Publishing to Google Play Launch Checklist
March 13th, 2014 | Published in Google Student Blog
Most apps for The AdMob Student App Challenge are finished at this point; it’s now time to think developing a product marketing plan for your teams app. For a more in-depth pre-launch guide, take a look at the Android checklist here. The goal of this post is to provide some context around the best way for your team to prep your app for launch, and to make sure it’s as successful as possible on the Google Play store.
As always, follow AdMob on G+ for any new updates about the Challenge, and enjoy building the marketing strategy for your apps; as any Google product marketer would tell you, what happens after the launch is what determines whether a project was successful or not.
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Understand the publishing process.
- Please see the publishing workflow for more information.
- Understand Google Play policies and agreements.
- Test for core app quality.
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Determine your app’s content rating.
- Choose from: Everyone, Low Maturity, Medium, High.
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Determine county distribution.
- Once you determine what countries you want to offer to, you can begin the process of localization. Here’s a handy checklist to use when considering localization.
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Confirm the app’s overall size.
- Currently, the maximum size for an APK published on Google Play is 50 MB.
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Confirm the app’s platform and screen compatibility ranges.
- Before publishing, it's important to make sure that your app is designed to run properly on the Android platform versions and device screen sizes that you want to target.
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Decide whether your app will be free or priced.
- Deciding whether you app will be free or paid is important because, on Google Play, free apps must remain free.
- Consider using in-app billing.
- Set prices for your products (if necessary).
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Prepare promotional graphics and materials.
- When you publish on Google Play, you can supply a variety of high-quality graphic assets to showcase your app or brand. After you publish, these appear on your product details page, in store listings and search results, and elsewhere.
- Build and upload the release-ready APK.
- Plan a beta release.
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Complete the app’s product details.
- On Google Play, your app's product information is shown to users on its product details page, the page that users visit to learn more about your app and the page from which they will decide to purchase or download your app, on their Android devices or on the web.
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Link to Google Play in your various marketing campaigns.
- Using a Google Play badge gives you an officially branded way to promote your app to Android users; doing so can really help drive downloads.
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Final checks and publishing
- When you think you are ready to publish, sign in to the Developer Console and take a few moments for a few final checks.
- Support users after launch.
As always, follow AdMob on G+ for any new updates about the Challenge, and enjoy building the marketing strategy for your apps; as any Google product marketer would tell you, what happens after the launch is what determines whether a project was successful or not.