Yandex.Store: We have toys from Disney, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Zeptolab and Game Insight

Hi! Please tell me why Yandex needs its app store – what task does it perform for the company?

Eugene Kim

Yandex has a mobile application ecosystem built around the Android platform – search, mail, mobile maps, we have a browser and cloud storage. And the Store is a logical chain in this series – without it, unfortunately, it is impossible to build a complete ecosystem. That’s why we created Yandex.Store a year and a half ago and, in fact, we continue to work in this direction.

What does it mean “you can’t build without it”? Yandex has its main product — contextual advertising, and all these additional products encourage people to accumulate it around Yandex, and then sell this audience to advertisers. But how does the Store help with this? Accumulates an audience too?

No. We need an ecosystem to offer a choice to manufacturers of Android devices. Accordingly, device manufacturers need to interest end customers in their devices and without an app store, an Android device loses a lot in price: users need to search for games and applications for their smartphones and tablets, install them from somewhere. We give this opportunity through Yandex.Store.

Tell me, how many applications do you have at the moment? If it’s not a secret, how fast are you growing? In which markets is it possible to grow rapidly now – is it only Russia or some other?

Now we have approximately 120,000 applications. If we talk about the growth rate, then about two months ago it was 100,000. We did not start from scratch – from the mark of 40,000 applications. In terms of markets, these are mainly Russia and those countries where Yandex develops its services – Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey.

What devices does the store currently live on?

At the moment, we can say that Yandex.Store is preinstalled on all Nokia devices on Android – this is a series of Nokia X smartphones. Next, these are devices with our own Yandex firmware.Kit, this is Huawei and Explay. Plus, if we just list, these are OPPO, Lenovo, Fly, teXet and similar brands recognizable in our market.

There is an international partner – Jolla, they have the Sailfish operating system, which allows you to run applications on Android, Yandex.Store is also preinstalled there.

I am a novice developer, I need to understand how to start interaction: conditions, commission, payments? Can I work with you as an individual? And which of the major publishers are already cooperating with you?

To register in our Store, just a few steps are enough: log in to the developer portal, register with a Yandex account, fill in information about yourself, about the developer, fill in payment data, download applications, publish them, and they will be available in Yandex.Store.

The working conditions are standard – we pay the developer 70% of the sale of their applications or internal sales of their applications. We have no restrictions on payments yet, either by country or by organization – it does not matter whether it is an individual or a legal entity. Monthly payments upon reaching the $100 mark. All this is spelled out in the conditions that the developer accepts when registering.

About publishers: if we are not talking about a gaming application, then here we have a fairly large selection of the most popular applications – VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Twitter and the like.

Now we are actively working with game publishers. Now in the Store we have toys from publishers such as Disney, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Zeptolab, Game Insight recently came to us. We are no longer focused on the quantity, but on the quality of applications in our store.

By what principle do you have moderation of the application?  A classic example: can I download some gambling application or sweepstakes from you, or something else that is not allowed in the Store?

We have the same standard rules for categories of downloadable content.  We don’t have pre-moderation. The application may be blocked by user requests that it somehow violates the terms of the store, or our team of editors will notice the application itself that does not fit certain parameters and notify the developer that his application has been blocked.

The only thing we have when downloading an application is an authorship check so that developers of non-native applications cannot publish them. Verification of authorship takes place through the e-mail, which is specified for this application in other stores. That is, an email will come to him and there you will need to click on the link confirming that you are really the developer of this application.

Here we have different payment methods – cards, phone bill, etc., but are there any figures on the percentage of payments?

To begin with, we need to say that there are only four payment methods in our Store: mobile account, bank card, Yandex.Money and a bonus account has recently appeared. And here it should be noted that with every purchase made in our Store, 10% is returned to this bonus account. This is a virtual currency with which you can also make purchases.

It is no secret that in our country the most popular way is to pay from a mobile account without SMS, linking some kind of card, and it is not surprising that in our store most payments relate to this payment method. Our users mostly pay from their mobile account, which works with the three main operators in Russia – Beeline, MegaFon and MTS.

Regardless of the payment method, the developer still receives his fixed percentage – 70%.

