5 essential tips to get your app published on the App Stores

Releasing a commercial mobile app isn’t just about development. Think of it like preparing for a flight—no matter how much time you spend packing and planning, if you don’t meet the airline’s rules, you could find yourself grounded. In the same way, launching your app depends on getting through the approval process for the Apple App Store (iOS) and Google Play Store (Android).

You’d be surprised how many people go through the hard work of building an app, only to face expensive rework or even have to abandon the project because of rejections at this stage.

The approval process is much more than a box-ticking exercise. The stores have strict rules about what they will accept, and they call all the shots.

The good news is that there’s a lot you can do to tip the odds in your favour. In this article, I’ll walk you through the app review process and share my top 5 tips for preparing your app for a smooth takeoff.

The process

If you’re releasing both iOS and Android apps, you’ll need to go through this process twice, once for each of the stores. It is almost the same in both cases, and here are the steps:

1. Your developers build the app, and upload it to the stores.

2. You share the build with testers. These can be your internal team, and a wider set of beta testers.

3. You submit the app for review.

4. The app may be rejected. This is very common, even for well established apps. At this point you may need to provide more information to the reviewer, or you might need to fix issues and start again with a new build.

5. Your app is approved.

6. After approval, you can publish the app (but you don’t have to! This will be important later in the article, when we look at submitting for reviews early).

7. Once you have published the app, it is live on the stores and available to the public.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a one-time process. Each update to your app will require another round of approvals, making it crucial to stay in compliance with store guidelines over time.

Now that you understand the review process, let's get into my tips to ensure your app is approved smoothly. The first tip is often the most overlooked.

Tip 1 - Read the store guidelines and policies

Imagine you’re travelling by plane. If you accidentally pack prohibited items in your luggage — maybe you didn’t realise you couldn’t carry your shower gel in your hand luggage, or your laptop won’t turn on when requested — you’ve got to make a choice. Either give up the item, or don’t take the flight.

Just as travelling by plane is different to travelling by car, building for mobile is different to web and other platforms. You can’t build whatever you want. The app stores are walled-gardens, and even app concepts that are perfectly reasonable, moral and legal might be against store policies.

So my first tip: always read the guidelines before you start. These tell you the rules for distributing on the stores. If your app doesn’t comply, it won’t be approved and you won’t be able to distribute it. Checking the rules first ensures your app is viable before you go to the expense of building it.

For Apple, you need to follow the App Review Guidelines. As the name suggests, these are guidelines and don’t cover every eventuality. Ultimately, it’s up to the discretion of whoever reviews your app as to whether or not it is accepted. The document is dry but readable, so I’d encourage you to read it in its entirety. Apple also provides the App Review page which gives information on how to prepare for review, and common rejection reasons to avoid.

For the Google Play Store, you need to comply with their Developer Program Policies, and the supporting policy documents which can be found through their Help Center. The documentation goes into a lot of detail, which makes it tricky to navigate and quite intimidating. I’d encourage you to read the program policy document, and search for anything relating to your app or business idea to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

Gotchas

The guidelines / policies change over time. Your app will need regular updates, so you need to keep up to date.

• It’s not always obvious that something you’re building is against the rules, even if you’ve read all the policies.

• You can be rejected in the future for something that was previously approved, even if nothing related to it has changed. Be very wary of skirting around the edge of guidelines, as you might get caught out later!

• Don’t try to start a fight with Apple or Google. No matter how unfair you think their rules are, you won’t win, and it won’t be worth the stress.

• The rules are similar for iOS and Android, but an approval on one of the stores doesn’t guarantee approval on the other.

Even if you’re familiar with the rules, your app isn’t guaranteed to be approved. How can you be sure your app will pass? Follow tip 2 to test the waters early and often.

Tip 2 - Submit for store reviews early and regularly

We’re at the airport again. It’s a good idea to check in, go through passport control and get to your gate as early as possible. Then if there are any problems, you can get them sorted and get on the plane. If you leave it to the last minute, you might miss your flight.

Just like getting through passport control, the only way to be 100% sure that your app will be approved, is to actually get it approved. Getting approval early in your development process will massively reduce your risk, compared to waiting until you’re ready to launch.

There are a couple of pieces of insider knowledge that can help you here:

1. Submitting your app for review doesn’t mean you actually have to release it to the public.

2. Early rejections won’t make it harder for you to get your app approved. It doesn’t need to be perfect when you first submit, and in fact most apps are rejected often during their lifecycle, particularly in the early stages.

This means that you can safely submit your app for approval much earlier in the development process than you might have thought, and continue to resubmit as you make changes to your functionality.

I can’t overstate how much this will reduce your risk compared to waiting until the end to submit for review. You will catch potential issues much earlier, giving you time to pivot and confidence that your app meets the necessary standards before it’s time to launch.

Gotchas

• Make sure you set up the stores to manage releases manually. You don’t want your app to be released automatically when it passes review if you’re not ready for it to go public.

• Your app will be rejected if it doesn’t contain enough functionality. If that happens to you, don’t worry. Add more, and try again.

• If you are rejected, you might only be told about the first issue that was found. Be sure to fix it and try again even if you are confident you can resolve it, as it could be masking other rejection reasons.

• Your app will be rejected if there are references to test or beta anywhere within the app or its branding, so you’ll need to remove these.

