Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

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

00:00:09 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in her new Virginia. This is show number 177. And

00:00:14 ◼   ► today is Thursday, March 13th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes.

00:00:18 ◼   ► So let's get started. All right, so I'm going to be continuing on my in my series about

00:00:25 ◼   ► how towards a better app store things and thoughts and ideas that I have about things

00:00:28 ◼   ► that could actually practically make the App Store a better place.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And I want to first off say thank you to all the people who've been giving me feedback

00:00:34 ◼   ► on this.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I've been getting a lot of great emails and responses to that.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And so I really appreciate kind of those thoughts.

00:00:40 ◼   ► It's helpful for me to hear either things that I agree with, things that I disagree

00:00:46 ◼   ► with, whatever it is, just things that help me to kind of formulate these thoughts I've

00:00:50 ◼   ► been developing over the last little while.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And so if you have other thoughts, either responses to things I've said or things that

00:00:55 ◼   ► you've always thought, if you had this great idea that you could apply to the App Store

00:00:58 ◼   ► that would actually make it better. This is a great time to reach out to me and I really

00:01:01 ◼   ► appreciate that. Another side note is that next week I will be at NS Conference in Leicester

00:01:08 ◼   ► in England. If you are a listener to Developing Perspective and will be there and hear this

00:01:12 ◼   ► before then, please come out and make sure you let me know. I'd love to meet you. I always

00:01:16 ◼   ► love to hear from people who enjoy the show. It's always kind of fun to hear, you know,

00:01:20 ◼   ► how you've, the most interesting to me usually is where you picked it up, how you found out

00:01:24 ◼   ► about the show and kind of what you think about it. So if you listen to the show and

00:01:27 ◼   ► and will be at NS Conference this next week.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Make sure you say hi.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I'd really appreciate it.

00:01:32 ◼   ► All right.

00:01:32 ◼   ► So otherwise, I'm going to dive into the topic of today's show,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and that is going to be search.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And search is a pretty important thing,

00:01:39 ◼   ► because if you consider the fact,

00:01:41 ◼   ► like I was building on last week's show

00:01:43 ◼   ► where I was talking about how there's just so many, so many,

00:01:46 ◼   ► so many apps in the App Store, if it wasn't for search,

00:01:51 ◼   ► the vast majority of them would be completely irrelevant,

00:01:53 ◼   ► because they'd only be available unless they

00:01:55 ◼   ► were-- if they were featured or if they were ringing incredibly

00:01:57 ◼   ► highly, which is a pretty small subset of the store.

00:02:00 ◼   ► So search is the important thing that allows you to find

00:02:04 ◼   ► an application that isn't one of those two things, isn't

00:02:06 ◼   ► being currently featured, or isn't currently

00:02:09 ◼   ► ranking very highly.

00:02:10 ◼   ► So isn't doing high volume or doing high grossing.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And so that probably is, by definition, most apps.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And so the way that you implement search is vitally

00:02:20 ◼   ► important for helping customers find the specific

00:02:23 ◼   ► app that they're looking for.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And at the same time, search is also really one of the most

00:02:32 ◼   ► gameable, in some ways, attribute of the App Store,

00:02:35 ◼   ► which is a little bit tragic.

00:02:36 ◼   ► In some ways, you could argue maybe that Grossing or the

00:02:39 ◼   ► Chopped Charts are a bit manipulative and sensitive.

00:02:42 ◼   ► But the reality of that is it takes a lot of work to

00:02:44 ◼   ► maintain kind of scamming or working on the App Store

00:02:47 ◼   ► rankings, because you're having to actually have

00:02:49 ◼   ► downloads to sort of put to that.

00:02:51 ◼   ► But search is a bit more subtle, because it's the

00:02:54 ◼   ► algorithm that's determining the ranks in searches is something that's probably a bit

00:02:58 ◼   ► slower moving and is a bit easier to kind of predict or work with. And as a result,

00:03:04 ◼   ► search is something that I think has honestly been very, you know, has been attacked by

00:03:07 ◼   ► developers good and bad for years. I mean, back in the old days, you even used to be

00:03:12 ◼   ► able to, you know, completely keyword spam your app or description and it would improve

00:03:16 ◼   ► your search ranking. And the reality is, the reason people do that is because search is

00:03:21 ◼   ► so important. There's, you know, for any number of ways, I would say my gut says, you know,

00:03:26 ◼   ► at least a third of app downloads are coming from searches, not just top charts and featured.

