Hope Caton, writer of the world famous video game TombRaider IV: The Last Revelation along with her business partner Robin Bell developed a mobile game named “Cigbreak” to help smokers to quit smoking.
This game replicates the game- “Fruit Ninja” as the players have to break cigarettes to achieve game rewards.
This is the first smoking cessation app in UK, which is in the form of game. It motivates the players to quit smoking.
It is also clear from the research that 52% of players are smokers.
This game app is now available on Apple iTunes and Google Play.
If you use apps or know about android app development or iPhone app development, then you have definitely viewed or heard of app preview videos. Google and Apple app stores are maxing out at almost 2 million apps each and new apps stand out because they infuse bright colours with bold designs or simply because they are developed by reputed organizations. In a sea of developers and designers, each with their own unique ideas, mobile app preview videos help your product stand apart from the crowd.
What an app preview video does is it increases the chances of your iPhone or Android app being downloaded and it does this by simply allowing prospective users to take a look at what your app offers and how it works. We can tell you off-hand that a paid app has a higher chance of being downloaded if buyers can preview what your app does before investing their money.
Here is an example for an app video:
App stores are the battleground where iPhone and Android apps compete for downloads regardless of the effort that has went into android app development or iPhone app development, budgets or marketing strategies. The best apps as well as the obscure ones are given equal opportunities to strut their stuff in elaborate app descriptions, screenshots, ratings and reviews.
User Psychology
The only thing standing between your app and a million downloads are the users. Unfortunately, users are lazy. Studies have shown that more than 60 percent of iPhone or Android app store visitors don’t even look at the two most effective means of describing what an app does – screenshots and descriptions. This means that 60 percent of prospective users won’t even bother to check what your app does. App preview videos are the next best thing in these situations because almost everyone will tap a play button instead of scrolling through text.
Image courtesy: Apple
StoreMaven reports that adding preview videos increases conversions by 20 percent for App Store and 35 percent for Play Store. In other words, people are more likely to download your app if they watch a video of it first. Did you know that app preview videos can affect the ratings of your app? Tune conducted a survey which revealed that apps with preview videos were generally given a higher rating than apps without them. The average rating for apps without a preview video is 3.81 stars, almost half a star lower than the average rating for apps with a video: 4.24 stars.
Image courtesy: Tune
In App Store and Play Store, higher ratings help new apps move up in app rankings and app rank is the default sorting filter applied in both stores when people are browsing. Newly released apps don’t have a tonne of reviews which prospective users can read so unless there are other pointers, like preview videos, users will classify the app as suspicious and move on to other options.
Ankit Jain, former head of Google Play search said at a recent Google I/O conference “Video previews are the next level of screenshots. With a short video, you’re able to show the user really what it’s like to play with your app. Giving potential users an accurate impression of what your app is all about is an approach that keeps on giving… developers have told us that uploading a video can really help gain user adoption, and users in a lot of studies have told us that video previews are amongst the most convincing features of an app details page.”
Image courtesy: Tune
If you have spent your time, effort and money for android app development or iPhone app development, then you want it to have higher ratings. Almost 60 percent of the ratings are achieved through app descriptions and user reviews but where can you find that extra edge to push your app in front of the competition? 40 percent of smartphone users consider app preview videos among the top three deciding factors for a download.
To sum it up here’s why preview videos are essential for your mobile app:
1. It engages users more directly than text or screenshots.
2. Videos are easy to share and have the potential to become viral, unlike text.
3. Users prefer watching videos to scrolling and reading.
4. Videos communicate ideas more clearly and effectively in very little time.
5. It provides a demo of your app so users know what to expect.
So if you are confident that your iPhone or Android app is sure to hit the top-10 list, give the users a preview of your app because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that people like to tap play buttons on their smartphone screens.
5 Simple Tips To Make Mobile App Videos
Now that you know why app preview videos are important, let’s get on with understanding how to make them and ensure the efforts of your android app development or iPhone app development team doesn’t get wasted.
1. Define a script. On Apple’s App Store your preview video has 30 seconds to tell users about your app and convey its usefulness. While Google’s Play Store does not have a time limit, studies show that the average viewer will look at a video for two minutes before moving on. This sort of constraint implies that you need to brainstorm ideas to highlight the most compelling features of your app and write a script which will effectively showcase each of them. Unlike Play Store, App Store does not allow localisation of videos. This means that for an iPhone app, the same preview video is viewed all over the world so including text or narration is not the best idea since you are limited to one language.
2. Capture the video. Apple’s app preview guidelines state that absolutely no real-world footage should be included in the video, unless you have developed a camera app. Your preview video should contain only animation and in-app features. We suggest using expanding dots to convey taps and moving arrows for gestures. Of course, if your app works on only one or a few screens, a preview video won’t really get you anywhere. Play Store, on the other hand, provides a set of loose guidelines/suggestions which, if followed, will ensure that your preview video effectively communicates the usability of your Android or iPhone app.
