How to optimize the orientation of iOS screenshots.

Your app store optimization efforts can deliver best results when guidelines meets innovation. Read more!

Screenshots are one of the most critical aspect of App Store Optimization. While there are tons of apps to choose from, users are sure to end up examining the app icon, its description and most importantly the screenshots of an app to judge the application’s overall appealing factor and infact the quality of the entire app. Further, their inclination is directly going to affect whether to download the app or not! Hence, it is more of an opportunity for developers to make the most out of their screenshots; because apart from the icon, screenshot is the only feature that communicates to the users about the app’s visual appeal.

Today, we will be closely focusing on optimizing the iOS screenshots. The optimization of iOS screenshot is dependent on few factors that are mentioned below.

·         The orientation of the screenshots

·         The screenshots efficiency in communicating its purpose

·         Smartly using all the 5 slots of screenshots offered by Apple

·         Localization of screenshots

·         Conducting competitive analysis

·         A/B testing

Working precisely on each of the elements mentioned above can help you in leveraging the effectiveness of your screenshots. For now, let us study how to optimize the orientation of iOS screenshots. For that, we will require to have a closer look at what kind of orientation best suits each of the device and when can you consider experimentation.

The orientation of screenshot is fairly dependent on where is it being placed or which device is being considered for the screenshot. There are 3 possibilities.

1.    iPhone

2.    iPad

3.    Desktop iTunes/Web

Screenshots for iPhone:

Considering the iPhone, the portrait or the vertical orientation comes as a default. As a result, the audience is used to viewing the screenshots vertically as it itself falls in place on the iPhone screen. Even then if you consider choosing the landscape orientation, it will be flipped to the portrait orientation which might be bothersome for the audiences to deal with.

Have a look at these vertically oriented screenshots of Candy Crush Saga on iPhone device.

Whereas, these landscape oriented screenshots on an iPhone device requires making quite an effort to view the details.

Screenshots for iPad:

Landscape pictures can be saved for iPad as they seem to fit perfectly on to its bigger screen. Portraits can also be considered for iPad as it will be viewed equally correctly. However, there is a difference in the overall appeal of the picture due to the size of the screenshots of the landscape and the portrait when viewed on the iPad. Have a look.

Here, you will notice that the Clash of Clan’s screenshot with the landscape orientation looks much more attractive compared to the Flappy Smash's vertical screenshot.

Screenshots for Desktop iTunes:

Desktop and web itunes, both are confined to showcase the default iPhone screenshots. Though, the landscape screenshots that usually end up flipping in portrait orientation on the iPhone screen, shows up as a landscape orientation on the desktop iTunes. As a result, there appears to be less uniformity as the second screenshot gets cut-off. Hence, choosing to showcase portrait screenshots means enabling audience to view two full screenshots.

Let us compare them with examples:

Here,you can see that the first screenshot of Minecraft pocket edition shows vertical orientation on the desktop iTunes. While, the second screenshot being landscape oriented gets cut-off, which really doesn’t give an appealing view altogether.

Whereas, here you can see that two full screenshots of Temple run gives a much more appealing view when compared to the former orientations.

These guidelines will help you conduct the best optimization of the orientations of your screenshots. However, experimentations accompanied with guidelines can deliver innovative results and it can always be considered by potential developers to come up with something that suits best to their application.