7. Submitting Your App
Hello world!
Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan, authors of The C Programming Language
“Hello, world, and let me introduce my app!” In this chapter, we kick our app out of the nest and into the great big world. We’ve raised it and cared for it the best we could, using localized functions wherever possible, and translated all its strings. We’re ready to send it on its way and have its passport ready. This chapter covers what to expect when you’re dealing with other region App Stores. We’ll talk about and list those other stores, go over what you can charge for an app, and cover what that exchange rate will be for those other app stores. Having your app available in all app stores is easy to enable and the default for most of us, but now we’ll target our audience and delight them with an app “built” for them. We’ll cover localizing the description and important things to consider.
App Submission Requirements
This chapter assumes that you have an app to submit, and this section will be a quick refresher for you. This section covers what’s needed for you to be able to submit an app to the Apple App Store, resources available, and what the basic workflow looks like. Again, this is commonplace stuff, and I want to make sure we’re all headed in the same direction.
iOS Dev Center
The Apple iOS Dev center is where you can download betas, SDKs, and search documentation; watch and download WWDC videos; download Xcode; and access the developer forum and the support center. To fully access the site, you’ll need to be registered as an Apple developer. You’ll need to create a new Apple ID or use an existing one, requiring the typical credentials: email, password, name, and address. Again, I appreciate that these are standard, straightforward actions we do every day. I encourage you to be mindful of the customer-facing information, such as company or organization name. Don’t “bee” clever. Be considerate of locales and anything sensitive to them. Make sure that there’s nothing that could literally be misinterpreted.
Also, be aware of the situation; if your country does not have access to an online Apple Store, you might need to fax information to Apple. This is a rare circumstance but worth a heads up.
Provisioning Profiles
iOS apps are first approved by Apple before they can be available on the App Store. After an app has been successfully reviewed, only then can it be downloaded and launched on the device. Apple achieves this by requiring that every app available to run on hardware have a signed Apple Certificate. Apps hosted in the App Store come bundled with a certificate, which is verified by the OS before the app runs. If a valid signature is not present, not only will you not have access to the App Store, but your app won’t even run. The provisioning portal allows us dev type people to run apps on our devices directly and gives us access to our app’s App Store information, including the keywords, descriptions, and screen shots. Profiles are sometimes called “code signing identities” that allow Xcode to sign your apps in a way that your devices’ iOS will identify as valid. Two types of profiles exist:
Development profiles—These are tied to specific devices so the app can run only on those devices.
Distribution profiles—These are used to sign your app before you submit it to Apple for approval. They contain no device-specific information, but you can’t use them to install apps on any device because Apple still requires the approval process.
You’ll need both of these profiles, and you get them from the iOS Dev Center via the following steps:
1. Log on to the Apple iOS Dev Center (developer.apple.com) with your active Apple ID.
2. Click Member Center.
3. Click iOS under Dev Centers.
4. On the right, click Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles (see Figure 7.1).
iTunes Connect
iTunes Connect is the portal used to submit your apps. It’s accessible at https://itunesconnect.apple.com. This is where you’ll register a new app, enter the app’s description and screenshots, choose the price, and configure game center and in-app purchases. Basically, anything related to submitting your app to the App Store takes place here.
App Store Details
This section looks at the App Store countries, or more precisely “territories,” and gives details on the pricing tiers available for submitted apps.
Available Territories
Apple has a total of 155 “local” App Stores throughout the world. What “local” actually means is App Stores that are internationalized for region, reflecting both localized text and a region’s currency and date formats. These App Stores’ markets are restricted to national boundaries, which in effect means a customer in the Spanish App Store cannot make purchases in France’s App Store. A list of all the countries that have an online presence is found later in the chapter in Table 7.2. This table also includes associated languages for the local App Stores, which is given the appropriate explanation in the same section.