3. Add music. Including a sound track in your preview video will make it livelier but, for legal and moral reasons, you are limited to using audio tracks for which you have acquired licensing rights. Let’s just say Beethoven wouldn’t like his compositions to be used in an app without his knowledge. For this reason, several app developers source audio from SoundCloud and look for royalty-free tracks. If you are showcasing your Android or iPhone app being used then it is a good idea to include the UI sound effects to give a sense of continuity to viewers.
4. Format your video. Apple’s guidelines are very particular when it comes to preview video resolution, file type and even pixel shape. Your video has to be shot at the native resolution of devices on which it will be viewed. This means that for iPhone 6 users your video should have a resolution of 750 x 1334 and for iPhone 6 Plus: 1080 x 1920, any other resolution and your video is rejected. A tool called FFMPEG will help you easily reformat preview videos.
5. Upload your video. Play Store allows you to link promo videos from YouTube so post your preview video on YouTube and then link to it. Be sure to make the video Play Store specific, for example – don’t include an end slide that says “Download from App Store and Google Play”. App Store is more specific when it comes to preview videos – you need to upload the video using Safari, Apple’s web browser. Apple rejects videos which have non-square pixels but luckily, there are several online tools which will convert your video into a square-pixel format.
So, you are armed with valuable video making knowledge. You can go ahead and make an app preview video that will make your Android/iPhone app shine brighter than the competition! Do you have experience creating an app preview video? We would love to hear from you in the comments section below.
Dr. Ahjoku Amadi-Obi, Nigerian doctor introduced a mobile app named “HUDIBIA” to provide health care solutions to people all over the world.
This app helps the people to connect with registered medical practitioners all over the world, resulting in increasing access to health care. With this, physicians and patients can communicate with each other in local languages of Nigeria and also in English, Arabic and French.
It will deliver cost-effective and high quality health care solutions to people across the world as it uses several emerging technologies.
Users can pay their medical bills, monitor the health of their family and friends and can also seek professional clarifications regarding any health issue with the help of disease alert function in the pipeline.
Christy Byrd, professor at the university of California, Santa Cruz created an app to solve the issue of microaggressions in college.
This app helps you to collect all the details of microaggressions happening on campus. With this app, a total of 477 reports of microaggressions from more than 250 students.
Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Wednesday introduced a new mobile app to reduce, manage stress- “No More Tension”.
This app will help the users to manage their stress as it provides the users with necessary information, symptoms and how to manage it.
The minister also released a magazine named “Healthy India Initiative/ Swastha Bharat-ek-pehal”. It is a part of Goverment’s Digital India Programme and is to give priority to public health and to modify citizen-centric health services.
Google and Apple recently unveiled new updates to their mobile app store helping app developers.
These update will help developer’s apps to stand out in the fully crowded marketplace as it provides early access promotional codes for their own apps and in-app s.
Google said that they will expand their play store to new computing platforms which includes Chromebook laptops, VR headsets and wearables allowing developers to sell their apps in one marketplace.
To provide app recommendations for Google Play users, Google will also invest more in machine-learning algorithms.
These announcements follow the changes that Apple made to the App Store this year, which includes providing developers a bigger revenue. Also helping them to store unlimited number of reviews for new apps.
Google has made the difficult procedure of developing apps for play store easy.
With the guidance of Sameer Samat, who was a previous employee of Google rejoined earlier this year, the firm is sharpening play store. Along with this, it also expands support for different payment platforms.
Google’s play store is also expanding to various new platforms, including virtual reality headsets, wearable devices, and its Chromebook laptops.
Play store has made extensive use of machine learning also, a branch of artificial intelligence gathering insights from a big collection of data.
“This app comes with many special benefits, one among them is FREE FOOD”, said Whataburger reps.
On your fifth visit, you can get a shake, a cinnamon roll, fries and many other products for free of cost. This app is available on Google and Apple app stores.
Air India has introduced a new mobile app with which passengers can easily book tickets, check-in and can also manage their whole journey.
With this app, passengers can collect their boarding pass on their smart phone or smartwatch. Also, passengers will be getting regular updates on flights through the app.
Passengers can access the details of points they earned and other updates to their accounts as this app also has been integrated with Air India’s Flying Returns loyalty program.
Air India will implement this mobile platform iTravel by SITA, global technology provider.
The app will be available on Android, iOS and Windows.
Last week, DeMont, aged 60, collapsed in front of a bus stop at the University of Washington Medical Center.
A medical student arrived at the spot quickly to help and a nurse helped him to stabilize until the ambulance arrived.
The nurse got an alert through this app. With this app, you can also get to know about the location of the ambulance and monitor emergency radio traffic.
This app is available now for Android and iOS devices.
