For a while now, especially small developers face hard times in the App Store and the chance is high, that you are affected yourself.
One of the main reasons are changes Apple made in the App Store and it’s search after acquiring a company called Chomp last year. Since then it has become much harder for users to find our apps, especially for paid ones. Other recent changes even disadvantage regular updates as our hard earned reviews vanish from the visibility of potential costumers.
WE CAN ASK APPLE TO FIX THIS!!! and – according to our contacts there have a very good chance to be heard. Over the last weeks we have carefully researched the biggest problems of the App Store for independent developers and are now launching
To achieve this, YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! Only if enough of us file a similar bug report, we will get a priority within the responsible teams at Apple to resolve the issues stated.
If you agree to the content of the page created, PLEASE PARTICIPATE and spread the word. Chances are high that you will help us all to get the originally brilliant App Store economy back on track and the perspective to make our living creating great apps.
Thank you very much for your consideration, please feel free to contact me with any questions.
I agree it’s a good initiative, I’m just not sure the proposals make much sense considering they are listed as solutions:
It doesn’t really favour free apps exactly, but it does weigh whatever is more popular as a top search hit. The SEO is based on a number of factors. It used to be bad such as including what iAP names the app had. I believe this is being worked on over time. More people download free apps, it is what they want. Apple are rumoured to factor in how long people are using the app for now.
And how do you expect them to do that? manually? because you are already placed in what’s new and you get a sticky boost at the start. If by then nobody wants it you have to figure out why.
But with 1,042 apps (correct as of post date, source 148apps.biz) being submitted per day and at least half that approved, I’m really not quite sure how you expect apps to return reliably WITHOUT some form of weighting? the amount of apps using the same search terms are incredible. So again, what is the solution?
You can do that, just tap to show old versions. International is a nice touch and I would like that, yes.
But those manipulative practises are exactly what consumers ask for. Millions do ask for that. It’s like alcohol: you can ban it but it doesn’t get you anywhere long term. FYI Apple have begun eradicating manipulative practises from apps targeted at children.
Now I’m not beating on you, but the solutions aren’t actual solutions but requests for solutions, with no valid solutions proposed. You need to in detail propose some form of solution, if only on your website for other developers. A strong solution can be considered but simply “asking for a fix” is very difficult when you don’t have the data to back up your arguments. A lot of what you propose is the wrong solution once face with data (example millions of apps with the same SEO).
Other issues like Bot farming often help free apps though. While apple do combat it, they don’t do it anywhere near as much as they should. So there is that separate issue you haven’t addressed yet among others.
Although I come across like an Apple fanboy, I’m not. I’ve actually moved on from that market and now am focussing on consoles/desktop. For this reason I will not be supporting this particular initiative but hope that in future a new initiative with far clearer proposals will be drawn up. A lot of the issues and solutions do show some lack of understanding of the actual problems.
All I have to say to this I am pleased that Apple is targeting manipulative apps that try get you it insert a quarter to continue play and all of your complaints is really about lack of visibility for any length of time for new apps that aren’t by well know entities.
I’ve said it before but Apple could make a ‘Sundance’ Indy section with all the criteria of the ‘mainstream’ except the apps would all be from companies with 100,000 or less in app downloads. Of course, then you’d get these SEO spammers and even big companies creating shell companies just to release ‘Indy’ apps like the real Sundance. Or maybe not, I doubt gaming is a big enough revenue stream in apps for Disney such to bother with that. The SEO spammers, well that’s another thing entirely.
Don’t depend on Apple marketing for you. Unless you make a truly good game, you destined to obscurity regardless of what particular search engine algorithm is in your best interest. “Search Engine != Marketing Solution”. If you spend less time whining about what you think is fair, and tracking and looking at how ranking happens, and spend more time on actually creating a marketing strategy, this quickly becomes a non-issue.
Besides the fact that petitioning to change Apple’s search algorithm is probably resulting in nothing (there really isn’t even a good argument you have presented), if crazy wild chance it did, then different people would now be pissed because it doesn’t meet their perceived requirements/demands/entitlement.
Time spent setting up a pointless internet petition website could have been spent marketing your app. Place the blame squarely where it belongs.
Also important to bear in mind that the app store and how it works is designed around the best way to help players/customers find games. Not developers, that is your responsibility.
The only major feature App store missing now (and not mentioned in your petition) are video trailers (like the Play store), or at least a Clickable link to the trailer…yes it will be extremely hard to implement since apple doesn’t have a solid video hosting servers like Google has with YouTube…but a feature like this is essential.
