App Store logic: How to get Apple's recommendation position

A friend of mine recently received a call from a scammer who claimed that he could "guarantee 1 million for a recommended picture on the App Store." My answer to this type of "I have someone above me" scammer is to ask him to predict the recommended picture for next month. If the prediction is correct, I will believe it. Although the above incident was dropped after the scammer revealed more clues, I still think that friends in the industry need to popularize the knowledge and logic of the recommended position in the app store. The author has been recommended four times, one of which was for a small game from his own startup company, so it is not difficult to be recommended. The main thing is to have clear ideas. The first thing I want to say is that no one can tell you that you will be recommended 100%. This article can only increase your chances of being recommended, because recommendations are determined by Apple editors, and it is a matter of human rule, not law, and there is no definite standard. Without further ado, today is December 2, 2014. When you turn on your phone, you will see this interface:

This thing is commonly known as the app store recommendation position. Apple also calls this a feature. At the top is a large picture of excellent new apps and excellent new games. Today's top picture carousel is: UnionPay payment 1 yuan to open, Sniper God, Little Postman, Dessert Candy Crush. Excellent new apps include health, travel, education, tools, photography and video, etc. 16 excellent new games include Sniper God and 16 others, the last one is Kingdom Rush Origins. We can find many patterns on the first page. First, policy and strategic things take precedence over all others in the big picture sorting. Then there is a popular game, a children's education app, and a match-3 game. The last three all appear in excellent new apps and excellent new games. Ok, this is the first rule recommended by Apple: if you want to upload a large image, upload a small image first. At the same time, it is not difficult for us to find the second rule: the recommendation of small pictures is that the old one is on the far right and the new one is on the far left, sorted by time, and each new one squeezes out the old one.

Continuing to scroll down, we can see topics such as the best apps of the week, games, appstore apps, photography and video, education, etc. Except for the first picture, clicking on the other pictures will directly jump to the homepage of the corresponding category. Further down is the excellent preview, which is full of videos. This is the recommendation area corresponding to this year’s new features. The following apps such as Crossy Road are small picture recommendations, some of which have large pictures.

The bottom part is the best updated games. Note that these updated games have been recommended in previous issues. Then comes the special topic section, and finally the introductory games for beginners. In fact, seeing this, we can clearly see the third rule: all recommended apps have very good artistic level. You don't have to have the NB3D graphics of Sniper God. Q-version ones like Dessert Candy Crush can be recommended, cartoon-style ones like Bruce Lee can be recommended, and even pixel-style ones like Crossy Road can be recommended. So what I want to say is that if you don’t have the unreal graphics like Infinity Blade, you can increase the probability of being recommended with a unique art style, such as the Ukiyo-e outline style and leaning back character modeling of Shadow Blade, or the flat and paper-cut style like Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake. In short, you have to be different from others. You see, Mr. Crab’s art is recommended because of its style. Why? Think about it, who speaks at every Apple press conference besides the CEO? It’s chief designer Jonathan Ive. No need to mention other reasons, you also understand that Apple is a design-led company, and designers are the driving force of the entire press conference. At the same time, designers also influence Apple’s entire style, including the editors of the Apple App Store. Do you think a good IP can be recommended? Don’t be ridiculous. Apple has never thought that IP is a big deal. If IP can be recommended, then buying IP is equivalent to buying Apple’s recommendation position? There is no such good thing. Among today's recommendations, only Astro Boy Flight, Pro Evolution Soccer Club, Tomb Raider (Lara Croft), and FIFA 15 have IPs, which account for less than 5%. Looking at their descriptions, none of them emphasizes the IP. I would rather believe that Astro Boy Flight is recommended because Apple editors think that Tezuka's painting style is itself an art style. At the same time, if we have a good grasp of elementary school arithmetic, we can also discover the fourth rule: there are more apps with larger target users in the recommended positions. This conclusion can be clearly drawn by counting the number of stand-alone and online games in all recommended positions. Today, as Android's market share continues to expand, we can see from UnionPay promotions that Apple is still very anxious. They need more and more market share and more and more new users. This is also why we are all tired of playing match-3 games and seeing the greasy candy style. Dessert match-3 games can still be played on large pictures, but even if you port Legend to iOS, its target user base will never be as large as that of match-3 games. At the same time, there is another more obscure pattern, which is that Apple is repeatedly pulling traffic from less popular sections such as education, photography and video, in an attempt to revitalize categories where traffic may be depleted. Even many paid 18 or 30 yuan educational apps that few people download are still contributing revenue to Apple above more excellent new games. This is the fifth rule: categories with fewer apps are more likely to be recommended, especially education and travel, photography and video, and other categories that Apple is currently focusing on. There is also a sixth rule that everyone knows: manufacturers that have been recommended are more likely to be recommended. This rule is very easy to illustrate. After explaining the rule, let’s talk about some suggestions for game manufacturers. 1. If you want to consider the long-term, make a few stand-alone recommendations first so that it will be easier to recommend online games in the future. 2. If you want an online game to be recommended, it’s best to have 3D games, and the graphics shouldn’t be worse than those produced by major foreign manufacturers. 3. Unpopular categories are easier to be recommended, so you can move the categories towards unpopular ones. 4. The editors in China are on holiday during the Spring Festival, so all the recommendations will be posted for more than a week. Let’s see who is the lucky one who gets recommended one day before the Chinese New Year. Finally, if someone contacts you and says that you can pay to be recommended by Apple, ask him who he can make recommended next month and on which date. If he is sure, please introduce it to everyone. If he is not sure, just block him. Don't let the scammers look down on the IQ of us IT people.

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