Don'ts of Making App Screenshots
Just look at the above screenshot of an App Store page of an app, notice how much space is gained by those screenshots? nearly two third of all the space! It is huge. So, It’s really important to make use of it. Because as we all know people scroll through the app store just at a glance, and you have to make sure that you catch the eye when they do that
So how do you go about implementing screenshots?
Let me guide you, there are three predominant strategies that we’ve seen people do.
One is just very simple screenshot taken while the app is in use and your hope is that the user will be able to gather what the feature is or what your app is about just by looking at the screenshots.
A slightly better way is just by adding a brief sentence or two above the screenshots to tell poeple what that amazing feature is. And essentially sell them on downloading it.
Third way is fully designed version where you really show off all of your features and how your app is differentiated from other similar apps by using full blown designs that incorporate this screenshots as well as explain a text.
So depending on how much budget, depending on how much time you can choose to go with one of these three types of screenshots.
Now what a good screenshot should look like will be unique to your app. And as with app icons are requires quite a bit of split testing just showing users different screenshots and seeing which ones really draw them in or which ones really persuade them to download the app and it will be something you need to experiment and think about
But here’s a few rules to follow on what not to do.
Firstly if you are using images that look like stock photography just don’t do it because it inevitably looks cheesy and makes you look really cheap
Secondly if you have so much explain the tags that you can no longer see the screenshot below it. Don’t do this because I don’t know what this app is showing me anymore and I don’t want to read through reams and reams of tags explaining to me how great this app is. This is a total fail in terms of the screenshots. It is still about the visual imagery. So use people’s faces use things that draw poeple in instead of adding a loads of text.
Keep it to at maximum two sentences and ideally just a phrase.
Thirdly if you are going to use images in your screenshot make sure they are not pixelate. Make sure that they are the right size and also if you can cut out images and you know do some photoshopping. Make sure you’ve got somebody who can actually use photoshop and cut things out properly.
Believe it or not the above screenshot is from Craigslist and from the looks of it, it looks like they put up a Craigslist ad looking for just any random freelance design who will design screenshots a big company like that you would expect a little bit better so be better than Craigslist, make sure that your designs actually look good.
