Well, having a percentage of more than 100% of active installs on the Android Market seems a bit unrealistic to me. However, this is what it shows in my Android Market app listing. The one shown on the right is a paid application that had just been launched, so I guess the Android Market didn’t update its internal statistics properly yet.
The mix of ingredients to get a high percentage of active installs is fairly easy:
- Have a good app with as less bugs as possible.
- Provide a good app / user experience.
- Have a good presentation of your app on the Android Market (or other stores).
- Establish a relationship with your users (connect to them via Twitter, ask then to sign up for your newsletter, reply to their emails addressing their issues, questions and suggestions, etc.)
- Tell your existing users you have a new app available.
Though, I consider it common sense, I know that there are a lot of developers out there who don’t do that. Of course, there is a lot more you can do, but at least that’s a start. Most developers write an app, put it up there on a market (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry all the same) and then lean back and see. Folks, that’s not how the world works. App users are like you and me, if we buy a car we want to hear from dealer how good the car and what features it has. Once we bought it, we want to be sure, it does not break down at the first overland trip and we want to have an exciting experience every time we start the engine. Same counts for apps – as a user I need to love it and I need to be told to try it!
Good advice but your bogus 120% in active installs is more the fact of a problem with Google updating total installs the past days, than satisfied users.
Hey b0b, of course that’s obviously a bug in the Android Market’s reporting system. Anything above 100% is somehow suspicious 🙂
Great Article!
I agree about what you said (as a user I need to love it and I need to be told to try it!). I understand some developers can’t debug well because not all handsets are the same. But atleast they should have some sort of bug trapping system or the like.
As we speak, I have 6150 active and 5850 regular installs. My apps are around $5 and I have suspicious someone has cracked my app and giving it away for free on some website. My $$ numbers went down in half. I am actually losing around 5k a month, while chart shows big spike in installs.
It drives me crazy .
Where people get free hacked apps?