00:03:31 ◼   ► And that's just a gut, but I know in my own experience that's often the case because search

00:03:35 ◼   ► is where you go when you know what you're looking for. Search is where you go when you

00:03:39 ◼   ► have something in particular in mind. The top charts and the featured lists are things

00:03:44 ◼   ► that you browse, whereas search is somewhere you go to actively find something. It's you've

00:03:49 ◼   ► You've heard a name of an app.

00:03:50 ◼   ► You've heard about an app called Podometer++, say.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And you go and say, well, let's go find that app.

00:03:57 ◼   ► The unfortunate thing right now is if you go into the App Store

00:03:59 ◼   ► and search Podometer++ in the store,

00:04:02 ◼   ► the fourth record is the app you're looking for.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Or sorry, not the fourth.

00:04:05 ◼   ► The 14th record is the app you're looking for.

00:04:08 ◼   ► The 13 before that are not the app you're looking for.

00:04:10 ◼   ► There are a variety of podometers, many of which

00:04:12 ◼   ► are great apps.

00:04:13 ◼   ► But unfortunately, it's not exactly the one

00:04:16 ◼   ► that you're looking for.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And so that's where search can get kind of complicated.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Because search is one of the few things

00:04:20 ◼   ► that the user actually has something in mind

00:04:22 ◼   ► that they're trying to drive towards.

00:04:25 ◼   ► So what can we do about that?

00:04:28 ◼   ► How can we make search better?

00:04:30 ◼   ► And there's various recommendations

00:04:32 ◼   ► that I have that fall into a variety of categories.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But the first one is that the interface that the App Store

00:04:38 ◼   ► has-- and this came in iOS 7-- is kind of terrible.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And I'm talking about the cards, where

00:04:43 ◼   ► So you have these massive, giant screenshot-oriented search

00:04:49 ◼   ► results, where it shows one app at a time.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And I understand kind of what they're doing there.

00:04:53 ◼   ► They're making sure that the screenshots

00:04:55 ◼   ► are shown full and bright and obvious to the user.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But at the same time, it makes it

00:05:01 ◼   ► very hard if your app isn't the first search

00:05:04 ◼   ► result for something, or the first one or two search results,

00:05:07 ◼   ► to actually ever be seen.

00:05:08 ◼   ► In the old system, when you'd search,

00:05:10 ◼   ► you'd get a list of apps with the icons on the left

00:05:12 ◼   ► the names on the right, and maybe the rating I think was shown. What that does is that

00:05:16 ◼   ► gives you the ability to much more quickly kind of browse through a variety of choices

00:05:21 ◼   ► rather than just having to go one by one. It's kind of like a slideshow. And so I think

00:05:26 ◼   ► I have a lot, but I would perp, as maybe the broad start off on saying is, I think it'd

00:05:31 ◼   ► be great if Apple really, really loves that card's approach and is completely wedded to

00:05:35 ◼   ► it, is to also have the option that you could toggle a button on the top or something to

00:05:39 ◼   ► to have list view or grid view, essentially.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Like you often see on a lot of websites.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Or you could still have that list view available,

00:05:45 ◼   ► if that's what the customer wanted,

00:05:47 ◼   ► because they're trying to find something very specific.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Next, it's kind of-- the next recommendation

00:05:52 ◼   ► is a little bit squishier, but I think

00:05:54 ◼   ► it's still pretty practical.

00:05:55 ◼   ► In that, one of the biggest problems

00:05:58 ◼   ► I think I have with search now is

00:05:59 ◼   ► that it's very odd to try and determine

00:06:03 ◼   ► what is defining the relevance or the ranking of the search

00:06:06 ◼   ► results.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And often, the results you get back

00:06:09 ◼   ► aren't things that are necessarily

00:06:12 ◼   ► the best apps for the customer.

00:06:13 ◼   ► They're the apps that are often things

00:06:15 ◼   ► like, for example, the oldest app-- that meets that criteria--

00:06:18 ◼   ► the app with the most downloads, which in some ways

00:06:21 ◼   ► is a good thing.

00:06:22 ◼   ► But there doesn't seem to be a lot of, I guess you could call

00:06:24 ◼   ► it, punishment or reward for things that are objective,

00:06:30 ◼   ► would objectively make an app better.

00:06:31 ◼   ► It's pretty tricky.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And while I'd love to see some types of manual curation, which

00:06:35 ◼   ► is sort of the next thing that I'll talk about,

00:06:38 ◼   ► One thing that I'd like to see is even just

00:06:40 ◼   ► for just the objective things, the things that are very clear

00:06:43 ◼   ► and obvious.

00:06:44 ◼   ► For example, if an app was last updated two years ago,

00:06:48 ◼   ► that should probably not be the first search result.

