Here is everything you need to know from today’s WWDC Conference. A major push to #VR and the #Metaverse with Apple Vision Pro. Lots of news to review and digest.
All you need to know from WWDC 2023
Blog Archives
App Analytics: peer group benchmarks
Put your app’s performance into context using peer group benchmarks, which compare your app’s performance to that of similar apps on the App Store. Peer group benchmarks provide powerful new insights across the customer journey, enabling you to identify what works well in your app and what can be improved. Apps are placed into groups based on their App Store category, business model, and download volume to ensure relevant comparisons. Using industry-leading differential privacy techniques, peer group benchmarks provide relevant and actionable insights — all while keeping the performance of individual apps private.
Getting Featured on the App Store
The App Store showcases great apps and games that impact the lives of people around the world, helping to shine a spotlight on developers doing incredible work. Apple’s always looking to highlight new apps, games, significant updates, in-app events, and great stories.
Overview
The App Store has a global team focused on helping users discover and engage with apps and games that fit their needs. Campaigns and programs are created to help, inform, and inspire users while also helping you drive downloads and redownloads. Apple worldwide team of editors curates selections on the App Store for each Apple platform in order to help your app or game get in front of the right users, in the right places, at the right times.
Apple highlight new apps and games as well as those with significant updates, special in-app events or exclusives, cultural or seasonal moments, and more. Apple also highlights unique stories — for example, a behind-the-scenes look at how a developer launched an app that changed an industry or supported their community, or a spotlight that shows how an app helped a user solve an uncommon problem.
Factors Apple considers
Apple looks for high-quality apps and games across all categories and business models. There is no paid placement or checklist of requirements. Selection is based on a variety of factors, all of which amount to a great product that all customers will love.
UI design. Great usability, appeal, and overall quality — such as beautiful visuals or intuitive gestures and controls.
User experience. Cohesive, efficient, and valuable functionality that’s helpful and easy to use.
Innovation. Solves a unique problem for users or takes advantage of new technologies to provide an optimal user experience.
Uniqueness. Stands out from the crowd, defines a new genre, or takes a fresh approach to a familiar category.
Accessibility. Well-integrated features that provide a great experience for a broad range of users.
Localization. High-quality and relevant localizations, including culturally appropriate content and support for multiple languages.
App Store product page. Compelling screenshots, app previews, and descriptions, as well as ratings and reviews.
Additional considerations for games:
- Gameplay design
- Art and animation
- Controls
- Story and characters (if applicable)
- Replayability (if applicable)
- Sound effects and music
- Technical performance
- Overall value
Share your story with Apple
Apple World Wide Developer Conference 23
June 5 – 9, 2023. Apple Park, California
Mark your calendars for an exhilarating week of technology and community. Be among the first to learn the latest about Apple platforms, technologies, and tools. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with Apple experts and other developers. All online and at no cost.
Meet with App Store experts
February 28 to April 13, 2023
Want to make your product pages even better? Have questions about in-app events or implementing subscriptions? Connect with App Store experts and learn how you can make the most of these features. Discover how to attract new customers, test marketing strategies, optimize subscriptions, and so much more. Live presentations with Q&A will be held in multiple time zones and languages.
Registration is open to members of the Apple Developer Program.
Custom product pages
Create additional versions of your App Store product page, each of which highlights a feature or specific content, then share a page’s unique URL in your corresponding marketing efforts.
Overview
You can create additional versions of your App Store product page on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 or later to showcase different features or content within your app — such as a particular sport, character, show, or gameplay feature — and share them with different audiences through unique URLs. You can also use these pages to showcase seasonal or culturally relevant content. Each custom product page can include screenshots, promotional text, and app previews that are different from those on your default product page.
Configuring in App Store Connect
When creating a custom product page in App Store Connect, you can choose to start with a copy of your default product page or a blank page. You can then customize screenshots, promotional text, and app previews for any of your page’s localizations. Any metadata you provide must be submitted for review, which you can do independent of an app update. You can also use the App Store Connect API to automate metadata upload and submission for your custom product pages. You can have up to 35 custom product pages per app published on the App Store at a time. For a smooth review experience, make sure your screenshots and app previews follow the specifications and that all metadata follows the App Store Review Guidelines.
