3 Tips for an Awful Mobile App Description

|

3 Ways To Screw Up App Description

I’m a tiny little bit completely addicted to browsing the App Store on my iPhone, so I’ve seen enough app descriptions to know not only what makes a good description, but also what kind of description will make me more likely to download an app. I’ve also written a few app descriptions myself (for Webtrends, Dfib, and Crusader), so believe me when I say I understand how hard it can be.

Nevertheless, there is a wrong way. Several wrong ways, actually. Here are a few of them that really bug me.

1: Start with Your Reviews and Rankings

When I see an app that looks interesting because it’s in a category I’m interested in, or has a nice icon, or a 5-star rating and 10,000 reviews, I want to read more about what it does and how it can benefit me. Not this

angry birds app store page

That's...a lot of countries

Yes, I bought the app. It’s fun and I don’t regret it, but I was still really annoyed that the paragraph describing the game was buried between globs of self-congratulatory cheese. Who cares that it’s the #1 downloaded app in Estonia? Do Estonians even care? Are they frustrated by Estonian AT&T?

Lesson: Tell me up front what the app does and why I should care.

2: Use Pointless or Insufficient Screenshots

So many app descriptions are poorly written or uninformative, that I often just skip right to the screenshots. I’m usually interested in the design of the app. It’s hard to tell what an app will really be like from a few screenshots, but you can immediately see whether the developer has given some thought (or money) to aesthetics and usability.

So, when that’s true, when the design of an app is gorgeous, shouldn’t the app store screenshots show that off?

This app, Groups, brings major missing functionality to the iPhone, but you don’t really get to see what that is unless you download it because the developer didn’t include a single full screenshot in the gallery.

The pictures are nice, and they do show key parts of the app interface, but you know what? I already know what the iPhone looks like, so you can leave that part out. And now that iPhone 4 is out, these images look dated because they show an old phone. I actually really like the image that shows the drag-and-drop functionality, but it also demonstrates another problem–lots of text in the image. It would have been fine, I think, to superimpose the name of the feature, but all that text is taking up valuable image real estate.

Lesson: Show full shots of the screen, no device in the image unless necessary or appropriate, like this. Keep the text to a minimum.

3: Try to Impress Me with Your Witty Banter

This one goes along with not burying the app description under a pile of reviews. General chattiness in the text of a description is not useful — and probably not read. By anyone. Ever.

Two examples of app description hubris that pop up often are 1) discussion of the developer’s other apps, which are of no interest to the user who wants to buy this app and 2) instructions for the app.

Now, I definitely like to check the App Store for apps by developers whose awesomeness I have previously paid for, but I don’t ever want to read something like this

War and iShred

You had me at “iShred.” Seriously. What do guitar playing iPhone owners want to do? Shred. How does this app let them do it? With the bullet list of virtual stompboxes three flicks down in the description. There are other cool features too, but they’re stuffed into paragraphs instead of in a bullet list. Too many instructions. Too much cross-marketing.

Lesson: Keep it short, keep it awesome. You want people to tap “Install,” not flick all over the place to see if your app has the right features.

There are lots and lots of good App Store descriptions, but in general they tend to be heavy on the advertising and review quoting and light on useful information. Maybe keep this in mind when you’re putting your description together: I want your app, but I won’t download it if I can’t quickly see what it does or what it looks like. But I do want to know if it’s on sale.

  • Josh

    Great list/article. Descriptions are feeling worse and worse these days. I rarely read them. Like you, I’m an addict, check the store every night, but I look for stars first, then go straight to YouTube to see if there’s a demo.

  • http://blogs.webtrends.com/ Benjamin Diggles

    I love this. Picking good apps seems like such a crapshoot. I have installed and uninstalled so many that I just quit browsing them unless a friend recommends it.

    Great article!

  • http://robinbalmer.com Robin Balmer

    Good screenshots are totally essential. I’d heard a lot about Angry Birds, but the screenshots didn’t describe the gameplay to me at all. All it took was 10 seconds of seeing someone play it for me to buy it – I definitely didn’t care it was #1 in Estonia.