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Best Practices for Google Play App Distribution

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Google Play is the central place where you upload apps for distribution. However, it is necessary to follow certain best practices not only for popularity but also to receive positive reviews for your app.

According to Google, you should make use of two-step authentication for your Google account for better security and transfer the apps to a separate account other than your personal Gmail account. Moreover, you should grant only minimum level of access to your team members instead of sharing passwords. As a final step you should monitor the list of members who have been granted access and delete them if they are no longer involved with the project.

Keystore is an important element in Google Play and is required every time you publish an update. In order to secure it, you should choose a strong password which is different from your Google account. Moreover, you should backup your keystore preferably in a pen drive.

Google advises you to regularly check the e-mail address which you used to register with developer console since it is on this e-mail you receive information about your app and account. Your app users contact you using the specified customer support email address and hence it is vital to monitor this id on a daily basis. It is preferable to make use of a web based system to track support queries.

Before proceeding to publish an app, it is better to refer the recently launched guides and examples for Google Play’s developer program policies and developer distribution agreement. This is because once you publish an app for free, it is not possible to convert it into a paid one although you are allowed to add in-app products.

If more than one member is involved with the creation of your app, then you should clearly allocate roles for each job such as updates, statistics, optimization tips, read and reply to user reviews and revenue tracking. As a team leader, you should provide access for all members to the developer console.

Content is vital for the success of your app and hence you should allocate the job of creating description, graphics and pricing to a person who is well versed with the language. In addition to the above mentioned guidelines, you should set your primary language including additional languages, optimize image assets by including a feature graphic in your Google Play listing, create icons with the launcher icon generator, display of screenshots for both phones and tablets showing both portrait and landscape layouts.

"Users are 47% more likely to trust & download content when you use the official Google Play Badge. Use the device art generator to create beautiful marketing material," said Ellie Powers, Product Manager, Google Play.

Ellie also suggests you to regularly check the Android developer’s blog, follow +Android developers, and check the developer console regularly for announcements.

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