Clicking Publish and Watching the Installs Soar

You've finally published your first application — now it's time to watch the millions start rolling in, right? Well, kind of. Whether you're an independent developer or a corporate developer, you need to be aware of the end user's experience with your app on various devices. There are various ways to identify how your application is doing:

• Current Overall User Rating: A five-star rating is the best. The higher average rating you have, the better.
• User Comments: Read them! People take the time to write them, so provide them the courtesy of reading them — you'd be surprised the great ideas that people provide to you for free. Most of the time I've found if I implement the most commonly requested feature, users get extremely excited about it and will come back and update their comment with a much more positive boost in rating.
• Error Reports: These reports are submitted by users who were gracious enough to let you know that your app experienced a run-time exception. The error report contains stack trace information — that is, a report of the sequence of instructions your app followed that led to the error — which can be very helpful in debugging. (Stack traces are available only for devices running Android 2.2 and later.) Review these reports and fix the errors. Apps that get a lot of force-close errors tend to receive bad reviews — quickly.
• Total Installs: The total number of times your app has been installed.
• Active Installs: The total number of users who currently have your application installed.

  Keep track of total installs versus active installs. Although this isn't the best metric for identifying user satisfaction, it is an unscientific way to determine if users who install your app tend to keep it on their phone. If users are keeping your app, they must like it for one reason or another!

• Direct E-mail: Users can return to the Android Market to find your e-mail address or website address. They will e-mail you to ask you questions about features or to send comments about their user experience. They may also send you ideas about how to improve your app or to ask you to create another app that does something they cannot find on the Market. People love to be a part of the process. Try to reply to users within 24 hours — I aim for four hours — to keep your users happy. Although this is difficult to sustain if your app has a million active users, your customers will appreciate your efforts.

Keeping in touch with your user base is a large task, but by doing so you reap the rewards of dedicated, happy customers who will refer their friends and family to your application.