Shoot for the stars: 6 principles to optimize app quality

As an app developer, you know that improving your app’s rating to 4 stars or more could increase discoverability and convince more users to download it. Google Play research also shows that higher rated apps earn more revenue:

^{* Revenue includes all app business model on Play: IAP, paid app, ads advertising}

But how can you achieve that 4+ star score? Once you have set up your regular cycle of collecting, reviewing and actioning feedback from user reviews and ratings, the next key strategy is to optimize the quality of your app. 

6 principles to improve app quality

1. Stability: no crashes. Read user error reports often, and take action quickly to help you improve stability and eliminate bugs.

2. Responsiveness: speed matters. Minimizing the complexity of your layouts is a simple way to improve your app speed. 

3. Usability: be thumb friendly. Two common, easy-to-fix problems are addressing small tap targets and fonts that are too small. Make sure links are easy to tap.

4. Appearance and aesthetics. If you don't have the luxury to work with a designer, try using Photoshop, GIMP and other image editing tools to make your app look better. 

5. Less is more: launch the right features. Listen to your users by collecting and responding to feature requests, but remember, you don’t always need to build every suggestion. 

6. Integrate with the system and third-party apps: make users happy by including system features like Home screen widgets, rich notifications, global search integration, and Quick Contacts; or leveraging other apps’ functionality.