iTunes App Store pages get overhauled

The iTunes App Store saw a mass overhaul over the weekend in a move to more vibrantly showcase apps on their individual pages while simultaneously presenting more relevant information to potential buyers.

One big change in the new way that the App Store displays individual apps is in streamlining the description area. Seemingly in response to the less ethical developers who spammed that area with glossolalic spam keywords, the new description area requires pithier, more concise descriptions. After a couple of lines, the new system truncates the app description with a “Read more” link. Hopefully, the new system will make it easier for users to figure out just what an app’s main features are, but for now, that’ll have to wait until developers re-write their descriptions to take into account the new format.

Additionally, each app’s icon takes up much more real estate on the app page, making an attractive and professionally designed icon even more important in attracting customers. App screenshots are also more intuitively displayed: instead of showing only one screenshot at a time, with the existence of other screenshots conveyed by clickable gray bubbles, the new system shows all available screenshots in a scrollable frame.

The left column of each individual app’s page also now reveals a more organized view of the specifics of the app, including version, developer, and rating, as well as a quick and easy way to navigate to the most popular apps by the same developers. Each individual app page also features a row of other app recommendations based on your purchases at the bottom, cheerfully and colorfully arrayed by their app icon.

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Overall, a nice update which should heighten the signal-to-noise ratio in the average App Page. Thumbs up, Apple.

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