Having local App Stores allows for pricing and descriptions appropriate for that locale. This includes price as well as the taxation appropriate for the locale. The App Store that displays as your default when you launch the App Store app or iTunes is determined by the billing address of the credit card you have on file as part of your Apple ID. Because of this, it is not possible to “bring up” any region’s App Store to display and verify your app’s description and other information for that region. You also aren’t able to see how many Japanese Yen your app would cost in Japan’s App Store.
Regions in iTunes
There’s a slight exception to this rule with iTunes. iTunes does have an option to display a selected region’s App Store. You’ll find this with the “flag” icon at the very bottom of the App Store page. I’m referring to this as “slight” because you’ll need to change your Mac OS language setting to have the fully localized experience with iTunes, which includes localized descriptions and screenshots.
You can’t access the App Store for other countries through the App Store app or through iTunes, but you can through the iTunes Web interface by including the appropriate country code. The following link displays the App Store associated with Japan: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/genre/ios.
The following link shows a fully localized Japanese application in the Japan App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/shao-nianjanpu+-janpuno-man/id875750302?mt=8
And this link shows a fully localized German app in the German App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/kindle/id302584613?mt=8
Note that in both entries in the supplied links, the descriptions, images, and badges are localized.
You can use the same link to look at how your app is presented in other countries’ App Stores:
1. Open the iTunes Preview Web site via the link https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios. Change the country code to your default country.
2. Browse to your app.
3. Change your default country code to another country, for example, “jp,” “fr,” “de,” “kr,” or “gb.” Note that if you mistype the country code, it displays the app entry in your default country’s App Store.
Pricing Tiers
The App Store is a professional selling platform and as such has a uniform pricing structure. The pricing structure is broken down into tiers, from “Tier 0” to “Tier 87,” with each tier having a customer price associated with it. Tier 0 has a zero cost associated with it, or better put is for a free app. In U.S. dollars Tier 1 is $0.99, Tier 2 is $1.99, Tier 3 is $2.99, all the way up to Tier 87 at $999.99. The tiers also include the equivalent prices for 25 international currencies. Table 7.1 includes a sample of pricing, for Tier 0 through Tier 8 and five currencies:
U.S. dollars (USD)
Euro (Euro)
Japanese yen (JPY)
Danish krone (DKK)
Chinese yuan (CNY)
The complete App Store pricing matrix can be found on this link: http://forecomm.mptw.fr/templates/PriceMatrix.html. The matrix is also accessible from the Apple Developer portal from your signed-in account.
When you are pricing your application for the App Store in other territories, be aware of how the cost is going to be presented to the customers in that locale.
Different Price for Different Country?
The question pops up on different forums from time to time: “Can I charge my own custom amounts for my app depending on the country?” The official answer from Apple is no, and the sensible answer is no as well. When you submit your app, you need to see the pricing tier, which sets the price for all App Stores automatically. If a different price is a requirement, you would need to submit a different app as well and target it to the specific App Store territory. This approach does go against the idea of writing one app and localizing its resources. There are “alternate tiers” available, which you will find at the bottom of the pricing tier list, which allow different pricing to be available for different regions, but again these are not customizable.
Localizing iTunes Connect Data
With this section we’ll cover making your app attainable to specific App Stores and what steps are necessary to do that. Specifically, we’ll cover the steps needed to change territories and add App Store languages. We’ll also dive into what’s required to localize the information on your App’s summary page and the metadata involved with that.
To access this data, follow these steps:
1. Log in to your Apple Developer account at https://itunesconnect.apple.com with your account credentials.
2. Click My Apps and select the app you want to modify.
Changing Available Territories
By default, your app will be available, at the time of this writing, to all 155 territories worldwide (see Table 7.2 for a full list of App Store territories). To change this or to specify a single territory or group of territories, follow these steps:
1. Log in to iTunes Connect.
2. From your app’s summary page, click Pricing.
3. Click the Specific Territories link.
4. Make either your selections to add territories your app will be available in or your de-selections to remove territories from availability (see Figure 7.2). Select All and Deselect All buttons are available as well.
