re: Top Ranked – Market Testing

Ben Riga - Microsoft — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:02:36 GMT

Hello Ben, thank you for writing the interesting post.

As we know the marketplace has a strange situation with paid apps. There is big difference in number of downloads between a paid app with trial that as ads vs. a free app with ads, although practically both are equivalent.

So, if one starts with a higher price then the total number of downloads are going to be further low.

And we also know that marketplace decides the ranking in paid app categories based on total number of downloads or at least that plays a significant role.

Thus by pricing higher, you reduce total downloads and lose ranking/position. And I guess not many users will scroll beyond the top 100 apps in a list/category.

On a side note, search is another important functionality to discover apps but it's completely broken in marketplace at the moment. I think it should be powered by a real engine link Bing.

Regarding A/B testing, I guess it's not possible for an app which is already published to all regions. Right?

Looking forward to your thoughts on above.

Thank you.

Gaurav (@ngreader)