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This week saw Apple announce the 2022 App Store Awards winners. Congratulations to everyone on that list! I hope your blue cubes are as beautiful as they look in the photos. 🟦

If your goal is to join the Apple Design Award or App Store Award winners, this is a great time to look at what Apple values in an app and plan out a route to put your app in a better position to get picked, because it’s certainly possible to do that.

Start with the basics. Make sure your app is useful, reliable, and well-designed, but it’s about more than that. Apple also values great accessibility, localisation, and making appropriate use of modern platform features. Have you done all that? The bad news is you just increased your chances of an award from 0% to slightly above 0%. 😬 What you need is a multiplier for all your great work.

The multiplier is letting Apple know about your app! Look at the winners and navigate through to their App Store listings. Apple had already featured the vast majority in App Store “stories”, and many have an Editors Choice badge, too. None of these apps has come from nowhere, and even if they haven’t been around for a long time, they got onto Apple’s radar quickly.

I can hear what you’re saying now … “But I don’t know anyone at Apple. How do I get my app in range of that radar you’re talking about?”

It’s not a secret. Apple have a page titled “Getting Featured on the App Store”! There’s a huge set of tips for ensuring your app is in great shape (better than my list above), and then there’s a section titled “Tell us your story” with a button. You know what to do… 😂

You have nothing to lose using that form every time you make a significant update to your app or can tell a new story about your app. If you can’t think of anything to say about your app, that’s something you need to work on, and not just so you get featured. Keeping active with marketing takes planning and lots of work.

So, take a good look at this year’s App Store Award winners. Learn from them and take inspiration from them, then tell Apple all about it, and maybe it’ll be your app on the list next year. 🤞

Dave Verwer  

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And finally...

Some would say it’s better than the real thing. 😬