- Get ready to optimize your App Store product page
- Configure custom product pages
- Creating your product page
- App Store icon, app preview, and screenshots overview
Marketing custom product pages
Once you’ve created a custom product page, you can use its unique URL to share it through your marketing efforts, such as social media advertising or promotional communications. For example, you can promote a sports team in an email campaign and link to the custom product page that highlights that team. The unique URL adds a new product page ID parameter to the default product page URL. For example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mountain-climber/id12345678?ppid=45812c9b-c296-43d3-c6a0-c5a02f74bf6e
Custom product pages don’t appear when someone searches for your app or game on the App Store (except as a search results ad that you created with Apple Search Ads). However, they may appear in editorially curated selections on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs.
Advertising networks can also use custom product pages in StoreKit-rendered advertisements. They’ll use the custom product page ID as the customProductPageIdentifier when using SKOverlay, or as the SKStoreProductParameterCustomProductPageIdentifier when using SKStoreProductViewController.
Apple Search Ads lets you create Today tab ads and search results ad variations based on your eligible custom product pages. Tailor ad messaging and images for different audiences, feature launches, or seasonal promotions when you set up your campaign. Learn more about Apple Search Ads.
Measuring success
Once your custom product pages are live, you can measure their performance in App Analytics in App Store Connect. Under the Acquisition tab, you’ll see product page impressions, downloads, redownloads, and conversion rates to understand how effective each page is at encouraging app downloads. You can also view retention data and average proceeds per paying user for each custom product page. Additionally, you can compare the performance of your custom product pages against your default product page, and see whether people who downloaded your app from a custom product page stay engaged longer or spend more on in-app purchases.
Apple Announces Biggest Upgrade to App Store Pricing, Adding 700 New Price Points
Developers will also gain new flexibility to manage pricing globally
Apple® today announced the most comprehensive upgrade to pricing capabilities since the App Store® first launched, providing developers with 700 additional price points and new pricing tools that will make it easier to set prices per App Store country or region, manage foreign exchange rate changes, and more.
Since the App Store’s inception, its world-class commerce and payments system has empowered developers to conveniently set up and sell their products and services on a global scale. The App Store’s commerce and payments system offers developers an ever-expanding set of capabilities and tools to grow their businesses, from frictionless checkout and transparent invoicing for users to robust marketing tools, tax and fraud services, and refund management.
Pricing has been foundational to these capabilities, enabling developers to choose from a variety of business models, such as one-time purchases and multiple subscription types. These new pricing enhancements will be available for apps offering auto-renewable subscriptions starting today, and for all other apps and in-app purchases in spring 2023, giving all developers unprecedented flexibility and control to price their products in 45 currencies throughout 175 storefronts.
Under the updated App Store pricing system, all developers will have the ability to select from 900 price points, which is nearly 10 times the number of price points previously available for most apps. This includes 600 new price points to choose from, with an additional 100 higher price points available upon request. To provide developers around the world with even more flexibility, price points — which will start as low as $0.29 and, upon request, go up to $10,000 — will offer an enhanced selection of price points, increasing incrementally across price ranges (for example, every $0.10 up to $10; every $0.50 between $10 and $50; etc.).
In each of the App Store’s 175 storefronts, developers will be able to leverage additional pricing conventions, including those that begin with two repeating digits (e.g., ₩110,000), and will be able to price products beyond $0.99 or €X.99 endings to incorporate rounded price endings (e.g., x.00 or x.90), which are particularly useful for managing bundles and annual plans.
Starting today, developers of subscription apps will also be able to manage currency and taxes across storefronts more effortlessly by choosing a local storefront they know best as the basis for automatically generating prices across the other 174 storefronts and 44 currencies. Developers will still be able to define prices per storefront if they wish. The pricing capability by storefront will expand to all other apps in spring 2023.
For developers distributing their apps around the world, the App Store’s global equalization tools have given them a simple and convenient way to manage pricing across international markets. Today’s enhancements expand upon these capabilities, allowing developers to keep their local currency constant in any storefront of their choice, even as foreign exchange and taxes fluctuate. This means, for example, a Japanese game developer who gets most of their business from Japanese customers can set their price for the Japan storefront, and have their prices outside of the country update as foreign exchange and tax rates change. All developers will also be able to define availability of in-app purchases by storefront.
