Get ready to launch application in playstore

Hey, after putting a lot of research and development efforts on coding your application, do you think that your app is ready to be unleashed?

Maybe yes. But there are a few points to be kept in mind to increase the popularity of app.

Last Tiny Steps

Optimization and Error handling strategy

1. Use proguard on your app ( usually, you just have to add this line : proguard.config=proguard.cfg in the default.properties file) this will optmize, shrink and obfuscate your code, very usefull for preventing from code thieves. You don't have to delete any comments, there are automatically deleted at compile time
2. Optimize your images ( using Paint.NET, PNGCrush or OptiPNG )
3. Optimize your layouts for most of screen sizes. You can doing this by simply changing the screen size while editing a layout in eclipse
4. Try/Catch all exceptions on the UI and display a simple toast wich indicate to the user that something wrong happened.
5. Set compatibility options android:minSdkVersion, android:targetSdkVersion and android:maxSdkVersion accordingly.
6. Try your app on each android version with the emulator -> many bugs appear at that moment
7. Ask your friends to do monkey test, learning from users usually brings many good things

Marketing Strategy

1. Launch your app at the end of the week ( thursday afternoon is usually a good time ) why so ? well, no companies would like to publish an app only 1.5 day before the week end -> too dangerous ( in case there is a problem that needs a quick reaction time )
2. Use either Flurry or Google analytics for future analytics.
3. Add a section "More apps" in your app, that's free ads. Consider adding an advertising feature in your app such as AdMob
4. Be the first to rate your app with 5 stars -> that influence the future users ratings
5. Instead of providing a paid version, consider doing in-app billing -> user are more likely to in-app pay than pay for a paid version
6. Consider including a "Tips" or "instructions" section in your app

Become a Playstore Publisher

This is a very basic procedure as you might have seen in other web registration portals.

• Register as a publisher and setup your profile.
• Read and agree to the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement.
• Pay a registration fee of $25 USD via Google Checkout.

To publish applications on the Android Market, you must be a registered developer. Head over to https://play.google.com/apps/publish and sign in with your Google account. Next, fill out all the required information along with your real phone number, which Google will use to contact you in the event of an emergency or a problem with any of your Android applications. If you can’t decide on a developer name, don’t worry. Just use your real name for now – you can always change that later via your profile page.

Click the Google Checkout button and pay the one-time registration fee and you’re done!

Collect the nuts and shells

1. Choose an apt and attractive title to describe your application and pull more subscribers.
2. Prepare a descriptive text which would be used to sell your application. This should be very precise and catchy.
3. Writing a promo-text will be useful as this would allow to promote your app.
4. Collect two most appropriate screenshots which give a brief overview of what your application will do.
5. Application icon in high resolution with equal height and width is required.
6. Adding a good feature graphic and promo graphic would be very helpful.

Uploading an application

Login to your publisher account and click “Upload an Application”. Fill in all of the form data and include screenshots. You can also choose whether or not you want to release it as a free or paid app – though you need to be a registered Google Checkout Merchant to do the latter and it’s currently only available in a handful of countries.

Lastly, click “Publish.” 

Hurray, you’ve just successfully published an application to the Android Market!