews.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And I think there is a place for that.

00:04:02 ◼   ► There is a way for us as developers

00:04:04 ◼   ► to seek to improve the ratings of our apps.

00:04:06 ◼   ► But the situation as it is right now isn't great.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And I think there's two things that Apple

00:04:11 ◼   ► could do to really kind of improve the situation.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And then the first one is perhaps most straightforward.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I really think Apple needs to provide a clear policy

00:04:18 ◼   ► about where, how, and when applications

00:04:20 ◼   ► can prompt users for reviews.

00:04:22 ◼   ► It seems like the kind of thing that should be part of the app

00:04:24 ◼   ► review guidelines.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I think right now there's just a general statement about you

00:04:28 ◼   ► can't game them or you can't exploit them

00:04:31 ◼   ► in ways that aren't right.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But it's a very vague general statement.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I think it would make sense for there

00:04:37 ◼   ► to be a specific guideline.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And in many ways, I don't care so much

00:04:40 ◼   ► about exactly what that guideline is.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I think generally I'd like to have it be more customer

00:04:45 ◼   ► centric rather than developer centric.

00:04:46 ◼   ► But generally what I would like is

00:04:48 ◼   ► for it to be a very clear policy.

00:04:50 ◼   ► An app will be rejected from the store

00:04:53 ◼   ► if it is found to ask for reviews in a way that

00:04:56 ◼   ► is inconsistent with this policy.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And I think this is important, mostly because what it does

00:05:02 ◼   ► is it puts all developers on an even footing in this regard.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Your star rating is very important for how users

00:05:09 ◼   ► potentially would compare your apps between their peers.

00:05:12 ◼   ► If I'm looking at three or four apps, and one of them's five stars and one of them's

00:05:15 ◼   ► four stars, if they look very similar, I might go with a five star app.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And the reason that they may have gotten those five stars is because they're doing lots of

00:05:22 ◼   ► kind of tricky things to drum up their reviews.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And that's not a great thing.

00:05:28 ◼   ► You're not reinforcing or rewarding, I think, the right behavior there.

00:05:32 ◼   ► What I'd really prefer to see is where all apps are on the same playing field.

00:05:37 ◼   ► They have to abide by the same rules.

00:05:38 ◼   ► They can only prompt users for reviews

00:05:41 ◼   ► and go after them in the same way.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And then whatever those rules are, at least it's fair.

00:05:48 ◼   ► You don't have this situation where-- I remember

00:05:50 ◼   ► I heard from so many developers when we were having

00:05:52 ◼   ► the prompt dialogue discussion.

00:05:54 ◼   ► They were saying, I really hate doing this,

00:05:56 ◼   ► but everyone's doing it.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And so if everyone's doing it, then I need to too.

00:06:00 ◼   ► It's kind of this collective lack of personal responsibility

00:06:04 ◼   ► in that way.

00:06:04 ◼   ► It's like, well, if Johnny down the street's doing it,

00:06:07 ◼   ► then I can do it too because he's doing it.

00:06:10 ◼   ► That's not a great place for us to find ourselves

00:06:12 ◼   ► as a community and as a store.

00:06:14 ◼   ► If I prefer for there to be a clear policy,

00:06:16 ◼   ► this is what we should do.

00:06:17 ◼   ► You may link to the app store for the purpose

00:06:19 ◼   ► of collecting reviews only from static screens that

00:06:22 ◼   ► aren't modal.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And you may only present this to you-- this must always

00:06:26 ◼   ► be as a result of a user action not something you're doing,

00:06:29 ◼   ► for example.

00:06:29 ◼   ► You can imagine those are clumsy words,

00:06:31 ◼   ► but I'm sure you could refine it down

00:06:33 ◼   ► into something where you're saying

00:06:34 ◼   ► it is possible to ask your user if they'd like a review.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Maybe you aren't allowed to do it in a modal way.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Maybe it has to be as a part of another screen.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Or who knows?