00:06:50 ◼   ► If there is an app that meets that search criteria,

00:06:52 ◼   ► that was updated six months ago or six weeks ago.

00:06:55 ◼   ► There are objective measures that we can look for that.

00:06:58 ◼   ► There's things that you could base on, not just downloads,

00:07:01 ◼   ► but returns, number of crashes even.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I was realizing recently that iOS and iTunes Connect

00:07:08 ◼   ► has access to all the crash logs.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And so they can probably see which apps crash the most.

00:07:12 ◼   ► There's a lot of these objective things

00:07:14 ◼   ► that you could measure and weight

00:07:15 ◼   ► and that I think would be far better in terms

00:07:17 ◼   ► of improving the relevance of that ranking

00:07:20 ◼   ► to try and find what's the best app for this particular search

00:07:24 ◼   ► criteria.

00:07:25 ◼   ► And then piggybacking on that-- and this

00:07:27 ◼   ► is what I mentioned a moment ago--

00:07:28 ◼   ► is I'd love to see a bit more actual curation about this.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And curation is a bit complicated.

00:07:33 ◼   ► But my suspicion is that there's a very steep drop-off in terms of the number of search

00:07:40 ◼   ► terms that are used a lot, and there are a number of search terms that are used very

00:07:44 ◼   ► infrequently. The number of people who are searching, even for argument's sake, who

00:07:50 ◼   ► are searching for Facebook is probably much, much higher than people who are searching

00:07:55 ◼   ► for, I don't even know, apps to map tunnels. I don't even know where that came from. But

00:08:02 ◼   ► But you know what I mean.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Like I'm trying to understand that I'm sure there are probably maybe a dozen, two dozen,

00:08:09 ◼   ► five dozen, whatever it is, maybe less, probably maybe a hundred.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Let's call it a hundred.

00:08:13 ◼   ► There's probably, if you took the top 100 search terms that people look for in the App

00:08:16 ◼   ► Store and you look at them, the search results for those terms seems like they should have

00:08:22 ◼   ► some amount of curation applied to it.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And the canonical example for that is to do something like if you search for Twitter right

00:08:29 ◼   ► now, or even maybe take it a little stronger, you search for Twitter client. Right now,

00:08:34 ◼   ► you don't get the things that you would sort of expect to get back for that. You'll get

00:08:37 ◼   ► all kinds of junk and other stuff around that. And that has to do with a lot of like Tweetbot

00:08:41 ◼   ► and Tweet and Twitterrific, for example, two great Twitter clients, which have done non-paid

00:08:47 ◼   ► updates. And so they kind of have new had to restart all of their search mojo, which

00:08:51 ◼   ► is a whole other thing. But it doesn't really make sense. And maybe that goes back to the

00:08:55 ◼   ► previous point about relevance. But it's one of those areas where like there should be

00:08:59 ◼   ► be a little bit of manual curation.

00:09:01 ◼   ► At least for those very popular search terms,

00:09:03 ◼   ► someone should go through and make sure

00:09:05 ◼   ► that the search results you're getting back make sense.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And if they're not, either adjust your algorithm

00:09:10 ◼   ► so that that's not happening in terms

00:09:12 ◼   ► of it doesn't have to be directly curated

00:09:13 ◼   ► like a featured list.

00:09:14 ◼   ► But I would hope that there's a lot of iteration happening

00:09:17 ◼   ► on there, especially monitoring the most popular terms to try

00:09:21 ◼   ► and make sure that they're good.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And the last thing I wanted to talk about

00:09:25 ◼   ► is a kind of a more general point about search

00:09:27 ◼   ► as it is now just doesn't scale.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And I'm reminded and thinking a little bit about something

00:09:34 ◼   ► like Amazon.com.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And in the last week, I was complaining about how big

00:09:37 ◼   ► the App Store is, how it had millions and millions of items

00:09:40 ◼   ► and how that is causing such trouble for the App Store

00:09:43 ◼   ► for developers and for customers.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And I think of a store like Amazon.com,

00:09:47 ◼   ► which has many million items in its store.

00:09:51 ◼   ► It is a massive marketplace.

00:09:53 ◼   ► You can buy anything you could possibly imagine, but I don't find searching it to be nearly

00:09:58 ◼   ► as complicated.

00:09:59 ◼   ► As an example, this morning I needed to buy a new toaster.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And I know toasters and podcasts, what are you going to do?

00:10:07 ◼   ► But I was going to go buy a toaster and I just wanted to buy a fairly inexpensive slot

00:10:12 ◼   ► toaster that was stainless steel to match the type of appliances I have in my kitchen

00:10:19 ◼   ► and that had four slots.

