Learn from comics: Detailed explanation of the 4 key factors for getting Apple recommendations

As the competition in the mobile game market becomes increasingly fierce, the corresponding promotion costs are also rising. For an app, if it can win the favor of Apple editors and be listed in the recommended position of AppStore, it can greatly improve the ranking and revenue of the game. However, it is not so easy to get Apple's recommendation. Sometimes, no matter how good your product is, if you don't do it well, you still can't get the recommendation position in the end. How to communicate with Apple and what kind of products can win the favor of Apple editors? At the beginning of the year, AppMarketingLabo also explained in detail the four major factors for getting Apple's recommendation in the form of comics:

Apple recommends 4 elements

In fact, as early as 2013, Apple put forward four key points on its official website: quality, attention, business model and versatility.

• Quality first: The first condition for Apple to recommend an app is product quality. There will never be a situation where recommended spots are bought or sold in the AppStore.

• Attention: The design is novel, it is clear what it can convey to users, and it has unique appeal

• Business model: Appropriate business model and price, preferably a unique business model compared to similar games

• Universality: Support for various specifications of equipment and localization in various regions

How to connect with Apple

After understanding what content will win the favor of Apple editors, the next step is to connect with Apple. The email address of Apple editors is also disclosed here, so students who are interested must write it down.

The content of the email is also shown in the picture. If you want to get a recommendation, the best content of the email is to introduce what kind of app we are, how we can meet the needs of users, and what kind of experience we can give them. In short, you should show your shining points one by one to the eyes of Apple editors.

The email address below corresponds to the weekly recommended column. If you have a paid app and want to do a limited free trial, you can contact the email address below. Of course, the premise is that you must do a good job of localization work for the corresponding recommended country. Then, you must leave your email address, which is very important.

The world-famous "Monument Valley" increased its downloads by 7 million due to the limited free event. About 10% of the users, or 700,000, purchased the paid download package. In this event alone, its revenue increased by more than 168 million yen (about 10 million yuan).

Here is also a case for your reference. It is a story about a developer of a game called "Are You In Over Your Head?" who contacted the person in charge of AppStore through LinkedIn and finally successfully got the editor's recommendation:

In fact, the game had already received 15 million downloads before receiving the editor's recommendation. After successfully receiving the AppStore game category arcade and family game recommendations, it attracted the attention of many media, thereby gaining more exposure and a significant increase in new games.

How are the recommended games selected?

Basically, 1,800 apps are launched every day. How do Apple editors select them and which games can be recommended?

According to Apple's official explanation: recommendations are decided by the AppStore editorial team in the corresponding country; new works and major updates are more likely to be recommended; complete localization in the local language; new works are updated or launched every Thursday.

In other words, each region will have an Apple editor who is responsible for the recommendation position in that region, so the focus is to do a good job of localization in the language of each region.

There are so many languages, which ones should we do?

Apple considers the most important languages ​​to be English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Arabic (in no particular order)

According to AppBot's survey, Chinese and English are the most commonly used languages, covering 52% of users in total. If all of the above languages ​​can be covered, 82% of the countries and regions in the world can be covered. At the same time, AppBot also provides a statistical chart of the language ratio of user comments worldwide.

Get app features recommended by Apple

Free software accounts for 2/3 of the total due to its greater technology, while paid software accounts for 1/3

Products launched within one month are more likely to be recommended, accounting for 80% of the total. In addition to the first release, major updates are also likely to be recommended.

Among the recommended software, games account for 65%. Since 74% of AppStore’s revenue comes from games, we will strengthen the recommendation of games (the number of games only accounts for 25% of the total number of software).

The average rating of recommended apps is above 4.3 stars. According to Businessinsider statistics, highly rated software had at least 9 major version updates each year from 2013 to 2014.

20% of the recommended apps are created by developers who are not experienced. This shows that even inexperienced individual developers have enough opportunities to be recommended by Apple.