00:06:42 ◼   ► There's lots of things that you can apply there and just

00:06:44 ◼   ► make sure everyone's on the same level.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Secondly, I really kind of wish that the rating scale

00:06:49 ◼   ► wasn't just tied to the most recent version

00:06:51 ◼   ► of your application.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And I know this was added probably a couple years ago now

00:06:56 ◼   ► where in the old system, it was just your overall average.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And that could create these really awkward things where

00:07:00 ◼   ► you have one particular version that

00:07:02 ◼   ► has a really bad crashing bug or something that

00:07:05 ◼   ► got through your quality assurance.

00:07:06 ◼   ► It gets out into the store, gets tons of one star reviews,

00:07:09 ◼   ► and your ratings are always held down as a result.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Like that was always kind of awkward.

00:07:13 ◼   ► You wanted it to kind of reset.

00:07:14 ◼   ► You wanted it to kind of clear itself out over time.

00:07:17 ◼   ► The problem with the current system

00:07:18 ◼   ► of only being based on the current app

00:07:22 ◼   ► is that every time you do an update,

00:07:24 ◼   ► it makes your reviews look terrible.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Because suddenly, rather than being

00:07:29 ◼   ► based on a large subset of your users,

00:07:32 ◼   ► they're only based on a very small set.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Or even worse, when the update first comes out,

00:07:37 ◼   ► before it gets a certain number of reviews,

00:07:39 ◼   ► your app shows up as zero stars, essentially.

00:07:41 ◼   ► It has a blank rating.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And that's even worse.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I'd prefer to have it be some kind of a weighted average

00:07:47 ◼   ► of your last few versions.

00:07:48 ◼   ► I think that would give a good representation

00:07:51 ◼   ► to your customers of what it is.

00:07:53 ◼   ► And it can move over time.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's like it could just be, rather than based on versions,

00:07:57 ◼   ► it's based on time.

00:07:59 ◼   ► So for example, it's based on the last 30 days

00:08:02 ◼   ► worth of reviews.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And so if you have a bad crashing bug

00:08:05 ◼   ► and it has all these problems, fair enough.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Your ratings are going to take a bit of a dive

00:08:12 ◼   ► for that little period.

00:08:13 ◼   ► But over time, they'll work their way back up

00:08:16 ◼   ► if you've improved the app, if you're getting better.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I think that would be much more representative to our customers.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And I think that would be better optimized for the right things

00:08:23 ◼   ► for doing as a developer.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Because the thing that I don't like

00:08:25 ◼   ► is that it discourages me to do updates.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And it encourages me to annoy my users with review prompts.

00:08:31 ◼   ► because every time I do an update, my reviews reset.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And so I have to work on getting them back up.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And unfortunately, one of the ways

00:08:38 ◼   ► that I can get them back up is by spaying my user with prompts

00:08:42 ◼   ► to do that.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And neither of those are encouraging the right behavior.

00:08:44 ◼   ► So I think we could do better.

00:08:46 ◼   ► All right, next, I was going to talk

00:08:47 ◼   ► a little bit about the editorial parts of the App Store.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And when I say editorial, I'm talking about really

00:08:52 ◼   ► the feature pages.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I'm being a bit highfalutin and calling it editorial.

00:08:55 ◼   ► But it's the parts of the App Store

00:08:57 ◼   ► that aren't algorithmically generated.

00:08:59 ◼   ► the parts of the store that are curated by people at Apple who

00:09:04 ◼   ► are looking at applications and saying, this is a great app.

00:09:06 ◼   ► This is a great app.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I want this to be front and center.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And it's a very important part of your--

00:09:11 ◼   ► I think as a developer, it's a very important part

00:09:13 ◼   ► of the store.

00:09:14 ◼   ► It isn't as important as I think it used to be.

00:09:16 ◼   ► There used to be, if you got featured, it was a huge deal.

00:09:19 ◼   ► You got 100 times the downloads that you would otherwise.

00:09:22 ◼   ► It doesn't seem to have been quite the same thing

00:09:24 ◼   ► in recent years for me.

