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Today Vodafone launched a refreshed app shop called Vodafone AppSelect where Vodafone customers can easily discover and download apps and games for their Android phone. Vodafone AppSelect will come pre-installed on Vodafone Android phones and has a clean, compelling and easy to use design that surfaces relevant content to a wide range of customers. Vodafone AppSelect will be available across 9 markets (United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Netherlands and Russia).

So why Vodafone AppSelect?

• Vodafone AppSelect is exclusive to Vodafone and provides customers with a simplified purchase environment.
• Curated catalogue allows for easy app discovery by eliminating poor quality apps.
• Personalised recommendations and dynamic collections ensure that featured content is relevant for customers.
• Integrated carrier billing allows for convenient and secure purchases

So what does Vodafone AppSelect look like?

So what does this mean for you, the developer?

You can still submit your apps as before and benefit from reaching Vodafone customers, details of the publishing process can be found here, http://developer.vodafone.com/publish/.

However, as part of the Vodafone AppSelect release there’re a number of changes that you need to be aware of. These include,

• Updated QA process
• new Vodafone AppSelect Image Style guidelines
• new Vodafone AppSelect Metadata guidelines

Further details below,

1) As the AppSelect catalogue is curated, your app will need to pass through a filtering process prior to QA testing which has a focus on improving the customer experience and value delivered by the application. This includes ensuring a higher quality bar for the way the application is described, language used, use of keywords that are real words and relevant (for example don’t use ‘game’ for a word processing app) and multi language support where appropriate. Further details of this can be found here, http://developer.vodafone.com/blog/2011/09/12/vodafone-shop-submission-process-update-apps-and-games/.

2) The Vodafone AppSelect Image Style Guide outlines the image requirements for publishing your content in Vodafone AppSelect. Imagery is often the first thing that customers see; therefore you will need to ensure all the images you provide are of high quality, clear, engaging and compelling, to maximise the marketing opportunities.

Here is a summary of the specific set of images that you are required to provide for each individual content item,

-  512 x 512 (mandatory icon)

-  480 x 800  (mandatory screenshots) – please provide minimum 3, maximum 6.

-  480 x 854  (optional screenshots) – please provide minimum 3, maximum 6.

-  320 x 480 (optional screenshots) – please provide minimum 3, maximum 6.

You can review the complete Vodafone AppSelect Image Style Guide here.

3) The Vodafone AppSelect Metadata Guidelines outline the mandatory and optional metadata requirements you need to supply when publishing your content in Vodafone AppSelect. Metadata is used to describe, market, discover and recommend your content in Vodafone AppSelect. Such metadata includes (but is not exhaustive): title, keywords, description, supported languages, category selection, images and video link.

You can review the complete Vodafone AppSelect Metadata Guidelines here.