After months of developing and testing, you’re finally ready to publish your app to Google Play Store.
To publish your app to Google Play Store for the first time can seem very daunting as Play Store comes with its own set of rules and procedures.
That’s why we wrote this step-by-step guide on how to publish your app to Google Play Store.
Before you dive in, make sure to review the Ultimate Guide to Launch your Mobile App, which shows a more elaborate Mobile App launching strategy.
Step 1: Purchase a developer account
Before you can publish your app to Google Play Store, you need to create a Google developer account on Play Store if you don’t have one already.
To create a developer account, all you need is to pay a one-time registration fee of $25 once you have agreed to the distribution agreement for development. You can make the payment using either a debit or a credit card.
To complete the process, fill out the necessary information such as developer name, website, contact email, and physical address. It might take a while to process your registration request.
Now that you have set up your Play developer account, you can now publish your app to Google Play Store.
Here’s how to go about it:
Step 2: Create an app
- Click on the “Create Application”
- Select your app’s default language from the drop-down menu
- Type in your app’s title. You can change this later, so don’t worry if you’re still not sure of the name of your app.
- Click on “Create.”
Step 3: Create and fill the play store listing
Before you can publish your app to Google Play Store, you need to fill its store listing. Store listings contain information users will see when searching your app on Play Store and viewing your app’s store listing.
Play store listing is divided into several categories:
Product details:
Product detail is one of the most important categories. You’re required to fill in the name of your app, a short description, and a full description.
Graphic Assets:
In this category, you can add icons, screenshots, videos of your app. Ensure they showcase the main features of your app to capture user’s attention.
Languages:
The default language is English. You can always change this and even add translations of your app’s store listing details, alongside screenshots.
If you don’t include translations, there’s an option for users to view automated translations of the app’s information using Google translate.
Categorisation
You are required to select the appropriate type (game or app) and category to which your app belongs. To specify further categorization, you must first upload your app to skip this for now.
Contact Details
Contact detail is where you fill in your contact details so your users can reach you.
Privacy policy
You are required to fill a link to your privacy policy, so users know how you will use their sensitive data. The privacy policy is only required if your app requests access to sensitive user data.
Step 4: Upload the app.
Now that you have filled your app’s store listing, it’s time to upload your app. To do that first, you’ll need to create a release of your app before you can upload it.
Create a release, click the menu, and navigate “App Releases” from “Release management.”
You can then choose the type of release you want to upload. You can choose between an internal test, an alpha, a beta, and a production release.
We suggest you choose one of the first three as they allow you to upload your app to a select group of users for testing. These stages will enable you to catch bugs before creating a release for the general public.
Step 5: App content rating
This is another significant category because if you don’t assign a rating to your app, it will be listed as unrated. Unrated apps are likely to get removed from Google Play.
To rate your app, you need to fill the content rating form. You do this by clicking the menu and navigating to “Content rating” from “Store presence.”
When filling the questionnaire, make sure you enter accurate information. Failure to do so will likely result in the suspension or removal of your app from the Play Store.
Step 7: Set app pricing and distribution
Before filling this, you’ll need to figure out how you will make money from your app if you plan to anyway.
Once you have figured that out, you can then set your app as free or paid. Please note, you can always change your app from paid to free but not the other round. You can then select the countries you want your app to be available.
Step 8: Release Your App
You’re almost ready to publish your app, but first, you need to review the information you have filled in to make sure they are correct.
Ensure the store listing, content rating, pricing, and distribution section all have a green check. The green check means all the required information for that section has been filled successfully. If a green check is missing, please go back and review the section.
Once you have filled out the required details, click the menu and navigation to “App releases” from “Release management.”
Click “Edit release” next to your desired release, and then select “Review and rollout release” to verify that there are no problems with the release.
If there are no problems with the release, you can then select “Confirm rollout” to upload the app to the Google Play Store.
After rolling out the release, you have to wait a couple of days to be validated by the Play Store team. When the release has been validated successfully, you will see your app on Play Store.
Congratulations, you have released your app.
Conclusion
To publish your app to Google play store doesn’t have to be difficult. This article explored the different steps involved and how to publish your app to Google Play Store easily.
We have developed a more thorough Ultimate Guide to Launch your Mobile App, which shows a more elaborate Mobile App launching strategy.
If you followed this step successfully, you should have your app on Google Play Store, drop a link to your newly published app, maybe we will give you good ratings.
