The Beautiful Design Winter 2013 Collection on Google Play

Posted by Marco Paglia, Android Design Team

While beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, designing apps for a platform also requires an attention to platform norms to ensure a great user experience. The Android Design site is an excellent resource for designers and developers alike to get familiar with Android’s visual, interaction, and written language. Many developers have taken advantage of the tools and techniques provided on the site, and every now and then we like to showcase a few notable apps that go above and beyond the guidelines.

This summer, we published the first Beautiful Design collection on Google Play. Today, we're refreshing the collection with a new set of apps just in time for the holiday season.

As a reminder, the goal of this collection is to highlight beautiful apps with masterfully crafted design details such as beautiful presentation of photos, crisp and meaningful layout and typography, and delightful yet intuitive gestures and transitions.

The newly updated Beautiful Design Winter 2013 collection includes:

Timely (by Bitspin), a clock app that takes animation to a whole new level. Screen transitions are liquid smooth and using the app feels more like playing with real objects than fussing around with knobs and buttons. If you’ve ever wondered if setting an alarm could be fun, Timely unequivocally answers “yes”.

Circa, a news reader that’s fast, elegant and full of beautiful design details throughout. Sophisticated typography and banner image effects, coupled with an innovative and "snappy" interaction, makes reading an article feel fast and very, very fun.

Etsy, an app that helps you explore a world of wonderful hand-crafted goods with thoughtfully designed screen transitions, beautifully arranged layouts, and subtle flourishes like a blur effect that lets you focus on the task at hand. This wonderfully detailed app is an absolute joy to use.

Airbnb, The Whole Pantry, Runtastic Heart Rate Pro, Tumblr, Umano, Yahoo! Weather… each with delightful design details.

Grand St. and Pinterest, veterans of the collection from this summer.

If you’re an Android developer, make sure to play with some of these apps to get a sense for the types of design details that can separate good apps from great ones. And remember to review the Android Design guidelines and the Android Design in Action video series for more ideas on how to design your next beautiful Android app.

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Bring Your Apps into the Classroom, with Google Play for Education

Posted by Shazia Makhdumi, Head of Strategic EDU Partnerships, Google Play team

Google Play for Education has officially launched. It’s an extension of Google Play that’s designed for schools, simplifying discovery of educational apps and enabling developers and content providers to reach K-12 educators in the U.S. It offers bulk purchasing with purchase orders and instant distribution of educational apps, videos and other educational content to students' Android tablets via the cloud. Google Play for Education helps your apps gain visibility with the right audiences, without having to knock on school doors.

If you've built an Android app that would be awesome for schools—or even have an idea for one—now's the time to jump in. We'll put you one click away from getting purchased and installed by entire school districts. Class Dojo, Explain Everything, Nearpod, and Socrative are already getting discovered in Google Play for Education.

How to join Google Play for Education

If you already have an educational Android app you can use the Google Play Developer Console to mark your apps for inclusion in Google Play for Education. Marking your app identifies it as suitable for the US K-12 educational market and queues it for educator approval. These educators perform a first-pass qualification of apps, assigning the appropriate subject, grade, and common core standards metadata, while evaluating if the app meets the Google Play for Education criteria for classroom use.

Designing great apps for classrooms

High quality apps are top priority for teachers. Whether you already have an existing K-12 educational app or are looking to build one, take a look at our detailed requirements and guidelines—which we have compiled for you based on educator feedback—to ensure your app is appropriate for a K-12 environment. Also ensure that your app is optimized for both 7” and 10” Android tablets. Then, upload your new or updated app through the Developer Console, opt in to Google Play for Education, and publish. We will email you when your app has been evaluated.

For more information, please visit the Google Play for Education pages on the Android developer site. We are excited to be supporting schools to bring the best content and tools to their students. We look forward to seeing your app on Google Play for Education.

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App Translation Service Now Available to All Developers

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Today we are happy to announce that the App Translation Service, previewed in May at Google I/O, is now available to all developers. Every day, more than 1.5 million new Android phones and tablets around the world are turned on for the first time. Each newly activated Android device is an opportunity for you as a developer to gain a new user, but frequently, that user speaks a different language from you.

To help developers reach users in other languages, we launched the App Translation Service, which allows developers to purchase professional app translations through the Google Play Developer Console. This is part of a toolbox of localization features you can (and should!) take advantage of as you distribute your app around the world through Google Play.

We were happy to see that many developers expressed interest in the App Translation Service pilot program, and it has been well received by those who have participated so far, with many repeat customers.

Here are several examples from developers who participated in the App Translation Service pilot program: the developers of Zombie Ragdoll used this tool to launch their new game simultaneously in 20 languages in August 2013. When they combined app translation with local marketing campaigns, they found that 80% of their installs came from non-English-language users. Dating app SayHi Chat expanded into 13 additional languages using the App Translation Service. They saw 120% install growth in localized markets and improved user reviews of the professionally translated UI. The developer of card game G4A Indian Rummy found that the App Translation Service was easier to use than their previous translation methods, and saw a 300% increase with user engagement in localized apps. You can read more about these developers’ experiences with the App Translation Service in Developer Stories: Localization in Google Play.

To use the App Translation Service, you’ll want to first read the localization checklist. You’ll need to get your APK ready for translation, and select the languages to target for translation. If you’re unsure about which languages to select, Google Play can help you identify opportunities. First, review the Statistics section in the Developer Console to see where your app has users already. Does your app have a lot of installs in a certain country where you haven’t localized to their language? Are apps like yours popular in a country where your app isn’t available yet? Next, go to the Optimization Tips section in the Developer Console to make sure your APK, store listing, and graphics are consistently translated.

