Learn what steps to take to check the health of your mobile app and make sure it stays in app stores. In this short guide, you'll learn the 10 most necessary steps to safeguard your app. From Apple App Store & Google Play recommendations to handling security issues and down to notification problems—we cover it all. Dive in to save your app from ruin!
Imagine the following: your mobile app is done and dusted. Your business achieved its goals. The team breathed a sigh of relief. You have had quite a few users download the app. Some of them have already left reviews. Or even a 5-star rating on Google Play or App Store. Or, maybe, you’re one step away from launching it. Time for the app health check.
Does it really matter if you had it made from scratch or used a low- or no-code platform? No. Does it matter if it’s an app for Android or iOS? Not really. What matters now is to ensure that the app stays up, the business stays afloat, the users are satisfied, the revenue keeps flowing, and the only thing you’ll have to be dealing with from now on will be the raving reviews.
Maybe you already have a maintenance team in place and now the app’s development will be slowly running its course. Maybe you don’t. One thing is clear: you may think that your app works and it’ll keep working for many years to come with only a minimal involvement from your side. Well, that won’t be the case.
Maybe your clients have already started complaining. The bugs keep piling up and you need a software tester. The features aren’t working properly. The users started to bounce.
You may wonder, ‘What’s going on with my app? How do I make sure that the overall health of my app is good enough?’. Luckily, there are concrete steps you can follow to ensure the application’s health. And availability on app stores.
In this article, we’ll share with you the top 10 steps to go through to make sure that your app is more than ready for prime time. And how to avoid health check failures.
Below are the critical questions that will help you diagnose whether your app is already a winner or needs serious upgrades. Our article describes the Google Play ad App Store requirements, user rating issues, how to handle exceptions, errors, and compatibility issues.
We’ll also cover performance evaluation and application development process, and explain how properly configuring health checks will help you identify areas for improvement and resolve most common issues.
Read on to make your app come out on top.
To safeguard your app, get through the checklist carefully. It will serve as a roadmap for completing your app’s health checks to eliminate any app-related hiccups and improve the app’s functionality, quality, and efficiency.
Log in to the store console (developer panel) and check the status of your application’s availability. The store may have suspended or removed the application due to a lack of updates per privacy policy guidelines. You can quickly complete these guidelines in the store, or you might need to add the required link in the application to a webpage.
Store requirements often change, so it’s difficult to stay up to date. Be sure to carefully check emails from the stores and follow the links below with the relevant information:
Do you know that you should have updated your application’s minimum SDK (software development kit) version by August 31st? Otherwise, the visibility of your application will be reduced. You can find more information on what should have been done here.
Apps and games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked higher in search and Apps and Games Home. That helps users find apps that resize well, aren’t letterboxed, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. Editors Choice and other curated collections and articles will also consider these criteria in the future, creating new features for optimized apps. You can find more information here.
You’ll frequently come across valuable suggestions and feedback on the application in the comments section. This is another good way to conduct an app health check. We practice responsive engagement, so we can deeply understand user needs and customize solutions to match their requirements precisely.
One of the reasons for poor app ratings and consequently a decrease in the number of users is the presence of numerous errors. Basic analytics are available in the store console. In addition, external crash analytics tools for mobile apps provide valuable insights into app crashes, enabling developers to quickly identify and resolve issues, resulting in improved app stability and user experience. These tools continuously monitor the app, prioritize critical bugs, and offer real-time alerts, helping developers optimize performance and deliver a smoother, more reliable app.
The time spent in the application, functionalities used, and the way users navigate through the app are invaluable pieces of information that will help us guide the application’s development direction, focusing on what users need the most. There are various tools available to track such information.
The current monetization model of the application might not be properly aligned with users’ needs. It’s important to consider whether the application should be:
Choosing the right monetization strategy depends on your target audience, the value your app provides, and the preferences of your users.
Are you aware that one of the factors for better visibility in the store is support for new device types like foldables, flip devices, and larger devices like tablets? More information can be found here.
You can already find an accessibility report in the Google Play console under the “Pre-launch report” section. If you’d like to learn more about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), you can read our article.
Even basic error analytics will help discover critical errors that prevent the application f rom being used. Such analysis is already available in the store console.
External crash analytics tools for mobile apps provide valuable insights into app crashes, enabling developers to quickly identify and resolve issues, resulting in improved app stability and user experience. These tools continuously monitor the app, prioritize critical bugs, and offer real-time alerts, helping developers optimize performance and deliver a smoother, more reliable app.
You can easily check the performance of your application (frame rate, loading time) or ANR errors (application not responding to user interaction) in the Google Play console. You can find the information here.
With the latest versions of Android, new permission requirements have been introduced, such as permission for receiving notifications, permission for file management, and geolocation permission. Lack of handling of these permissions can lead to issues with the application’s functionality.
Here’s a list of things to ensure in your app in that regard:
Log in to your Apple or Google developer account and check the status of your APNS certificate. If it has expired, you’ll need to renew it.
Starting from Android version 13, users need to grant permission to receive notifications. You can find more information here.
Are you facing challenges delivering new functionalities quickly? To go through the app health check successfully, you’ll need to take care of that aspect, too. If your application was developed natively, tools for sharing code between platforms might be worth considering. Please check out our article here.
Ok, by now, hopefully, you’ve answered all the questions. What’s next? Well, now is the time to analyze the results. We can help here by identifying trends, patterns, and anomalies in the data.
As we analyze the results of the health check, we’ll be looking into metrics such as response time, error rate, and resource utilization. This way we can identify areas for improvement.
For example, failed requests and error rates can indicate issues with the application’s code, configuration, or infrastructure.
Worried about your application health? The health check metrics are poor? Do you need to improve user experience? The first step to take back control over how your app perform would be to start the troubleshooting processes to reduce risk and maintain application health. Troubleshooting involves identifying and fixing issues which were found during health checks.
Optimization is the next step. This involves making changes to the application’s configuration, code, or infrastructure to improve performance and reliability. Regularly checking application health check and optimizing the application’s health can improve its overall availability and is a critical component of user experience.
All in all, giving your app a good overhaul and diving into its inner workings can bring real benefits. If you find areas that need improvement, updates, or just want advice, reach out to us. We, at Applandeo, will fine-tune your app’s health and performance. We can also ensure your customer satisfaction will shoot to the moon. With us, business growth is a done deal. Applandeo delivers only top-notch mobile solutions.
Have you gone through all of the steps? Did your app pass the health check? We’d be happy to know that it did! But if not, no worries! We are here to help. If you’ve found one or more of these issues in your app, our mobile expert will guide you through how we would handle these problems. Fill in the form below to chat with us. We’ll make your app come out on top.
Hi, I’m Marcin, COO of Applandeo
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