5. Click Save.
If your app’s version has the “Ready for Sale” status, you can change the territories where your app version is available. With your app localized to fully support the languages in the listed territories, it will be more attractive to customers accessing that App Store.
Expect the refresh in the selected App Store territories to take up to 24 hours to complete.
Language Mapping
To start this section, we need to talk numbers, specifically three numbers: 155, 39, and 28. Currently, there are 155 territories within iTunes Connect that we can publish our apps to. iTunes Connect provides 28 languages to localize in, and iOS 7 devices support 39 languages. How do we reconcile 155 with 39 with 28? How do we maximize the localized reach to our customers?
Let’s draw a distinction between the localized data that exists in our app bundles and the iTunes Connect “metadata.”
The localized data contained with the app bundle are managed by the iOS device and display in any of the 39 languages that the app has been localized for.
The iTunes Connect metadata is, not surprisingly, data-specific to your app’s iTunes Connect summary information. This data is stored in an XML format on the iTunes Connect server. This metadata contains the settings you chose when submitting your app to the App Store, including Description, Version Number, Keywords, and so on, all categorized under a locale key with a value of the language chosen and stored in the XML file. For example, if with iTunes Connect you’ve chosen Simplified Chinese as the language for your app information, the metadata locale key is set to zh-Hans, the language code for Simplified Chinese. Choosing the listing for British English would set the locale key to en-GB.
METADATA.XML
The App Metadata profile is used to deliver and store metadata for your app, the app’s In-App Purchases, and Game Center. App metadata includes localized titles, descriptions, what’s new text, keywords, and screenshots, as well as territory rights, pricing, and availability categorized by the locale chosen in the App Summary page of iTunes Connect.
You can deliver localized titles, descriptions, what’s new text, keywords, and screenshots, as well as product information to both new and existing app versions.
See more detailed information in the “App Metadata Specification” section at this link (you will need to be signed in with your Apple Developer account): https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/ra/resources/download/AppMetadataSpecification/pdf. Also, Apple has provided the Terminal command iTMSTransporter to access the metadata direction.
That distinguishes the data between our localized app and iTunes Connect. Now we need to focus on the number of App Store territories and the number of languages available from our iTunes Connect portal. We need to answer the question “How does 155 map to 28?”
Table 7.2 lists the languages available in iTunes Connect and their associated territories. Again, looking at our Simplified Chinese example, if we add that language, our localized descriptions are displayed in the “China” App Store. If we add UK English as an iTunes Connect localized language, our app info is made available in 100 App Store territories!
Adding Language Support
When we’re talking about adding language support in iTunes Connect, it means localization support. It means taking the work you’ve done to localize and internationalize your application and placing it in the hands of the customers you’ve focused on. Setting the language within iTunes Connect associates the selected language with the supported App Store territory so that your focused customers get an app made just for them! A bit of hyperbole, but you understand my point. To clear my hyperbole, you have one app that you have internationalized and localized, and your customer is seeing this app in his localized App Store. All the descriptions and screenshots for your app are localized to this customer’s language and region. When he downloads and launches your app, it automatically recognizes his system settings and respects them.
Data Retained from Primary Language Setting
When you add a new language, you group your app to the associated App Store territory. Note that when you add a new language for your app via iTunes Connect, the Description and Keywords fields are not prepopulated with information. All other fields retain the previous entries from the primary language settings. This includes screenshots as well. You want to update and verify that all fields are correctly localized for your chosen language.
You can add a new language only when your app’s status allows for editing—for example, when it is in “Prepare for Submission” status.
Now that we understand how the languages map out, let’s go through the steps of adding language support to an existing app in iTunes Connect:
1. Access the account on iTunes Connect.
2. Click My Apps and then choose your app.
3. On the right-hand side of your app’s summary page, click the existing language listing (your default language) and select the language you want to add support for (see Figure 7.3).