00:10:21 ◼   ► That was what I wanted.

00:10:22 ◼   ► the toaster I had in mind. And even though I'm starting from a desire to search through,

00:10:27 ◼   ► you know, whatever it is, many million items, it didn't take long to find the toaster I

00:10:30 ◼   ► wanted because you have things called filters. And this is the last thing that I want to

00:10:35 ◼   ► kind of talk about is that I think the App Store is old enough and big enough and mature

00:10:39 ◼   ► enough now that it really does need kind of a little bit of more power search capability,

00:10:44 ◼   ► the ability to add filters onto things, the ability to build more complicated search queries,

00:10:49 ◼   ► that's the experience that I think you people are used to on websites where in this case

00:10:53 ◼   ► with my toaster I type in toaster and then I go to the side and I get a whole bunch of

00:10:57 ◼   ► results who knows even it was probably 10,000 results for toaster then I click I want slot

00:11:01 ◼   ► toasters I want sold by it be a prime eligible I want four slots and I want stainless steel

00:11:09 ◼   ► and then I sort by price look at the top two or three find the one I want and buy it and

00:11:14 ◼   ► And that was a very straightforward operation to search through, you know, thousands of

00:11:18 ◼   ► toasters.

00:11:19 ◼   ► But it's straightforward because I knew what I wanted.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And so giving the users the capability to do those types of filters, to do those kinds

00:11:26 ◼   ► of search is, I think, would be a massive improvement on the state of the App Store.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And it's a little bit tricky, though, and I'll give them that.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Because to do that, you require excellent metadata.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But honestly, that doesn't really bother me too much either, because just demanded from

00:11:40 ◼   ► developers.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Think of criteria that are useful.

00:11:44 ◼   ► of criteria that you could apply to an application, many of them you could just derive directly

00:11:47 ◼   ► from the application. You know, it has been updated in so long, it supports this device,

00:11:52 ◼   ► is useful for front and back camera or whatever it is. Like there's, whenever those criteria

00:11:57 ◼   ► that you could kind of imagine, I mean even the number of years the developer has been

00:12:03 ◼   ► around, average star rating, I mean you could imagine a lot of criteria that you could kind

00:12:07 ◼   ► of apply to it that would help the user to narrow in on what they want. And some of that

00:12:12 ◼   ► metadata you ask users for, some of it you just derive, but either way having those kinds

00:12:16 ◼   ► of things would be really cool. And doing that kind of a thing also gets you to the

00:12:20 ◼   ► last thing I was going to talk about, which is a better or multiple forms of sorting.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Well, like I said before, the current relevance-based sorting that they apply across the board works

00:12:31 ◼   ► all right if you get the algorithm right. But what if for me as a customer I'm looking

00:12:35 ◼   ► for something that's different, I'm searching with a different criteria in mind. Maybe I

00:12:39 ◼   ► Maybe I only want to see free apps.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Maybe I want to see only paid apps, honestly.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Maybe I want to sort from highest price to lowest price.

00:12:46 ◼   ► You hear all the time about people who are, for example, doing things like they're business

00:12:50 ◼   ► customers and they're looking for something that doesn't have in-app purchase.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Maybe that's something that an educational customer doesn't want.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And so being able to say that and say, you know, "Doesn't offer in-app purchase," or "Sort

00:12:59 ◼   ► by number of in-app purchases," or whatever.

00:13:02 ◼   ► There's all of these things that you could apply to your search that I think would make

00:13:05 ◼   ► the App Store experience so much better.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So that's it for today.

00:13:09 ◼   ► is kind of what I'm talking about about search. I think it's an area that they could do some

00:13:13 ◼   ► of the biggest impact. And it would be, in some ways, the smallest amount of work or

00:13:17 ◼   ► the smallest changes from the existing policies and the existing rules and just make search

00:13:22 ◼   ► better. And I know that's easy to say, but a little bit hard to do. But hopefully some

00:13:26 ◼   ► of those things that I just listed out would be practical examples of ways that they could

00:13:29 ◼   ► do that.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And that's it for today's show. The schedule for the next week might be a little bit off

00:13:34 ◼   ► just because, like I said, I'll be traveling to NS Conference in England. And so I'm not

00:13:38 ◼   ► exactly sure when I'll be back at the microphone again.

00:13:41 ◼   ► But like I said, if you're going to be there, please, please

00:13:44 ◼   ► let me know.

00:13:44 ◼   ► I'd love to meet you.

00:13:45 ◼   ► It'd be awesome.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you have a great week.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Happy coding, and safe travels if you're coming to Enniskov.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Bye.