How to publish an app to the App Store
What it takes to publish an app to the App Store and Google Play: screenshots, review questions, localisation and the numbers we watch in week one.
The listing is the product for ten seconds
Before anyone opens the app they see an icon, a title, a subtitle and two screenshots. That is the entire product for the first ten seconds, and most of the download decision happens there.
We rewrote the subtitle four times and changed nothing in the app. The subtitle that named the time commitment beat every subtitle that named features.
Screenshots do the selling
Treat them as a poster sequence, not a gallery of your interface.
What review actually asked
Less about the model, more about the money and the words around it.
Localisation is not translation
A translated store listing gets you indexed. A localised one gets you installs, because the search terms people type are not the words a dictionary returns.
We keep every screenshot string in one file per language, so a new market is a translation job and not a design job. The layout was built for three short headline lines, which is the constraint every translator gets told about up front.
The numbers we watch in week one
Not downloads. Downloads tell you the listing worked and nothing about the product.
We watch the share of new users who finish one lesson on day one, and the share who come back on day two. If those two hold, everything else is a marketing problem we can solve later.
Common questions
How long does it take to publish an app to the App Store?
The upload itself is a day and review is a few days, but rejection rounds stretch that into weeks. Submit the first build about two weeks before the date you want to launch on.
Why do most apps get rejected the first time?
Usually not for the code, but for listing and subscription inconsistencies: a price that does not match, missing renewal disclosure, a button that does nothing, or a privacy declaration that does not match reality.
Do you need separate screenshots per language?
Not required, but localised screenshots convert measurably better. If you have to pick, translating the first two images returns the most.