After you set the language, fill in the following fields with the appropriate localized text for the chosen language. Figure 7.4 displays a screenshot of the form.
Name
Description
Keywords
Support URL
Marketing URL
Privacy Policy URL
Figure 7.5 displays the app screenshot and preview video field. Note that screenshots need to be submitted with the first submission. If you want to change them, you need to resubmit your app, as opposed to the Description, Support URL, Marketing URL, and Privacy Policy URL fields, which can be modified at any time. Keywords, on the other hand, can be modified only when you submit a new binary, be it a new app or an update to an existing app.
Another item that allows for localizability is the End User License Agreement (EULA). Apple offers a standard agreement, which covers most items. If you require a custom agreement, make sure it is saved as a text file with line breaks only, no HTML flags. It is completely appropriate to have multiple language translations within the one Agreement file. To add your own License Agreement, follow these steps:
1. Log on to iTunes Connect with our Apple Dev credentials.
2. Click My Apps and then click your app.
3. Scroll down to the General App Information section.
4. Click Edit by License Agreement.
5. Choose the appropriate option, as shown in Figure 7.6.
Field Breakout
This section includes detailed information about the fields in the App Summary page.
Title—App Name Field
You’ll see this referred to as either “title” or “app name.” The title must be at least 2 characters in length, but no more than 255. The title displayed is based on your customer’s default language settings.
Description Field
This field must be at least 10 characters but no more than 4,000 characters. This should describe the functionality of your app. Use plain text, not HTML, and line breaks are allowed.
Keywords
The App Store allows for 100 characters for keywords. A “bonus” feature for the keywords field is that after you’ve added an additional language to localization, you get 200 characters’ worth of keywords with localization. How? The English keywords and application name are always searched with whatever the user’s language is set for. If the user has Spanish as the language setting and is searching for your app, it will match with both English and Spanish keywords. Essentially, you get a 100-character set for English that is always searched and another 100 character set for the localized language. Many translation services have ranking tools that can help you determine the best localized keywords to use.
What’s New Field
This field must be at least 10 characters but no more than 4,000 characters. Don’t use this for the first version of your app, for example, 1.0, but use it for 2.1, 3.2, and the like. This is a required tag when you are updating your app.
URL Fields
Look at the Support, Marketing, and Privacy Policy URLs. If they’re cool, provide a localized end point. The URLs must be at least 2 characters but no more than 255 characters.
Screenshots
You must provide at least one screenshot for each supported device. Screenshots can be added, changed, or removed. Be aware that you’re adding all the screenshots during any kind of change, meaning that if you have three existing screenshots and you’re adding a fourth screenshot, all four screenshots will be transferred, not just the new shot. A total of five screenshots are permitted. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, you should pay close attention to any locale sensitivity with the images you use and particularly make sure your screenshots are of your app running under the localized language. You don’t want to submit a French localized build to the Japanese App Store.
Copyright
If you are copyrighting to a company, make sure that the company name is locale-sensitive.
Apple Promotional Materials
Apple provides localized marketing materials used to promote your app. This is the “badge” artwork that you’ll see in promotions for apps that reads “Download on the App Store” so that customers know it’s an iOS app and it’s available. The available marketing material is an outlined image of an iPhone, with the name “App Store” in association with the localized version of the phrase “Download on the.” Figure 7.7 displays this badge localized for German.
Badges are available for the languages listed in Table 7.3, which includes the English translations.
When you’re using these badges, they must be legible on all marketing communications where your app is promoted. Also, you must provide a link to your app on the App Store whenever the badge is used.
Badges are available to download at https://developer.apple.com/app-store/marketing/guidelines/#downloadOnAppstore.
Summary
This chapter covered the basics of what is needed to submit your app. We covered needing an Apple Developer account and what’s necessary for that. We looked at Apple’s different tiers and what the different exchange rates are for the different app stores. We looked at the different territories and what country app stores are available. We talked about what needs to be localized within the app description. We then looked at what promotional marketing material Apple has provided us.