Watching the Number of Installs Soar

You’ve finally published your first application. Now it’s time to watch those millions start rolling in, right? Kind of. You might be an independent developer who’s releasing the next standout first-person shooter game, or you might be a corporate developer who’s pushing out your company’s Android application. Regardless, to be aware of the user experience on various devices, you can identify how your application is doing in various ways:

Five-star rating system: The higher average rating your app receives, the better.

Comments: Give people the courtesy of reading the comments they leave. You might be surprised at the outstanding ideas people provide to you for free. Users get excited about new features and return to the store to update their comments with a much more positive ratings boost.

Error reports: Users who were gracious enough to submit error reports want to let you know that the app experienced a runtime exception for an unknown reason. Open these reports, examine the error, review the stack trace, and fix the problem. An app that’s reported to force-close frequently can quickly receive lots of bad reviews. Stack traces are available only for devices that are running Android 2.2 and later.

Installs versus active installs: Though this comparison isn’t the best metric for identifying user satisfaction, it’s an unscientific way to determine whether users who install your app will tend to keep it on their devices. Users who keep your app obviously like it.

Direct e-mail: Users will return to the Google Play Store to find your e-mail address or website address and ask questions about features or send comments about their user experience. They may also send you ideas about how to improve your app or ask you to create another app that does something they cannot find at the Google Play Store. Reply if you have the time! Though maintaining an active dialogue with users is difficult if your app has a million active users, it makes users happy to know that they can contact you about issues with your app.

Staying in touch with your user base is a large task in itself, but doing so can reap the reward of dedicated, happy customers who refer their friends and family to your application.

Like the Google Play Store, the Amazon App Store for Android (one of the largest non-Google app stores for Android devices) offers applications for users to buy and install. Developers can sell their applications and receive a competitive rate for their apps from Amazon, or post free apps. Amazon also provides great sales metrics for developers and marketers. Find out more at http://developer.amazon.com . You can find out how to port your app to the Amazon App Store in Chapter 18.