00:09:26 ◼   ► Generally speaking, featured is still being awesome.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And the best part of being featured

00:09:31 ◼   ► is that it incentivizes quality, thoughtful, and relevant app

00:09:35 ◼   ► creation.

00:09:35 ◼   ► It incentivizes the things that I

00:09:37 ◼   ► think Apple would want developers to be focused on.

00:09:40 ◼   ► Because you're not rewarding somebody

00:09:42 ◼   ► for being able to zoom up the charts.

00:09:45 ◼   ► You're rewarding quality in its truest sense.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And so I like that.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I like that there's editorial coverage.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I like that it is part of the store, and it's very prominent,

00:09:54 ◼   ► and it's the first page you go to when you first

00:09:56 ◼   ► launch the app store.

00:09:57 ◼   ► So awesome.

00:09:58 ◼   ► But I think it could do better.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And the first thing I think it could do better in

00:10:02 ◼   ► is I really think they need to expand

00:10:04 ◼   ► the scope and the frequency of editorial coverage

00:10:07 ◼   ► in the store.

00:10:08 ◼   ► It seems very odd that features are only updated once a week.

00:10:12 ◼   ► They're usually updated Thursday afternoons.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And it seems strange when apps are being constantly updated,

00:10:17 ◼   ► apps are constantly being released.

00:10:19 ◼   ► There's this stagnation that I think

00:10:21 ◼   ► that comes along with that, where

00:10:23 ◼   ► they're only refreshing that list once a week.

00:10:26 ◼   ► customers are really only going to look at it once a week.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And that kind of disincentivizes an engagement

00:10:30 ◼   ► into the app store.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Whereas if there's a constantly kind of rotating, like, hey,

00:10:34 ◼   ► what's new, what's new, what's new,

00:10:36 ◼   ► you can create that type of a behavior in somebody

00:10:39 ◼   ► where maybe once a day they're going and looking

00:10:41 ◼   ► for apps, which me as an app developer would love.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And I think the Apple itself would do well there,

00:10:48 ◼   ► because in the current system, that page is really

00:10:51 ◼   ► only useful to a user once a week.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And that seems strange.

00:10:56 ◼   ► And also, it seems like the scope of that

00:10:58 ◼   ► could be expanded.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I would love to see more done there,

00:11:01 ◼   ► beyond just one little tab in the App Store.

00:11:03 ◼   ► You could imagine all kinds of things.

00:11:05 ◼   ► You could have, you know, [INAUDIBLE]

00:11:06 ◼   ► picks and hire little columnists, essentially,

00:11:10 ◼   ► to be writing things about applications,

00:11:12 ◼   ► have mini reviews inside the App Store.

00:11:14 ◼   ► There's a lot of things you could imagine that would really,

00:11:18 ◼   ► I think, round that experience out.

00:11:19 ◼   ► And we give it a lot more character and a lot more

00:11:22 ◼   ► authority to customers.

00:11:23 ◼   ► And so I really wish they'd updated more frequently

00:11:26 ◼   ► and expand that out.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And exactly what that looked like

00:11:28 ◼   ► would be dependent on what they felt comfortable with.

00:11:30 ◼   ► But I really think it could use a lot of work.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And secondly, I think it would be great

00:11:35 ◼   ► if the App Store made your featured status

00:11:39 ◼   ► visible after your initial feature.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And so this is something where I don't

00:11:43 ◼   ► know exactly the number is.

00:11:44 ◼   ► And I'm not sure anyone actually does.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Or I'm sure there's some analytics company

00:11:48 ◼   ► that could work it out.

00:11:49 ◼   ► But the number of apps that have ever

00:11:51 ◼   ► featured in the App Store is a fairly small subset

00:11:55 ◼   ► of the store at large.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Of the million apps in the App Store,

00:11:58 ◼   ► there are probably only a few thousand, maybe 10,000.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Apps that have ever been featured.

