Google Play Store Updates

Recently, the Google Play store, which has 2 billion monthly active users, has been updated, and the visual effects of the entire store have been completely redesigned. The overall design is more elegant and simple. Boris Valusek, the design director of Google Play, said that the new interface can help users to easily find the desired application, which also has a better opportunity for developers to display their apps.

First, a new navigation bar is added at the bottom to separate "Games" from "Apps". The functions are more distinct. Players can enter the game page faster, which increases a lot of opportunities for developers to display.

In a single application interface, there will be more detailed related information at the top of the page, and the buttons for installing and downloading are also placed in a more obvious position. The purpose of this design is to allow users to quickly understand related information at first glance and make decisions to install or not.

The icon system has also been updated. The traditional free shape has been changed to a unified rounded corner graphic. Developers should catch the user’s attention not only on the external shape of the icon, but on the picture itself to make the application outstanding.

In order to attract more users to click into the detailed pages in the app store, Google also gave a few suggestions, of which the more important one is the top image (also can be a video). All applications displayed in the featured area need to have a featured image. Google will not consider including apps without a featured image in the featured area, so developers must not forget to add this image and miss the opportunity. The top image occupies one-third of the screen on most Android phones and tablets, so a well-made, simple and eye-catching large top image is very important.

For developers facing the global market, you must not forget to add content applicable to specific countries/regions in the product details. Google Play supports applications to create up to 5 country-specific product details (which should include the application name, icon, description, and image resources). The text in screenshots or videos can also be localized.

Generally speaking, after this update, the Google Play store has more blank areas, but the application display area occupies a very large area, even you can only see a few applications on a page, and in a unified format. Hence, how to use the icons and large images to attract the attention of users has become more important, and developers should pay more attention to this.

According to the mobile market forecast report released by SensorTower, by 2023, revenue of App Store will reach USD 96 billion and Google Play will reach USD 60 billion; the number of product downloads on the App Store will be 370, and Google Play will reach 1,240. App Store will remain the leader in generating revenue, but Google Play’s compound annual growth rate of user spending will be even higher, reaching 19.0%. In terms of product downloads, Google Play will be much ahead, accounting for 77% of global downloads.