App store design opinions are the rage. At the feverish rate at which app stores are coming, design will play a crucial role in getting ahead of the crowd.
While some elements – like app functionality and range of selection – will depend on how app store makers address device fragmentation and technology standards across networks, eventually the choice and decision rests with the customers who don’t understand technology.
One trend emerging clearly from the app store tsunami is that the design has to be for mobile devices first and PCs later, especially in emerging markets where the first internet experience of a consumer is on the mobile phone. The app store has to be designed first for the mobile consumer who has a very short and interruptible attention span and is always on the move.
Some of the better designs of the most frequented app stores (and erstwhile WAP sites) for mobile devices are the least complicated. The look, feel and design USP has to be very easy to understand at the blink of an eye. A good friend of mine once commented the relationship between a user and his applications on his mobile device is like speed dating: capture the user at first sight – you may not get a second chance. Make the design dynamic and youthful. If the end user likes it he will keep coming back for more.
The industry tends to claim that developers are a different kettle of fish from consumers. However even they are end-users. For a successful app store you have to have developers coming back again and again to develop more and more apps.
Treat developers like any customer: keep it simple and give the developer a great, fun and simple design without compromising on the technicalities for which the developers really come to you.
Most developer websites we see today are overloaded with geeky SDKs, APIs and software programming guides. All useful, but design still matters. Developers need simple straightforward headings, precise and concise information and an easy to navigate website.
Go to the average developer website and you won’t see much color. A developer is as much of a dreamer as an artist – the developer uses bits and bytes of software code – give him some colour and make the site cool.
We tend to treat consumers with a B2C experience and developers with a B2B experience. While it is true that developers will only come back for more if information and upgrades are dynamic and constantly refreshed, we need to throw in a bit of a consumer experience to the developer facing side of the app store to make it just as compelling to them as the front end should be to the consumers.
Ashish Thomas is director of SingTel Group Innovations
For more on app store design and other crucial issues in the new mobile application ecosystem, don’t miss AppsXchange Asia 2009, coming to Hong Kong November 16-17.