There is a lot of hate for the app store by developers, and i've dished out some of it, but frankly with over a million apps it's not an easy problem to solve.
I actually think the store is in a pretty decent state right now overall. You can't possibly make everything very visible. It's a pretty good deal to be on the shelves, now you just have to work harder on your own promotion.
> ...but frankly with over a million apps it's not an easy problem to solve.
Maybe a perfect solution isn't easier, but it should be very easy to improve the mess that is the app store. Let's start with a very simple suggestion:
Searching for an app by name should return that app.
Yeah. It's much better than it used to be (today when I search for Tweetbot it pull up Tweetbot) but that hasn't always been the case. You still have the issue that they clearly have a CDN with a slow refresh so that when an app is first released you can find it via links online or features on the front of the app store but not by searching the name.
This was very disheartening to me when I was in the app store. Without a direct App Store link it was difficult to get someone to download. You had to swipe a random number of cards, sometimes quite a lot, to find the apps after entering the exact name. The results were usually quite relevant - in that they were competitors with similar but more popular apps.
It seems like an unjust reward for already successful apps - they're given the right to steal search results for a competitor's app name.
It's a balancing act. If you want to be found by searches for your title, you have to have a branded title (that if needed you could trademark). If you want to just use your top keyword as your name, it's going to be much harder to rank for it. I think the best path is to use a small subtitle - "Branded Name - Keyword Phrase"
That's a good way to be sure you can be found. If you type "Vima"[1] in the app store, I guarantee you find my apps :-)
[1] Vima is greek for "pace", which is how we came up with it. Full title is "Vima - GPS Run Tracker"
> There is a lot of hate for the app store by developers, and i've dished out some of it, but frankly with over a million apps it's not an easy problem to solve.
Sure it is. Stop trying to funnel the entire marketplace through a single vendor-controlled retailer.
I actually think the store is in a pretty decent state right now overall. You can't possibly make everything very visible. It's a pretty good deal to be on the shelves, now you just have to work harder on your own promotion.