I don’t think this petition solves the problems, but I don’t agree with zombiegorilla either, well not completely, the app store is a captive marketpalce, we can’t sell apps for iPhone anywhere else, nor does the present system help the customer find good games or other apps, if one looks for a zombie game a thousand possibilities come up and the further down the list the less chance an app is chosen. However, I don’t see why apps that are free are less relevant than apps that are paid for, the developers are taking a risk selling free and hoping IAP makes up the difference although everyone is aware of the very low click through rate with such things, but free apps still take money to make, so hard to see the reasoning behind trashing them. Then I like the apple ethos of allowing anything on within reason because it means some idiot isn’t refusing a perfectly good game for subjective reasons. No, the system isn’t perfect and needs changing but hard to see how any change that matters could be brought about in a short period of time, and I note this petition doesn’t offer any solutions beyond people moaning that what they want because of what they make, should take precedence. At the moment everyone is complaining and there’s a lot of reactionary forces suggesting these platforms now charge at least $5000 to let developers get access to reduce the ‘noise’ on the platforms (usually people wroking for big compnaies are saying this), so when one gets into this sort of thing the cure could actually end up being worse than the disease. Probably a solution will present itself when a new system is brought in in another platform, maybe these suggested store fronts that Gabe Newell was mulling over for Steam will work well depending on their implementation and that will suggest a way forward for Apple. We’ll jus have to wiat and see. Then zombiegorilla is totally correct about the developers be promoting their apps, even if that is hard to do, the failure of many developers is that they start promotion too late, that they don’t research the market, that they assume apps are a cash cow, that what they produce is the bees knees, and when the money doesn’t come rolling in, they assume the fault lays elsewhere, when in actual fact it’s probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. Yes the app store could do with a rethink to allow communities around certain reviewers or game afficiandoes to build up to overcome some visibility problems, but a lot of the fault does lie with the developers as well.
I am extremely glad about your feedback constructive thoughts! While it is virtually impossible to meet everyones opinion right on the spot, it is important to actually do something about issues with the App Store that we all face today.
A few words about us: With three app store accounts, 42 binaries (paid, free, freemium) in the market and (still) a monthly turnover of $30.000 and 300.000 active weekly users, we do have quite a good impression of what is going on out there. Also, this petition has been hard work and I am happy that we did have valuable feedback from both, fellow developers as well as Apple contacts before posting it. We are still a small developer compared to others – but in terms of marketing quite experienced and aware of the limits it has.
I really value your opinions, especially those that seem to have come from developers like us. Obviously there are posters that - even that they are not making their living from iOS apps - seem to know it all.
In any case, this discussion is unlikely to be read by anyone at Apple. So if you are an active iOS developer please help to make a change by either submitting a bug report using you own words – or supporting http://pleasefixtheappstore.com.
The main piece of feedback I can give on this is to think about what you’re asking Apple to do from their point of view. From our point of view as developers this is a “problem” because it means that as individuals our apps have a hard time getting found. But from Apple’s point of view the system has been optimised - the items most likely to either a) make money or b) make them look good get more time at the top of the lists.
Apple have a deliberately consumer-centric model that does a fantastic job of targeting the most mainstream users, because that’s where the value is for them. You’re asking them to shift a bit towards a developer-centric model where some amount our stuff is pushed in front of consumers ahead of stuff that’s already doing well. It’s kind of like going into a chain supermarket and asking them to shift Orios out of the eyeline in favour of your new, no-name, un-marketed line of biscuits.
The changes you’re asking for would be great for us, but what’s the net result for Apple? Why would they do it? What could you change about what you’re asking to make them more likely to do it?
Yes you know a lot about the appstore, and so forth. That doesn’t actually change the fact you haven’t properly suggested what apple should do, you’ve only suggested they should fix it. Everything in the world needs fixing but we need to know how. A proposal how imho will help it gain more traction.
If you have 300k active weekly users then you shouldn’t really have a concern? Obivously Apples search has worked for you. At that stage I’d say its up to your apps to drive the next phase of user acquisition.
As to paid apps declining that’s simply a market trend. Times change… move with them.
Less free promotion for free apps. Seems this has been changing a little recently, though time will tell.
Better ‘recently released’. Used to be, in iOS5, you could see a ‘recent’ list for each category that went to like the top 1000, and it wasn’t that hard to get a decent app on that list. For 2 weeks, you had a chance to generate traffic and test the waters. In iOS 6, they took that away. I used to browse that until they took it away.
For what it’s worth, google is even worse. They don’t even support keywords giving you a slight way to differentiate.
Hi all, thank you angrypenguin Gigiwoo for your constructive feedback!
@angrypenguin After a number of discussions with my contacts at worldwide developer relations, I can confirm that Apple DOES care about us small developers. The petition is a result of these talks - it is especially important, that we stick together to get heard on Apple’s side. As for your supermarket example: It’s not about replacing Oreos, but to give new innovative products a space on the self as well (even, if only sometimes) and the chance to become successful to.
@ Gigi. I completely agree!
Once again, even if you don’t agree to the petition, write a bug report in your own words - but please do! Thank you for your consideration. Thorsten
Of course the developer relations team cares about developers. It’s their job to care. But when Apple as a whole is weighing between “do what works best for a niche group of low-income developers” and “do what works best for our biggest earners and our primary customer base” I’m pretty confident that they’ll lean very strongly towards the latter.
And sure, to stick with the metaphor you’re not asking them to remove all of the Oreos, but you are asking them to displace some Oreos in favour of stuff that doesn’t sell as well. Keep in mind that the store doesn’t care whether they sell Oreos or Generic Chocolate Biscuits, but that the Oreos are placed very deliberately because doing so optimises overall sales for the store. As hippo pointed out, you’re asking them to change that, but you’re not proposing what you want them to change it to, or telling them what the benefit to them of doing so will be.
To sum it up, you’re asking them to move away from something that benefits them towards something that benefits you, without providing any compelling reason to do so (eg: new benefits to them). What can you change to make it a win-win?
The petition is a result of these talks - it is especially important, that we stick together to get heard on Apple’s side. As for your supermarket example: It’s not about replacing Oreos, but to give new innovative products a space on the self as well (even, if only sometimes) and the chance to become successful to.