10 rules to help an app get a recommendation from Google Play

Original author: Mike Thompson
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Today on the Android platform, more than 600,000 applications are available, in which it is very easy to get lost. One of the most reliable ways to stimulate downloads is to get the title “Editors' Choice” by an application on Google Play, but so far the company has not explained what principles it is guided by in order to determine whether the application is suitable for receiving such a recommendation.

At the Google I / O conference last week, intercessors of all developers Dan Galpin and Ian Lewis offered Android developers several steps, following which they can increase the chances of their application getting into the list of recommended ones on Google Play.



First of all, developers need to give their application high-resolution support. Those. it should work at least in 720p resolution. Lewis and Galpin also advised against using the Compatibility Mode in the Honeycomb version, as the enlarged graphics do not look so clear.

You should also not change or remove the “native” Android buttons from the screen. Sometimes the brightness of these buttons is reduced so much that they can become almost invisible right during the game. Instead, developers should follow the principle of minimal intervention. An example is the Back button, which, when pressed during gameplay, should pause the game. Further, developers can give this button the ability to display options or move the player to the previous screen, while pressing it on the main screen of the game should turn it off.

Developers also need to ensure that the application provides a “painless” user experience. This includes, for example, “respect for the user's lifestyle”, i.e. the application, for example, should not turn on and play sound, even when the device is locked. Instead, games should stop playing sound immediately after the user pauses them, and should not resume playing until the user returns to the application. Applications should require a minimum of permissions. They are unlikely to be on the recommended list on Google Play if, for example, they change wi-fi settings, change / read information from contacts and calendars, send and send SMS messages, etc.

The application must be reliable. The easiest way to achieve reliability is, as Galpin and Lewis said, testing applications on as many Android devices as possible , as the GPUs on different models are different, and different drivers can often cause crashes. Reliability is important for making payments within applications. Often applications do not track purchases and do not deliver content for which the user paid - such applications will not be recommended.

Finally, Galpin and Lewis advised developers who had already created a quality game to translate it into as many languages ​​as possible in order to increase their potential user base. If the company does not have the resources to translate the game into several languages, you should focus on English and Korean, as Korean Android users are especially fond of games on the platform.

And here are three simple ways to make the application NOT appear in the recommended list on Google Play. First, use any payment provider other than Google to make payments. Secondly, let the application download other applications. As Galpin said, “Google Play is not the place to distribute your own app store.” Thirdly, to bribe players with in-game rewards so that they write positive reviews. This approach is considered by the store’s editors as the worst violation, and a game that does this will never receive a recommendation. Of course, developers can ask users to leave their feedback, you just can’t create conditions that require positive ratings from players.

Galpin and Lewis said that their advice is by no means a set of rules, but it’s exactly the criteria they describe that Google uses when evaluating applications.

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