Google Rich Snippets Support

Our app landing pages now contain the markup for “Rich Snippets”. This should improve the quality and performance of your app in Google search results.

The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search. With rich snippets, webmasters with sites containing structured content—such as review sites or business listings—can label their content to make it clear that each labeled piece of text represents a certain type of data: for example, a restaurant name, an address, or a rating.

Read more about Rich Snippets in the Google FAQ.

New landing page theme: Robbins

Theme chooser:

Robbins layout example:

Added 2 new webfonts to the App.net landing page editor

Allerta Stencil

Stardos Stencil

Other changes

• Automatically import your image assets from the app store any time you want, not just when creating your app the first time
• New option to remove App.net branding for paid accounts
• Ability to edit the “More apps by this developer” text on App.net landing pages
• Numerous bugfixes

Thanks, we would appreciate any feedback/comments about this new functionality.

Dalton Caldwell
Founder/CEO App.net

I have read quite a bit of coverage about the huge numbers that mobile app developers see around the holidays. I don’t know about you, but when the word “billions” is thrown around, it’s hard to put that into context. What was the distribution of those downloads across individual apps and app developers?

Here at App.net we have the ability to see clickstream data from Facebook, Twitter and the web for certain mobile applications. We are big believers in instrumentation across the board, and so we have a few internal metrics to gauge how consumers engage with the mobile apps on our site.

Where did this graph come from? I generated this graph in Google docs by aggregating a few different metrics that App.net tracks. This data includes both iOS and Android. Please note that we are the first to admit that our methods of sampling are not representative of the entire app ecosystem and our data should thus be classified as “anecdotal.” That being said, my takeaway is that the average app on App.net saw an increase of 3-4X download engagement during the spike.

That’s a fairly compelling chart, right?

Thanks
Dalton Caldwell
App.net Founder/CEO

Q: What’s the secret to making a hit mobile app?

A: It’s actually very simple. First, build a hit website that has millions of daily users. Second, place a link to your mobile app on the top of every page.

While the above advice is a goofy Silicon Valley joke, if you take a look at the most downloaded applications in the Apple App Store, you will see a consistent trend of developers driving massive amounts of web traffic to their native app(s).

In fact, at this exact moment, the #1 free app in the app store is Facebook Messenger, which Facebook has been promoting at the top of the default newsfeed view.

Facebook is not the only example of app developers harnessing their existing web traffic to increase mobile distribution. Take a look at the top 200 apps in the App Store– you will see case after case of app developers utilizing outside web traffic to push consumers into their app download funnel.

If building your own hit website isn’t in the cards for you, the next best thing would be to build on top of the viral channels available to you on the Facebook platform. As Zynga and others can attest to, effectively building on the Facebook platform can yield huge benefits. The building block for promoting your brand on Facebook is the Facebook Page. Let’s go over the best practices for using Facebook Pages as a mobile app developer.

Best practices for marketing your mobile app on Facebook:

• Create a Facebook Page for your mobile application if you haven’t already
• Create inbound links to your Fan Page from your other web presences


Example of an App.net Facebook tab in action

• Come up with some ideas for content on your Fan Page that would both interesting to your Fans and something that you could write about on a regular schedule. For example, Sporcle does a great job of frequently posting the newest quizzes. Frequent updates of high quality content is the surest way to build up a large community.
• Using a nice looking “like-gate” will increase the growth of your captive audience. (The App.net Facebook product offers a customizable like-gate in a very easy to use package)



• Display prominent, appealing looking screenshots of your mobile application. A recent eye tracking study has shown that the wall area, and the photo area directly above the wall, are the most important parts of a Facebook page. We have specifically designed our Facebook product to place the screenshots and download button for your mobile app in the page locations that optimize for engagement and conversions.
• Have your native app integrate with Facebook and post interesting content into the newsfeed. For instance, most popular photo and video apps make it simple for their users to post to Facebook. This obviously drives traffic, but it also drives awareness and reach of your app within the Facebook social graph. If you can help your users post high quality, non-spammy content that their social graph is interested in, the amount of traffic Facebook can drive is mind boggling.

Our opinion is that effective Facebook marketing of your mobile app can move the needle for your company. We built our Facebook Page product to make it an order of magnitude easier to follow these best practices, but like everything else in life, your marketing will only be as effective as the consistent effort you put into it.

Thanks,
Dalton Caldwell
Founder/CEO App.net