With the app stores creating more market following for an OS and, in the case of Apple’s iPhone and IPad, creating not just a trend but a marketing model emulated by RIMM and Android makers, Microsoft joins the fray with its own Windows 8 app store. It makes finding and downloading compatible content that much easier. But it was no breeze easy for the Redmond giant and a challenges lie ahead.
In a blog post last Friday, program manager for Microsoft’s Store project Jonathan Wand, toured readers to the store showing its inventory of content for browsing, searching and downloading. The site’s aesthetics was anything but cluttered, allowing the apps the be the focus. But it’s one thing to have a store, it’s another for Microsoft to pull its prospective Windows 8 users to it.
The next step involves creating the right landing page to showcase content in easy categories and listings and content presentation will change based on how often the gets visited. This gives visitors the impressions that the store has more to offer for visitors to explore. The soon-to-be familiar Metro UI introduced with Windows 8 will simplify search and navigation through the app store such as tapping the Search function anywhere in the Metro UI, clicking the store to narrow your search, and sorting the search result listing by price, release date, or user rating. And when you download, you just tap on the Buy icon and a progress bar appears to indicate it is already being downloaded and getting installed at once. Taking a cue from Android and Apple, Microsoft will alert users on updates to your downloaded apps.
Wang posted that “In designing the Windows Store, we’ve tried to strike a balance between a design optimized for serendipitous app discovery through curated content, and one where customers can easily find the apps that they search for directly. Discovering, installing, and updating apps are all designed to be as simple and fast as possible.”
But that’s talking about the touch-driven screen one can expect from a Tablet rather than on the PC. Microsoft may have surmounted the challenge of pulling off a Windows app store, but a greater challenge lies ahead – getting users to install Windows 8 and getting a tablet for it. Compelling as the Metro UI is, the computing experience on the targeted Windows tablet must be as satisfying as what everyone knows the old PC delivers. That remains to be seen, and touched.
