Fabulous Screenshots for the Million Download App
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
We’ve discussed many of the important elements that go into determining whether your app will be downloaded and getting your app to the top of Android Market . We’ve discussed:
Now it’s time to discuss another equally important part of presenting the app’s overall image to consumers before they download. Let’s talk about screenshots.
Android Market requires them and it’s important that these screenshots be good and that they represent your app. Screenshots should look nice. They should show something interesting or fun in the app.
There are a few ways to get these screenshots from your AppsGeyser app. The first and best way to get these screenshots is to get screenshots from your Android phone.
Android phones don’t have a hardware camera button, which means that they don’t automatically do screenshots, so you’ll need a special program that makes your phone do screenshots. There are ways to do screenshots for free, but they involve rooting your phone, and we can’t recommend them. Instead, we recommend the inexpensive Screen Capture Shortcut. (It costs around one US dollar.) You’ll need to shake the phone to get your screen captures and then either email yourself the photos or link up your phone to your computer to get the pictures. We highly recommend this method.
If you don’t have an Android phone, or you can’t use screen captures for some reason, you have a few options. One option is to get a screen capture from the AppsGeyser preview. We don’t recommend this option except as a last resort, as this will give you only one picture, and you really need two, and this won’t give you a great picture. Another option is to go to the website you’re using for content, capture some of the screen, using PrintScreen, and use IrfanView or another image editor to crop it to the correct size and shape. It will be hard to make the images look nice this way, but it is possible.
Whichever method you choose, remember that screen captures are part of the first impression of your app and they should be created and chosen carefully.
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter,
If you’re interested in making your own Android apps, start creating apps here.
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