5 Things Android Market Must Change
2009-06-23, Jeremiah
Digital Dandelion’s first game, Rejoinder, has now been in the Android Market for a week. We like Android as a mobile platform and we’re excited to have an early presence on an emerging ecosystem, but we’re not yet impressed with the Android Market. We just don’t believe that the Android Market works well for us or our customers. Here are five things that must change.
1. Stop encouraging refunds.
The Android Market lacks a formal application prescreening process and we’re cool with that. We also like the clearly stated return policy of 24 hours.1 The problem is that the Android Market almost encourages customers to seek a refund. Upon downloading an app, a screen with two large buttons of equal size is presented: open and uninstall. This poor UI presumes disappointment. Worse, there is no confirmation if the uninstall button is accidentally touched.
2. Allow developers to promote apps through promo codes.
The ability to grant a promo code in the Apple App Store has proved to be valuable for app exposure. Developers cannot buy promotion within the Android Market, a stance of neutrality which we appreciate, but we need other tools to aid marketing elsewhere. Google Checkout’s coupon feature should be exposed to the Android Market. Bloggers have contacted us asking for evaluation copies and giveaways. Our only current option is to throw the apk around the internet and that’s just asking for casual piracy.
3. Improve browsability.
Google accounts are required for the Android Market, yet customers can’t go anywhere on Google’s site to browse and purchase applications. The App Store within iTunes offers a fun browsing and impulse buy inducing experience. With no phone to computer syncing, Google should build an equally elegant Android Market for the full web browser where purchases could be pushed to the phone for download.
The Android Market should aid app discovery with features like similar purchase lists and product screenshots. The more information available about an application, the less likely it will be returned. Just under half of Rejoinder‘s purchases have been refunded. We know that we have a great app, but it’s not targeted at tech savvy frat boys. Unfortunately, Android Market doesn’t help us convey that.
Mixing free and paid app listings also hurts app discovery. Applications in the Android Market are listed by popularity and release date. Free applications had a long lead time over paid applications and dominate the popularity list. For a paid application to break into the top popular listing, it needs over 5,000 downloads. This is a difficult chicken and egg situation: our app can’t be found unless it’s popular and the Market does little to promote new apps.
4. Improve license enforcement.
Protection offered to app developers was broken in less than a 12 hours of release and has never been improved.2 We don’t believe in DRM because we know that most people who pirate software never would have paid for it anyway. This, however, does not mean that Android Market should ignore piracy. It wouldn’t be difficult to do a check upon installation or first run to confirm that an app has been licensed to the Google account of the phone.
5. Realize the potential synergy within Google.
Google Search: Yes, really. Search within the Android Market isn’t up to Google’s standards. When looking for Bejeweled, the search could not do a partial match of the application name and did not offer suggestions of potential intended spellings. This is just inexcusable for the world’s most popular search engine.
Google Analytics and Google Checkout: these two products have an existing, powerful integration that allows online retailers to track a customer from ad click through purchase.3 As a developer, I would love to know where our customers are coming from, which blogs customers who don’t return our app read, and other demographic factors that influence purchases. Extending this integration to Android Market would offer insights to help developers better market their existing apps and make wiser business decisions about the next apps to develop.
On a similar notion, Google Analytics should add a _trackPageview like API4 to allow developers the ability to track user interaction within apps. Aggregated data about how customers use an app is useful for improving usability and measuring post sale satisfaction.
Google AdSense: Some people will never buy an app. AdSense for Android would allow developers to justify more feature complete lite editions of applications. AdMob’s runaway success on the iPhone should have Google worried that it’s going to miss the next great ad medium.
Conclusion
The Apple App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch isn’t perfect, but the Android Market must learn from its competitor’s success if it wants to attract serious development. The immaturity of the Android Market makes us hesitant to pursue further Android application development. We have lots of great games coming that shouldn’t be exclusive to Apple products. If Google builds as great a marketplace as it has a mobile platform, great app offerings will follow.
1 Android Market Help
2 Android Market DRM busted < 12 hrs!
3 Using Google Analytics to Track Google Checkout Orders
4 What is _trackPageview and how can it help me?
Comments
JD
09/06/24 05:25 PM
1. I disagree that uninstall should be less obvious than Open just for the sake of how often will you open apps from their page on the market...Though i do believe you are incorrect that there is no uninstall confirmation. I just uninstalled one of the apps on my G1 while i was writing this comment and after i clicked the Uninstall button, it popped up a notice saying basically: “Are you sure?” which i had to OK or cancel. Although i’d think developers would like the fact that most users will probably give useful feedback on why they uninstalled the app rather than Apple which doesn’t have that option.
2. Promo codes...I think they should exist, but i’m not a developer so i can’t say my opinion on this would be useful.
3. There definetly does need to be a web-based market thingy and more browsing options in the market on the phone. I’m quite disappointed that the Market wasn’t improved at all in Cupcake and that they have such a small team behind it (i believe Google said 3 people or less) so there will probably never be any/many major improvements to it. :(
4. I completely disagree here. No matter how much DRM and locking-down you implement, it will ALWAYS be cracked. Even Sony’s CD’s with the rootkit on them from like 2004 had rips on the torrent sites and Kazaa and i’d say a using rootkit to prevent piracy is about as far as you could go.
5. Search: Not being able to search by partial name is just idiotic. It’s nice to be able to find stuff in the market via QR Codes, but still, idiotic.
Analytics: I don’t know how this would work...Maybe i’d click on a market:// link on someone’s blog, but i think transferring all that information all the ways you’d do so is a security nightmare and a lot more API handling just to install a application…
AdSense: AdSense for Android Apps is now in public beta: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/announcing-adsense-for-mobile.html
All in all, I think the Android Market has a bit of catching up to do in some ways compared to the iPhone App Store, but it’s also beating the App store in a lot of ways...For example, Apple hasn’t sent many developers checks in well over 6 months and i believe you’re supposed to recieve a check from Apple monthly...No such problems with Google…
Apple locks down the App Store, not Google...Though i’m not going to go into this argument since everyone else has.
I also believe Apple takes a much larger cut of App sales compared to Google.
I’d say Google is doing quite well because, as i’m sure we all recall, the first year the iPhone was out, there were no apps unless you jailbroke your phone and even then, there was no app store.
Jeremiah
09/06/29 10:08 PM
Thanks for the comments JD.
1. I just purchased an app and tapped refund. No confirmation. Both our T-Mobile and Developer G1s immediately uninstall and send the refund request. A screen asks why a refund was requested *after* it has been sent.
4. As stated, I’m not asking for DRM, but improved license enforcement.
5. Google Analytics already tracks AdSense click through Checkout purchase. Extending this capability to Android Market, both through the device and desktop browser (if off phone purchases are ever added), is a logical next step.
Google announced AdSense for Mobile after I blogged. Quite exciting.
None of the iPhone developers that I know have ever had billing problems with Apple, though I have heard rumors of isolated issues.
Apple and Google both take 30% of an app’s purchase price.
Google didn’t launch its paid app store until February this year. The product quality overall in the Android Market is noticeably lower. I want Android to be stronger because competition is a great thing.
Rafael Sanches
09/10/16 09:18 AM
Hi, I totally agree with 5. It’s impossible for a single developer to track the growth rate of an android app.
I don’t have a phone, so for me it’s difficult even to read the comments of the users. I just wish that there was a graphic with number of downloads and number of active users. This would make life more easier when measuring campaign effects..