Is it possible to somehow promote your application using the platform? Do you have any cataloging methods, a “New” section and so on? Is it possible to get 10,000 installations for free at the start without having any budgets?

At the moment, the only free way to promote in our store is banners on the main page. The promotion is still free, the applications themselves are selected by our team.

Naturally, we are thinking about adding other ways of promotion, including when the developer pays for installations made from our store, when he starts his campaign, selects the necessary parameters and pays for each installation that was made as part of this campaign.

Does the Store have such a section as “New”, “Interesting”? Does everyone get there, or again at the editors’ choice?

There is. All applications that have been published in the store in a relatively recent time get there – everyone has a chance.

In addition, there is a choice of editors: sometimes we make collections of the application by some categories. For example, now these are music applications, there may be applications for watching videos – video players, video directories, etc., and gaming. Thus, we show a variety of content in our store.

The question about the choice of editors: does Yandex teach developers how to make them get to the main page?

There are a number of rules that guide our editors. The main thing is that the application does not contradict the terms of use of the store. For example, if the application has some alternative payment method, not through Yandex.Store, then such applications are not considered for promotion.

Naturally, we select applications based on parameters such as quality, user benefit, ratings in the same store and reviews from real users who have already downloaded this application.

We are open to communication with any developer. You can always contact Yandex.Store technical support and they will always redirect the question to specific colleagues who will definitely answer.

I am interested in the ranking factor in the Store: what influences the positions – is this algorithm similar to the one in Google Play?

Unfortunately, I can’t say what algorithm Google Play has, but quite a lot of parameters affect the order of the application in the store, including, since we are a search service, the result of the search results of a particular application affects.

Is this the ASO?

No. For example, positions in other stores also somehow affect the position in our store.

Do you somehow struggle with cheating? 

Yes, we are following this. There are methods to combat such cheating and adding a large number of reviews. We closely monitor the growth trend of each application and if we see any suspicious spikes, we contact the developer.

They’ll just write me a letter, but they won’t ban me right away?

Yes, first we will describe the situation, start a dialogue and make a decision based on its results.

In your interviews, you focus on security, that every application is checked by an antivirus, while even Google with its technologies, hardware and other things failed to build a “clean” store. How to move in this direction and make sure that the Store is virus-free?

I can’t comment on Google’s actions. I can say that we have a joint check with Kaspersky Lab – we check each application at the download stage. That is, if we suddenly find some suspicious files inside the application, we will not allow it to be published, and the developer will receive a message that he will not be able to upload this application to our Store.

If he has a question, he can always contact technical support, and we will explain in more detail what the reason is.

One PF — What is it and what tasks does it solve?

One Platform Foundation is an open initiative whose main task is to allow mobile app developers to minimize their costs to support alternative Stores, such as Yandex.Store. this is an open initiative that Yandex actively supports.

For example, One Platform Foundation has a universal billing library, integrating which a developer can support stores such as Google Play, Amazon, Samsung Apps, Yandex.Store and other open stores that also support this initiative. Among them are SlideMe and, for example, Opera.

This initiative also has other projects that are again aimed at supporting alternative Stores in the same application build.

For example, it’s no secret that the main headache of developers when downloading an application is to keep it updated in all stores. The guys from One Platform Foundation are trying to solve this problem.

We openly support the One PF initiative, because Yandex.Store is open in this regard, we do not have our own SDK for other purchases, we support One PF.

I understand correctly that I, as a developer, do not need to pay any money for this, I go there, throw it around all the shops and I have the same happiness in the form of saving time.

Yes, it is not a commercial organization, it only provides tools for developers, which they can use with the support of many stores. It’s all about Android.

Do you have a Yandex.Metrica product – does it give at least some functionality to mobile app developers? What are the chips there, differences from competitors, anti-fraud tools, for example?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you in more detail about the metric. I know that our mobile metric supports the main mobile platforms – Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Its main advantage is that the data is provided in real time, you do not need to wait 1-2 days to get the data you need today.

Mobile metric is free for developers, everyone can use it in their application and monitor activity, get to know their users better and optimize their applications based on this data.

Thanks for the interview!

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