Компании Nokia и Microsoft объявляют о программе поддержки лучших приложений для Windows Phone.

До 20 мая происходит приём заявок приложений для Windows Phone от разработчиков, после чего экспертное жюри выберет 7 лучших из них. Победители получат смартфоны Nokia Lumia 800, а также бесплатное продвижение своих приложений в течение месяца.

According to predictions of the analytical platform App Annie, interest in mobile apps will enjoy stable growth over the next four years. So, if you’re considering bringing your app to new markets, this is the time to do it.

During my two years as the localization manager, I came to understand that localization has its own rules, and knowing them can help you adapt any product for a new market quickly and competently. These principles will be useful for anyone who wants to localize an app but doesn’t know where to start.

1. Evaluate the potential

Start with the most important thing: figuring out which languages you need to localize your app into and determining whether or not localization is justified at all.

Here’s an example from my experience: Israel isn't a high-priority market for Badoo, but the app is localized into modern Hebrew. Moreover, only 6% of Israeli Badoo users actually run the app in Hebrew (as a comparison, 62.5% of Israeli users speak English). In this particular case, localization is justified even with these statistics, but a similar situation could represent a losing proposition for your app. So, study your market.

Localizing your product can involve many pitfalls, and there are two of them that developers face AFTER the content has been localized: translating the product updates, and offering support for international users of the localized versions.

In this article, we will demonstrate how these issues can be solved with just a few clicks.

Written by Alconost

5 options to choose from

I used to work as a translator. As I speak several foreign languages, friends, colleagues and “friend-of-a-friends” — heck, even total strangers — would often approach me asking to translate “just a few sentences”.

I have translated for clients, for friends and for my own needs. And I can tell you: there are several ways to get your text translated.

How do you choose the best one? Well, it boils down to the famous “time — cost — quality” triangle. And normally we get only two of these three at a time…

Let’s weigh up the pros and cons of each method. I hope to save you a headache next time you’re translating something into another language :)

Written by Alconost

We've developed a unified four-layer model for app promotion and added our recommendations.

Before we wrote this article we had our apps downloaded over two million times, ran about 50 large promotional campaigns, and made it onto the App Store top-lists in over 24 countries to finally combine all of it into a single workflow.

You won’t find almost any obvious stuff about keywords, nice-looking icons, screenshots, or ad campaigns in this article. We’ve tried to develop a unified model for a product-focused company based on our experience by answering the questions “What? When? Why?” and even “And what then?”

If you’re developing your own app, want to start developing one, or just have a friend who’s a developer or marketing professional at a product-focused company, you’ll find lots of useful information in this article.