00:12:03 ◼   ► And it seems like that is an important thing

00:12:06 ◼   ► to communicate to customers, that Apple has said,

00:12:10 ◼   ► of the million apps in the store, here's a handful.

00:12:12 ◼   ► Here's a tiny subset of those that we've looked at

00:12:16 ◼   ► and we've said are awesome.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Well, you should tell your customers that rather than just

00:12:20 ◼   ► that one week, one shot banner in the store,

00:12:24 ◼   ► why don't we show that all the time?

00:12:25 ◼   ► If you go to the App Store profile page for that app,

00:12:28 ◼   ► maybe it should say featured on, or have a little badge that

00:12:32 ◼   ► says-- a little thumbs up, like, yeah, Apple

00:12:33 ◼   ► thinks this app is cool.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Because you've said that.

00:12:36 ◼   ► You've said that at some point.

00:12:37 ◼   ► You've had someone take the time to look at it.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Why not communicate that to your customers?

00:12:42 ◼   ► Because I think it would encourage

00:12:45 ◼   ► this right kind of behavior, where

00:12:47 ◼   ► If you make building a feature-worthy app be worthwhile, differentiated perpetually

00:12:53 ◼   ► in the store, or at least for a long period of time, maybe times out after a year or something,

00:12:58 ◼   ► but I think you could really help developers who are focused on quality to have more notoriety

00:13:05 ◼   ► and to be more noticed in the store.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And along those same lines, I think you could do a lot of things in terms of also just showing

00:13:11 ◼   ► up your features, the feature works that Apple is doing inside things like search results.

00:13:16 ◼   ► I wish when you searched for accounting,

00:13:19 ◼   ► it showed you a list of the managing your money featured

00:13:23 ◼   ► sets that Apple puts together.

00:13:24 ◼   ► They love putting together these collections of apps

00:13:26 ◼   ► where they have, here's the best apps for managing your money.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Here's the best apps for checking the ski conditions.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Here's the best apps for platforming games.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So if I'm searching for ski conditions, show me that list.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Don't just have it disappear into the ether

00:13:42 ◼   ► once you've spent all that time and energy to put it together.

00:13:45 ◼   ► show the users on that going forward.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I think you could do a lot to just encourage quality app--

00:13:50 ◼   ► by emphasizing quality in the way that you do features.

00:13:54 ◼   ► And lastly, this is a quick one.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I really think that Apple needs to expand

00:13:58 ◼   ► the diversity of categories that you can attach to an app.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I think it's weird that only games get subcategories.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And everyone else, there's 24 categories in the App Store

00:14:07 ◼   ► trying to categorize a million things.

00:14:08 ◼   ► That just seems like it doesn't scale.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And so I wish you could subcategorize

00:14:12 ◼   ► into further and further things.

00:14:14 ◼   ► And that would, I think, help a lot for a lot of discoverability

00:14:17 ◼   ► for more niche apps.

00:14:18 ◼   ► If I'm looking for VNC clients, and there's

00:14:20 ◼   ► a category of VNC clients, and I'm the number one ranking

00:14:24 ◼   ► app in the VNC client, that's suddenly useful in a way

00:14:27 ◼   ► that being the number 26 app in productivity or Office

00:14:32 ◼   ► or whatever it is, like business tools,

00:14:34 ◼   ► that's not as relevant to a user.

00:14:36 ◼   ► And so I wish there was more categories

00:14:38 ◼   ► that we could apply.

00:14:39 ◼   ► And that's kind of it for the series.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Hopefully that was useful.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Like I said, I'm going to put together a kind of a synthesis post at the end.

00:14:45 ◼   ► But I think these are some things that we could as developers encourage Apple to do

00:14:50 ◼   ► that would make the store a lot better.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Thank you as always if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm on

00:14:54 ◼   ► Twitter @_davidsmith, david@developingperspective.com.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Otherwise, I hope you have a great week.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Happy coding.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Bye.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Otherwise, I hope you have a great week, happy coding, bye.