From my personal experience, I have been submitting applications built with Xamarin to the iOS App Store and Google Play for quite some time. After delivering nearly 40 mobile applications totaling ten million downloads, a lot of lessons are to be learned about what makes a mobile application successful or a failure. Xamarin apps are indistinguishable from Java or Objective-C apps to the end user, so you can make your app successful by following the same patterns as standard iOS or Android applications.
There is quite a bit you can do to make your app more successful. The following list contains some tips to follow:
- Pricing it right: If your application appeals to everyone and everywhere, consider a freemium model that makes revenue from ad placements or in-app purchases. However, if your app is fairly niche, you will be much better off pricing your app at $1.99 or higher. Premium apps must also hold a higher standard of quality.
- Knowing your competition: If there are other apps in the same space as yours, make sure your application is better or offers a much wider feature set than the competition. It might also be a good idea to avoid the space altogether if there are already several apps with the same functionalities as yours.
- Prompting loyal users for reviews: It is a good idea to prompt users for a review after they open your application several times. This gives users, who really like your application a chance to write a good review.
- Supporting your users: Provide a valid support e-mail address or Facebook page for you to easily interact with your users. Respond to bug reports and negative reviews—Google Play even has the option to e-mail users who write reviews on your app.
- Keeping your application small: Staying under the 100 MB limit on iOS or 50 MB on Google Play will allow users to download your application on their cellular data plan. Doing this negates the possibility of friction to install your app as users will associate a lengthy download with a slow running application.
- Submitting your app to review websites: Try to get as many reviews on the Web as possible. Apple provides the ability to send coupon codes, but with the Android version of your app, you could send your actual Android package. Sending your app to review websites or popular YouTube channels can be a great way to free advertising.
- Using an app analytics or tracking service: Reporting your app's usage and crash reports can be very helpful to understand your users. Fixing crashes in the wild and modifying your user interface to improve spending behavior is very important.
There is no silver bullet to having a successful mobile application. If your application is compelling, fulfills a need, and functions quickly and properly, you could have the next hit on your hands. Being able to deliver a consistent cross-platform experience using Xamarin will also give you a head start on your competitors.