IOS6 and iPhone 5 App Store Discoverability: What changed?

Re:IOS6 and iPhone 5 App Store Discoverability: What changed? by kyro on Thursday September 27, 2012 @04:28PM (#4582722)

I'm as rabid an Apple fan as the next guy, but I really have no idea what they were thinking when they decided to revamp the App Store search results page. I've been thinking about it since I updated to iOS6 and haven't been able to come up with any benefits to this layout. They show a screenshot of the app, but I think most people, including myself, search for apps either by name or icon, not by screenshot - and that's what's taking up most of the space. All the other information - icon, name, author, rating, install button - could have been laid out in the conventional list-like format, would have saved space, shown more results, and forced the user to scroll less. And let's talk about the scrolling... Horizontal scrolling is a huge pain. People hate it on the web, and I imagine they hate it on mobile as much as I do. Scrolling vertically just makes sense especially when you're going through lists.

The only reason I can think of behind Apple's decision is that they're trying to cater to big companies and studios, so that when you search American Airlines, you can be sure that that first result, and the only result shown, is the official app. That's great for big companies with a recognizable name and brand, but terrible for people trying to compete in the games/social/etc spaces, where the apps are often named "motorcycle racer X" and are competing against 20 other similar ones.

Edit: Much of these criticisms apply to the categorical app pages as well.

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Re:IOS6 and iPhone 5 App Store Discoverability: What changed? by jyap on Thursday September 27, 2012 @05:06PM (#4582900)

To give more of a background, Apple acquired Chomp on February 23, 2012.

You can see screenshots of the horizontal card based interface here from the original Chomp app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chomp/id348286549?mt=8

IMHO, the team at Chomp has too much power over the App Store. Apple comparatively few acquisitions per year so I wouldn't be surprised if the Chomp team totally took over App Store search.

As an indie developer I'm hoping someone at Apple is seeing the iOS 6 app download before and after results and isn't happy about the trends.

In the recent keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that 90% of the over 700k apps in the App Store are downloaded every month. I don't see that happening anymore with the current state of the App Store.

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Re:IOS6 and iPhone 5 App Store Discoverability: What changed? by pooriaazimi on Thursday September 27, 2012 @05:33PM (#4583040)

> I think most people, including myself, search for apps either by name or icon

I think that's the problem. It sounds crazy, but for most of us, the icon is actually one of the most important deciding factors... A shitty app (with horrible usability and UX) with a nice icon sells an order of magnitude more than a decent, pretty app (UX-wise) that couldn't afford a great designer for their icon.

This is (I think) the reasoning behind the change. How much have they succeeded? That's a whole other issue. But I think they aimed for the right thing.

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