You’ll find the App Translation Service in the Developer Console at the bottom of the APK section — you can start a new translation or manage an existing translation here. You’ll be able to upload your app’s file of string resources, select the languages you want to translate into, select a professional translation vendor, and place your order. Pro tip: you can put your store listing text into the file you upload to the App Translation Service. You’ll be able to communicate with your translator to be sure you get a great result, and download your translated string files. After you do some localization testing, you’ll be ready to publish your newly translated app update on Google Play — with localized store listing text and graphics. Be sure to check back to see the results on your user base, and track the results of marketing campaigns in your new languages using Google Analytics integration.

Good luck! Bonne chance ! ご幸運を祈ります! 행운을 빌어요 ¡Buena suerte! Удачи! Boa Sorte!

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Tablet changes in Google Play coming up November 21

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Fueled by the Nexus 7 and other great devices, more than 70 million Android tablets have been activated. Thousands of developers have already designed their apps to look great on tablets, and with the holidays fast approaching, we’re making it even easier for the next wave of tablet owners to discover great apps and games.

Play Store tablet changes coming up on November 21

Earlier this year, Google Play added a “designed for tablets” section, where users could easily discover apps that look great on their 7”- and 10”-tablets. This section includes only apps and games which meet criteria and guidelines we established last year. (Here’s an overview if you missed it.) Developers who invest the time to meet the criteria are seeing great results; take Remember The Milk, which saw an 83% increase in tablet downloads from being in this section. (see the whole story here).

On November 21, the Play Store will make a series of changes so it’s even easier for tablet users to find those apps that are best for their devices. First, by default, users browsing Google Play on a tablet will now see apps and games that are designed for tablets on the top lists (Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, Top New Free, and Trending). Tablet users will still be able to switch the view so they can see all apps or games if they choose. Also starting November 21, apps and games that do not meet the “designed for tablets” criteria will be marked as “designed for phones” for users who browse the Play Store on tablets.

You’ll want to make sure that your app is designed for tablets; read more about how to do this at the end of this blog post.

Make sure your app is ready!

If you want to be sure your app is included in the “Designed for tablets” view in time for the November 21 Play Store changes, go to the Developer Console to check your tablet optimization tips. If you see any issues listed there, you’ll need to address them in your app and upload a new binary for distribution. If there are no issues listed, your app is eligible to be included in the “Designed for tablets" view in the top lists.

Also, make sure to read the full tablet quality checklist to understand how to build outstanding tablet experiences.

Everyday, thousands of Android developers are taking advantage of the tremendous Android tablet opportunity. The flood of new users coupled with the increased screen size means new user experiences, more engagement and more monetization opportunities. We’re excited to see what you do!

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Improved App Insight by Linking Google Analytics with Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

A key part of growing your app’s installed base is knowing more about your users — how they discover your app, what devices they use, what they do when they use your app, and how often they return to it. Understanding your users is now made easier through a new integration between Google Analytics and the Google Play Developer Console.

Starting today, you can link your Google Analytics account with your Google Play Developer Console to get powerful new insights into your app’s user acquisition and engagement. In Google Analytics, you’ll get a new report highlighting which campaigns are driving the most views, installs, and new users in Google Play. In the Developer Console, you’ll get new app stats that let you easily see your app’s engagement based on Analytics data.

This combined data can help you take your app business to the next level, especially if you’re using multiple campaigns or monetizing through advertisements and in-app products that depend on high engagement. Linking Google Analytics to your Developer Console is straightforward — the sections below explain the new types of data you can get and how to get started.

In Google Analytics, see your app’s Google Play referral flow

Once you’ve linked your Analytics account to your Developer Console, you’ll see a new report in Google Analytics called Google Play Referral Flow. This report details each of your campaigns and the user traffic that they drive. For each campaign, you can see how many users viewed listing page in Google Play and how many went on to install your app and ultimately launch it on their mobile devices.

With this data you can track the effectiveness of a wide range of campaigns — such as blogs, news articles, and ad campaigns — and get insight into which marketing activities are most effective for your business. You can find the Google Play report by going to Google Analytics and clicking on Acquisitions > Google Play > Referral Flow.

In the Developer Console, see engagement data from Google Analytics

If you’re already using Google Analytics, you know how important it is to see how users are interacting with your app. How often do they launch it? How much do they do with it? What are they doing inside the app?

Once you link your Analytics account, you’ll be able to see your app’s engagement data from Google Analytics right in the Statistics page in your Developer Console. You’ll be able to select two new metrics from the drop-down menu at the top of the page:

• Active users: the number of users who have launched your app that day


• New users: the number of users who have launched your app for the first time that day

These engagement metrics are integrated with your other app statistics, so you can analyze them further across other dimensions, such as by country, language, device, Android version, app version, and carrier.

How to get started

To get started, you first need to integrate Google Analytics into your app. If you haven’t done this already, download the Google Analytics SDK for Android and then take a look at the developer documentation to learn how to add Analytics to your app. Once you’ve integrated Analytics into your app, upload the app to the Developer Console.

Next, you’ll need to link your Developer Console to Google Analytics. To do this, go to the Developer Console and select the app. At the bottom of the Statistics page, you’ll see directions about how to complete the linking. The process takes just a few moments.

That’s it! You can now see both the Google Play Referral Flow report in Google Analytics and the new engagement metrics in the Developer Console.

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