We Should Dominate the App Store Charts

High-quality content comes second, to a quick thrill in a poorly-designed app. But we have the opportunity to change that.

The App Store charts are dominated by crap. This isn’t anything new — it replicates behaviour we’ve witnessed in TV for decades.

TV is controlled by a finite number of commercial bodies. Their large overheads mean that each corporation is under intense pressure to deliver content that appeals to a great number of people. From an enclosed standpoint, they seem to be failing — I barely watch it, and a growing number of my friends don’t even own a TV set anymore. So we would ask “How have they messed up so badly?”, except we already know the answer. We’re in the minority in terms of what type of content appeals to us. A lot of people love these shows, and that’s why TV networks continue to have a successful business producing content we don’t personally rate.

So in what way are we different, which puts us in the minority? It’s actually a big difference in how we value a product compared to most people. For us, the high-quality nature of a product is incredibly important. A perfectly refined experience really sings to us, and it’s what we try to emulate in our own work.
Everyone has attributes that they value to be important in a product, but for most people, high-quality isn’t one of them. And that’s the reason why apps such as Snapchat, with it’s hideous interface and flow, manage to do so well. They may not be high-quality, but they do have other values which appeal to most people.

There isn’t resistance towards high-quality, people just don’t seek it out. And, as it isn’t vital to success, commercial products tend to ignore it as a requirement, and the charts become dominated by apps entirely lacking it.

But whether or not users value it as important, when it’s there, a focus on quality does improve their experience.

The crucial difference between creating content in the TV and app markets is accessibility. Because the App Store doesn’t come with giant overheads, rather than a relatively small number of content providers, we have a more infinite number of them — from large companies, all the way down to us individual developers (some of us hobbyists!). And so the content provided ends up extending across almost every niche there is. Unlike TV, we’re not at a shortage for content we enjoy, we’re just disappointed that it isn’t reaching more people. But it can, because we as individuals are some of the content makers, and thus we have the power to change things. Here’s how.

The success of the most popular apps isn’t based around a lack of quality; it’s based around having the various other attributes which appeal to people. So there’s a 2-part solution:

1. You first need to make sure you appeal to the wider audience. You can do that by using the same attributes that all of the popular apps are using, to replicate their appeal.
2. And the second part is what you want to do anyway — don’t let go of the quality. The solution isn’t in trying to persuade people to give up everything which they naturally enjoy; it’s in appealing to those interests, while retaining the high-quality that you favour.

It does seem unjust to spend so long on perfecting something, then to open the App Store and see the charts dominated by those which haven’t.

But I think that by providing the same appeal, while retaining our high-quality, we can overcome that problem and reach the masses. And I think that as content creators, we have a responsibility to give people a better experience.