A fantastic trailer is really the first thing that gets you lining up at the box office, isn’t it? The phenomenon is indisputable. If you create a great preview, a glimpse of the wonderful entertainment or spectacle that lies ahead, you’ll be able to convince people to come watch. In the case of apps, that’s the job of a fantastic app preview – to get people to download your app. Filmmakers get their best people on the job to cut the trailer. Are putting your best effort into creating an app preview? Today, we’ll help you nail it. Let’s talk about how to showcase the best features of your app, present your brand’s goal, create a sense of excitement, stimulate the users into action and show the vast potential of your app, all in under 30 seconds. So let’s dive in.
How Important Is An App Preview?
That depends on how you define important. You don’t technically need a preview to submit your app to the app store. However, users today want to be sure they are spending their time, bandwidth and phone storage on something worthwhile. So they’re watching not just one but up to three app previews before downloading an app. An app’s listing just looks incomplete and half-hearted without a proper app preview, all screenshots, detailed descriptions and all the other information that can possibly be fitted on the app storefront.
So to show the audience that your app has a solid potential and also to show how committed you are to it, create an app preview. It’s a little bit of work, but worth the rewards it brings. According to a study by StoreMaven, having an app preview can help increase your app’s conversion rates by 20-35%.
1. Identify and Explain Your Core Value Proposition
The first thing your app preview – and your app – needs, in fact, is a purpose. What is the core value you are offering? A thrilling game experience? An enlightening knowledge experience? A way to get some mundane, tedious job faster? A quick dose of entertainment? You need to tell your audience exactly what they stand to gain from your app. So your app preview must address that well and quickly. It needs to show them what to expect. Also use the app preview to show how your app does things differently from what the users might have already seen. Briefly talk about all your top features, be it high quality graphics or top-class handmade content.
2. Create a Story
Sure app previews can simply be a collection of screen grabs of the app’s features, but the better way to do that is create a short but well rounded story around your app experience. Talk very briefly about the problems users might be facing in their everyday lives and how much time it is costing them or how annoying it can be. Then elaborate on just how your app can solve that problem and make the users’ lives easier. Based on that premise, write a script and edit it to perfectly summarize what you wish to say, in the slotted time. Read up on this elaborate guide by Apple to learn more.
3. Create the Preview Visual
This is the part where you bring in the designing, animation and graphics, to visualize the story you just wrote. It is best advised to use real app visuals only because whatever is in your preview, your users expect to see that after they download, so refrain from creating a special visual or animation just for the preview. How you cut, edit and organize these app visuals to tell a story is what makes the difference. You need your visuals to align with your script as well as show some of the most stunning visuals and imagery of your app. The visuals must go with the flow of the script as well as show a complete journey. So instead of a random shot of a man running across a mountain, show a screen grab of what feature was clicked on to launch this action and what that led to. Use text to reinforce your point as well as suitable background music to accentuate the effect. Be sure to follow the chronological set-up of your app instead of showing the big finish first and showing haphazard videos of other random parts in an unorganized manner.
In addition to showing the attractive content of your app, also display how easy it is to navigate your app. Show easy touch buttons and visuals of someone easily navigating from one section or another. Show how easily menus open when summoned and swiftly move out of the way when done. If there are any knotty areas in the app that your users seemed to struggle with in the user testing phase, be sure to tackle them with care so that your potential users understand how to use them without a hiccup.
4. Watch How the Best Are Doing It
Watching how other successful apps are creating their previews can be one of the most powerful ways of firing up your imagination and doing things the trendy way. This might in fact be the first step many people undertake – begin with a prolonged viewing of all possible app previews they can lay their hands on. We put this towards the end of the list however, so that you have had the chance to work up your own original plan first.
You see, while scouring your competition and viewing hoe the reigning champs are playing it is vital to the game, viewing too many app previews can leave you with a potent hangover of what you watched. This can affect the originality of your app preview as you invariably and almost involuntarily end up emulating their good work. That is why getting a rough blueprint of what you want to do can be a good idea before you watch how others do it.
Having don’t that of course, spend some time viewing some of the best app previews out there, from the likes of Calm and Waze, to see how you can make your script and visuals even more precise, edit them better, craft your story better and overall, learn and adapt.
5. Set Realistic Expectations
App previews and movie trailers are made with the sole purpose of building excitement and promising a great time. However, take care to keep the preview aligned with the actual app. Over promising and under-delivering can lead to unrealistic expectations tat don’t get met and hence lead to disappointment, uninstalls and even bad reviews. So be honest with your app preview and set realistic expectations.
Conclusion
Creating an app preview might seem like the last straw that’s just too heavy to lift after all the hard work you put into developing the app itself. However, no movie ever released without a trailer. If it did, it probably didn’t fill the seats. With millions of apps in the app stores today, standing out is a challenge and a killer app preview can help you do just that. It can make the audience sit up and take notice. It can show them the attractive features of your app and convince them to download your app. So invest another day or two into creating a preview for your app, and watch the results pour in.
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