- Plenty of Choices
- Android Market
- Amazon.com Appstore for Android
- GetJar
- Where to Start Your App Marketing
Amazon.com Appstore for Android
Another important site that I consider a "must" for posting Android apps is the Amazon.com Appstore for Android. Launched in March 2011, this store is seeing strong growth and success for app developers. It started out showcasing a few thousand apps, and at the time of writing had grown to hold over 14,000 apps. You must submit your app for review by the Amazon.com staff before they'll post it for download on their store. The team wants to ensure that the approved apps are of a higher quality than the "standard" Android app, and they work to guarantee that posted apps are free of any malware.
Other key benefits offered by the Appstore for Android include the "App of the Day" program, cross-promotions, the Test Drive feature, and targeted emails:
- "App of the Day." Amazon.com selects an app and offers it for free on the app store's home page. This promotion gives the app huge downloads and seeds it into the market. Once an app hits a large number of downloads, it can continue to grow organically as it moves up in the rankings. Amazon.com doesn't clearly explain how apps are selected for the "App of the Day" program, but if you're lucky enough that your app is selected, it can provide a huge boost to your sales.
- Cross-promotion. Amazon.com is well known for the ability to cross-promote products. Tens of thousands of consumer products are sold on the Amazon.com website, and the sophisticated site software can suggest complementary products for the consumer to buy. This powerful feature allows your app to be cross-promoted with products that are similar or related to your app. In time, your app sales can increase as your app is paired with other products that may be of interest to the consumer.
- Test Drive. This feature is also unique to the Appstore for Android. Rather than downloading a free app to an Android device, the customer can simply click the Test Drive Now button to experience the app on her computer's browser. An instance of the actual app is run on the Amazon.com servers, letting the customer experience the app before making a purchase. Not all apps have this feature enabled, but many do. It's a great way to help sell more copies of your app, because potential buyers can try the app quickly and easily, with no risk.
- Targeted email campaigns. Amazon.com not only can conduct email campaigns to its massive retail audience, but can target the mailing list very tightly based on past customer purchases. This is a new area of marketing for app developers, so you may not even have considered it. In most cases, sending out general email blasts about your app won't work, because obtaining a narrowly focused email list on your own is nearly impossible. Sure, you can buy an email list, but it probably won't match your app's target audience. By contrast, Amazon.com has very targeted information about customers[md]what they like and have previously purchased.