One of the questions we often get asked as an app agency by our clients is 'why our old apps get rejected from the App Stores' It's an important question... There are many reasons why your app might get rejected, but first it's important to understand what's involved in the process.
All apps that get submitted to Apple and Google stores go through a review process before they are allowed to be publicly accessible. This process involves populating the store information and submitting the app for review, which can usually take 24-48 hours. This can sometimes lead to a rejected app submission with a reason as to why the app was rejected. In most cases these rejections can easily be resolved with minor tweaks. We will go through some of the common issues we have experienced over the years that resulted in the first submission being rejected.
App Review Guidelines
All apps should follow a set of ever changing guidelines, and as developers we are very much aware of these guidelines as we are building an app. These guidelines cover a lot of ground such as bugs, crashes, performance, payments, app completeness and much more. If Apple or Google see something that goes against these guidelines, they will reject the app until the change has been made, after the change is made we can resubmit the app for review.
This is why sometimes guidelines change during an apps development that needs to be considered during the development to adjust for these changes. Why just, recently Apple have made it a requirement for apps with a registration process to include an easy to find method of deleting their account, stating that disabling or deactivating accounts not insufficient enough to meet their expectations. This requirement has a deadline and any app submitted after that deadline must meet that requirement.
User Privacy
Not having a privacy policy will get an app declined from the store and if it’s not up to date the app can be removed from the store. Keeping up to date with Apple and Googles evolving policies is very important; there is usually adequate time for making changes to your app to fulfil any policy changes to keep your app up on the store.
More Information Needed
When you first submit an app without enough information provided the app will be declined. This could be as simple as just explaining who will be using the app, and how they will be using the app to provide a little bit more insight to the tester. Depending on the functionality of the app, the tester could deem that app to meet meet the requirements to be made available on the public store and recommend looking at a business account.
Internal Apps
We are often asked to build apps which aren't for the general public. If your app was designed to be used as an internal Business app for your company, and not intended to be made publicly available then the public App Store isn’t going to be an option.
This doesn’t mean your app can’t be downloaded by your intended audience, it just requires a different method of distributing the app through the Apple Business Manager.
Store Information
Apps can get rejected if the storefront hasn’t been fully populated with relevant content that clearly shows and explains what the app does. The store needs to contain all meta data such as names, keywords, descriptions and screenshots before submitting to the store for review. We’ve even had an app rejected by one of the stores, because the app description mentioned the other store in the description.
Final thoughts...
These are some of the common reasons an app can be rejected when it has been first submitted to the store. As long as the apps functionality doesn’t go against the guidelines of the stores and the submission isn’t disingenuous or fraudulent, these little issues can be remedied quite easily.
The Sugar Rush Team submit apps all the time and have the experience and knowledge on the latest guidelines to ensure that your app is designed, developed and successfully submitted to IOS & Google Play store.