• You will need to set up your store page with descriptions and screenshots before you can submit. You can add the bare minimum for early review, but set up your page properly before you release to the public.

Submitting early helps you catch potential issues with store approval, but there’s more you can do. Follow tip 3 to help you prepare for review and beyond.

Tip 3 - Get people to use your app before you release it

The pilots are already on your plane, and they’re running the technical checks, making sure everything is working as it should. They can resolve minor issues, but for bigger issues they might need to delay takeoff, or even cancel the flight. That’s not ideal, but much better than having a technical issue at 35,000ft with a plane full of passengers and crew!

To avoid issues when your app goes live, get it in the hands of as many people as possible before you release it. Both the App Store and Play Store offer mechanisms for sharing your app. You can distribute it to your internal team and a wider set of beta testers ahead of launch.

If it’s only been tested by your internal development and test team, there are lots of things that can, and will, go wrong! Different network speeds, geographic locations, permission settings, and, accessibility settings are just some of the factors that will impact whether or not your app behaves itself when it gets to a wider audience.

If you haven’t found these bugs, they could be flagged in review, resulting in rejection and delays. If they do, you’re lucky! If they don’t, the bugs will hit when the app is live, with potential for lost revenue and brand damage.

Gotchas

• Don’t assume that any bugs or issues you see before release won’t happen when you go live. They will, with a much higher impact than in test.

• The review process won’t comprehensively test your app. Just because it passes review doesn’t mean there won’t be issues when it reaches the public.

Tip 4 - Allow time for reviews and rejections

Back on your flight, you're still waiting for takeoff. Maybe the plane has missed its slot, or there's a thunderstorm at your destination. Whatever the cause, it’s beyond your control. You can’t guarantee that your flight will arrive on time, and if it’s delayed, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Like your flight, you can’t guarantee how long app review will take. As a rule of thumb, I assume 7 days for an app to be approved after it has been submitted. It’s often much faster, but it can be slower. The first submission in particular is usually slow.

However, if the app is rejected, it can take much longer than 7 days overall. It will take you time to make any necessary changes, then the review timer starts over once you resubmit. Even without changes, you may need to provide supporting information or workarounds for reviewer access. These will take time to prepare.

In some cases you can communicate with the review team and expedite reviews if there are mitigating circumstances, for example an urgent bug fix if your app is already live. However it’s down to the discretion of the reviewers, and usually there is nothing you can do except wait.

Gotchas

• App approval can take up to 7 days, but only if it isn’t rejected. A rejection can take much longer.

• You may need to provide supporting information to get your app approved.

• You’re more likely to be able to have meaningful communication with the App Store than the Play Store, but in both cases you’ll mostly get canned responses.

• Rejection reasons often aren’t specific. You’ll have to do the work yourself to figure out what the problem is and what you need to do to fix it.

A successful launch isn’t just about getting your app published on the stores. You also need to align your marketing activities. Follow tip 5 to avoid a marketing disaster.

Tip 5 - Plan marketing cautiously

You are finally near the end of your flight, and coming in to land. Your flight was delayed, and you’re much later than you planned — unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence! If you have no plans for the rest of the day, it’s not an issue. You arrive at your hotel late, and carry on with your trip. However if you were relying on arriving on time to make an expensive, non-refundable connection, well then you have a problem.

If you’re releasing a commercial app, you will be running a marketing campaign to coincide with launch. Marketing campaigns have high stakes — they are expensive, and they put your brand reputation on the line. The last thing you want is a marketing push that starts before an app is approved for release, or that references features that didn’t make it through the approval process. You have to be particularly cautious when planning them for apps because you can’t guarantee when the app will be ready to launch. Don’t commit to hard dates unless you have very high confidence of approval.

Start with a soft launch where possible. Here you publish the app, but you don’t publicise it. This guarantees that your app is ready when the marketing push actually starts. It also keeps initial user numbers small, since only people who find your app organically will be using it. This gives you a further opportunity to find and fix any bugs before ramping up user volume, avoiding unnecessary brand damage.

Avoid committing to specific feature references and screenshots in your campaign, unless they are already approved. This gives you flexibility if features have to be cut to ensure readiness for a launch date, or if they have to be removed or changed to pass review.

It’s not always possible to avoid hard deadlines, for example if you have to line up with TV advertising which is scheduled many months in advance. In this case, follow all the tips above to minimise your marketing risks.

Gotchas

• You are bound by the review and approval process. In most cases, you won’t be able to speed it up for your marketing campaign.

• Features might not pass approval, so don’t rely on them being in place for your marketing campaign.

Key takeaways

Here are the key takeaways to keep your app release on track and guide it smoothly into the stores:

1. Thoroughly review store guidelines: Always read the latest guidelines to avoid costly rejections.

2. Submit early and often: Submit your app for review early in the development process and with each major change, to catch any issues before your official release.

3. Beta test your app: Ensure real-world testing with internal teams and external beta testers to uncover bugs that might cause rejections or impact your launch.

4. Plan for review delays: Allow sufficient time for app reviews and potential rejections to avoid launch day surprises and delays.

5. Align your marketing plan with app readiness: Avoid committing to hard marketing deadlines until your app is approved and ready to launch.

By following these tips, you will increase your chances of approval and ensure a smoother, more predictable launch.