Nov 25
Apple has discouraged developers from annotating their screenshots in the App Store beyond just a plain screenshot. However many developers have found that it’s helpful (and profitable) to tell a story with their screenshots, explaining the main benefits of the app. And I have yet to hear of any app rejections due to annotated screenshots.
With the introduction of the Apple Store for iPad app, Apple decided to go with annotated screenshots for on of their own apps for the first time. They did it in an interesting, and unusual way, by showing an image of an iPad running the app below a headline that explains the benefit or feature shown in each screenshot.
You could argue that the UI of an app should be so self explanatory that a quick look at a screenshot conveys all the information you need to know about the app. But I think it can be very beneficial to use annotated screenshots in the App Store, when they’re done in a tasteful way. However, I wouldn’t use Apple’s approach of displaying the outline of the iPhone or iPad device as this takes up way too much real estate in the screenshot. And it also opens up a big minefield that you have to navigate when you use images of Apple’s products in your marketing. See the first link above for more details.
November 29th, 2013 at 01:32
There is only one thing that’s worst than annotated screen shots, and that is when they make a long image-strip with multiple screenshots and annotations and chop it into images of the right size, ending up with screenshots split across screenshots. Why on earth would they do something like that??
If they used the description for describing the product instead of bragging about all the awards they got, maybe people would start reading the description instead of only looking at screenshots…