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- Thread starter OmegaRace
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Where to begin... The entire store is set up badly.
1. Too few categories. Most consumers only look at the first screenful or two of apps in a category, so any new app gets at most a week of exposure. After that, you have to rely on users finding your app using the search mechanism.
2. The search mechanism sucks. I have seen horrible, horrible apps appearing on the first few screenfuls of search results, while newer better apps appear on page 10 or 14.
3. Unlike on Amazon, in the App store there is no way hold anyone accountable for their reviews-- no real-life name is given for instance unlike Amazon's mechanism. This lets other programmers with competing products put bad reviews in with complete anonymity, and obviously they have a self-interest to do so.
4. Unlike on Ebay and Amazon or any other website where items are sold, no response is possible when reviewers outright lie, as when someone says a feature is missing that is in plain sight. Nor can other users vote on reviews or respond to them.
In short, nice people who work hard to create useful apps and play by the rules are bound to get screwed in the App store, whereas ruthless types have many options open to them to prevail unfairly.
In addition I would add that another way in which the App store sucks is that apps for all languages appear in browsing and search results. If I mainly speak English, why would they be showing me apps in Chinese and Korean? Have I told them I speak Chinese? No. It's stupid. There isn't even a way to turn that off.
Is Apple mismanaging their App store? According to some developers: Yes.
Is anyone else managing an app store so well that a developer can typically sell more apps than in Apple's App store? No.
However bad Apple's iTunes App store seems to you, your sales could well be around 5X worse in any other app store (many report over 10X worse). If 1/5th the revenue is worth your time... please go ahead.
What better method would you propose?
Change how you're sorting results?
Would real life names honestly help you identify who a competitor is? I know I honestly give my name on my app, but so many others like to sell under "company" names.
Except the whole "Was this review helpful?" and "Report a review" system.
Which rules did Firemint or the makers or Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja, etc., break, exactly?
You might be onto something there, but I don't see how this can harm your sales in any way.
OK, if I were propose reforms for the Apple clergy, in the hope that groupthink has not completely set in, they would be:
1. At least 5 more categories should be added. Many current ones are too vague and some topics are excluded entirely.
2. Let users hide categories that they do not care about. For instance, I would hide Music, Books, Sports, Games... until I need them. Have an icon that when tapped show the hidden categories.
3.
There should be subcategories for people who are inclined to see them. For instance, suppose I'm a health nut, I would be happy to have subcategories of health separated out:
- exercise,
- nutrition,
- medical
- martial arts.
- finance,
- budgeting,
- project management
4. Let users create custom categories that require two keyword matches e.g. education and medical.
5. There needs to be better policing of whether an app fits in a given category. For instance, a while back I found a travel app miscategorized as a finance app.
6. Let users filter out apps that predominantly use (in the app or in the description) one language or another -- regardless of what the app authors claim is the language used. E.g. I don't want to see Korean apps and if the authors claim it's an English app I still don't want to see it.
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