Ever since its launch about nine years ago, the iOS App Store has been scoring minor iterative feature and UI upgrades. This time around, however, the team at Apple decided it was high-time to introduce a complete redesign of the App store. And today, here we are talking about the said update at the company’s WorldWide Developers Conference, launched alongside iOS 11.
Now, if you look at the App Store renders attached above, you will notice that the new design has little to almost no resemblance to the previous design. As the number of developers, as well as the apps, have grown over the past years, it has become increasingly difficult for users to discover new apps.
Apple is now planning to focus on solving the said difficulty by providing its users access to a new user interface that focuses on helping you discover and learn how to use new apps. All this info would be made available on the front ‘Today’ page, introduced with this redesign. This is a daily destination for all your apps, games recommendations and app culture. This will be defined by Apple’s team of editors, who’ll share the stories behind the apps and games.
The Today tab, as mentioned in the blog post, will be focused on highlighting original stories and editorials from iOS developers across the globe. The front page can now be seen as a customized interface for the user, which will place immense focus on luring users to apps through more eye-catching content — which will be marked with the new editor’s choice badge. It has been described in the blog post as under:
Compelling stories, in-depth interviews, helpful tips and collections of must-have apps and games will showcase Apple’s unique perspective and aim to inform, help and inspire customers every day.
With this redesign, Apple is not only opening a host of opportunities for the consumers but is also providing a chance to its app developer community to upgrade their offerings with engaging content and guides to make their app pages more interesting and even more interactive. It will allow their apps to be bathed in the spotlight, displayed in peppy new and colorful app cards, which will drive installs and eventually more revenues to the developers.
In addition, two of the most popular categories in the App Store will get dedicated sections for Apps and Games. While the latter is going to be feature recommendations of new releases and updates, compelling videos, top charts just for gamers, the former will be hosting apps for everything you use, need, and enjoy, from photography to money management, shopping to social networking and more.
It’s now easier than ever to navigate the over half a million games available and find the perfect game for everyone from the casual player to the hardcore enthusiast.
Just like the Games tab, the Apps tab will have great recommendations, videos and hand-picked collections across 24 categories, as well as its own app charts.
The redesign also features also brings changes to the search, updates feature set, and product pages. The updates tab in the bottom navigation bar will enable you to quickly jump into the installed app list and install the latest updates for your favorite apps, as well as games. And the search has been updated to now also surface editorial content added by App Store developers, while also placing focus on surfacing relevant results.
The product pages have been redesigned such that all developers can spotlight their apps with more engaging content, putting the most important information front and center for the customer making a download decision. The developers can now submit up to three video app previews and five screenshots, which can also be localized for different countries. It will also enable them to be able to highlight in-app purchases to make them more prominent and stand out.
Commenting on the new design aesthetics, Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said:
Together with our incredible developer community, we’ve made the App Store the best app platform in the world, and more than 500 million unique customers visit it every week. Now, we are taking everything we’ve learned from the App Store over the past nine years and putting it into a stunning new design. Every element of the new App Store is richer, more beautiful and more engaging.
This new redesigned App Store experience will be included with the new iOS 11 operating system, which is presently available as a developer preview. A public beta program will be made available to iOS users later this month, followed by an official launch by the end of this very year.
