iOS apps are just better than their Android counterparts. I thought about showing a bunch of screenshots here of App Store listings vs Google Play listings for the same app, showing how the iOS apps are always rated higher, but I don’t want to call anyone out. Just take a peek at your company’s apps, maybe look at a few others, and get back to this afterwards.
Rough, right? Apps that may be 4.5 or higher on the App Store hover around the 3.5 mark on Android, especially at smaller companies and startups. Why does this happen? To be fair, part of it does come down to rating algorithms and general attitude. iOS users are more likely to pay for apps, more likely to engage with developers, and more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, as a result. There’s a certain “sunk cost fallacy” at play there. You pay more, so you expect more, and when things go wrong, instead of being mad, you justify your purchase by assuming the issue is a fluke.
However, multiple reviewers and even a few studies have come to the conclusion that users prefer iOS versions of apps to their Android counterparts. In my personal experience, this comes down to navigation, UI consistency, “smoothness,” and a perception of quality that comes from those items. Apps across iOS all act and feel very similar, and that’s not true on Android. On top of that, devices are very different, with aspect ratio differences, feature differences, and OS differences between Android devices that just isn’t a problem on iOS. So what can an Android developer or product manager do to make sure their app is perceived as nice as iOS apps? Step one? Forget iOS.
Continue reading “How do We Make Android Apps as Good as iOS Apps?”