Periodically, Apple updates prices in certain regions based on changes in taxes and foreign exchange rates. This is done using publicly available exchange rate information from financial data providers to help ensure prices for in-app purchases stay equalized across all storefronts. Currently, developers can adjust pricing at any time to react to tax and foreign currency adjustments. Coming in 2023, developers with paid apps and in-app purchases will be able to set local territory pricing, which will not be impacted by automatic price adjustments.
These newly announced tools, which will begin rolling out today and continue throughout 2023, will create even more flexibility for developers to price their products while staying approachable to the hundreds of millions of users Apple serves worldwide, and in turn help developers continue to thrive on the App Store.
Ask Apple Nov 14th to 18
November 14 to 18
Join Apple for another exciting week of Ask Apple, where you can connect directly with Apple experts. Ask about integrating the latest technologies, designing intuitive UIs, testing on beta software, and so much more.
Q&As
Get your questions answered by Apple experts and engage with the developer community through text-based group chats in Slack. We’ll focus on optimizing experiences for new platforms and hardware, from supporting new features like Dynamic Island to migrating to Swift and SwiftUI. Q&As will also be available in Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese.
Topics
Accessibility & Inclusion
App Services
App Store
Audio & Video
Augmented Reality
Design
Developer Tools
Graphics & Games
Maps & Location
Photos & Camera
Privacy & Security
Apple Ad placement options
Understand where your ad can run on the App Store
Apple Search Ads Advanced offers four different ad placements to help you drive visibility and downloads of your app on the App Store:
- Today tab
- Search tab
- Search results
- Product pages — while browsing
These placements help you promote your app throughout the App Store user journey. Here’s more information about each placement option:
- Today tab ads let you reach people with high-impact creative on the front page of the App Store, where users start their visit. The ad creative for this placement is based on a custom product page you set up in App Store Connect, and must be approved for advertising before your ad can run.
- Search tab ads let you reach users before they search for something specific, with an ad that appears prominently at the top of the suggested apps list on the Search tab.
- Search results ads let you reach users when they search for something specific, with an ad at the top of relevant search results. To match your ad with potential customers’ search terms, you can choose your own keywords or use the ones we suggest. Matching is based on a direct signal of customers’ intent — their search query.
- Product pages — while browsing ads let you reach people while they browse apps on relevant pages across the App Store, whether their journey started on the App Store or from an outside link. When interested users have scrolled to the bottom of relevant product pages, ads appear at the top of the You Might Also Like list.
Below are some additional details on the similarities and differences between ad placements:
| Ad Placement Features | |
|---|---|
| Available in 61 countries and regions (including mainland China) | Search results placement only |
| Available in 60 countries and regions only (except for mainland China) | Today tab, Search tab, and product pages placements |
| Cost-per-tap pricing model | All placements |
| Daily budget | All placements |
| Optional audience settings | All placements |
| Keywords | Search results placement only |
| Bid insights | Search results placement only |
| Custom product page integration | Search results and Today tab placements |
| Ad variations based on custom product pages | Search results placement only |
| Recommendations | Search results placement only |
| Custom reports | All placements |
| Campaign Management API support | All placements |
| Apple Ads Attribution API support | All placements |
| Budget orders | All placements |
How ads are created
Ads are created using the metadata and assets you already uploaded in App Store Connect.Search tab and product pages ads feature your app name, icon, and subtitle. Today tab ads are created using a custom product page you set up in App Store Connect. For search results ads, you can create a default ad that’s based on your app’s product page, or you can create ad variations from custom product pages you set up in App Store Connect.
All ads have a blue background and ad disclosure icon.
App Store submissions now open for iOS 16.1 and iPadOS 16.1
iOS 16.1 and iPadOS 16.1, the world’s most advanced mobile operating systems, will soon be available to customers worldwide. Take advantage of Live Activities to help people stay on top of what’s happening live in your app, right from the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island on iPhone. Bring desktop-class features, such as an editor-style navigation bar and enhanced text editing menu to your iPad app, and get the most out of the latest advancements in MapKit, Metal, ARKit, Core ML, and more.
Build your app using Xcode 14.1 Release Candidate, then test and submit it for review. Please note, starting April 2023, all iOS and iPadOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 14.1 and the iOS 16.1 SDK. https://developer.apple.com/ios/submit/