Android™ Tablet Application Development For Dummies®

Clicking Publish and Watching the Installs Soar

You've finally published your first application — now it's time to watch the millions start rolling in, right? Well, kind of. Whether you're an independent developer or a corporate developer, you need to be aware of the end user's experience with your app on various devices. There are various ways to identify how your application is doing:

• Current Overall User Rating: A five-star rating is the best. The higher average rating you have, the better.
• User Comments: Read them! People take the time to write them, so provide them the courtesy of reading them — you'd be surprised the great ideas that people provide to you for free. Most of the time I've found if I implement the most commonly requested feature, users get extremely excited about it and will come back and update their comment with a much more positive boost in rating.
• Error Reports: These reports are submitted by users who were gracious enough to let you know that your app experienced a run-time exception. The error report contains stack trace information — that is, a report of the sequence of instructions your app followed that led to the error — which can be very helpful in debugging. (Stack traces are available only for devices running Android 2.2 and later.) Review these reports and fix the errors. Apps that get a lot of force-close errors tend to receive bad reviews — quickly.
• Total Installs: The total number of times your app has been installed.
• Active Installs: The total ...