So you’ve spent countless hours developing your great new iOS app and you’re ready to submit the app to Apple and take the market by storm.  You’re going to be the next App Store success story - you just need to fill out the necessary information in iTunes Connect and wait for review.

You come across the screenshot section and you rush to take a few screenshots in the simulator, upload them, finalize your app submission, and hold your breath until the app is approved.  Sound familiar?

This is very common among app developers.  We focus all of our efforts on designing and developing the app and neglect the marketing potential of great screenshots in the App Store. By the time we’ve finished writing the code we’re ready to submit the app since we may believe that the hard work is done.

Well, with the current dynamics of the App Store, writing the code is the easy part and marketing the app is the hardest part.  Potential customers are a precious commodity and stellar screenshots will help get more people to download your app and improve your app store rankings.

Lucky for us there are templates and tools that we can use to help make screenshots that will stand out from the crowd even if you are not a graphic designer.  Rather than just uploading a basic screenshot these tools will help you place your screenshots in actual devices and add descriptions to help users understand your app even better with just a quick glance.

One option to make your great screenshots is to use a program like Photoshop, Pixelmator, or Gimp to create custom images highlighting your app.  The good news for us is that there are helpful templates that have been created that will  give us a head start on our screenshot creation.

DesignBoost has provided one of the better templates that you can use.  There are 8 basic layouts that you can choose from and the template shows different configurations with devices, descriptive text, and different backgrounds.

You simply insert your basic app screenshots into the template and you get professional looking app store screenshots like you see in the image below.  The DesignBoost site even has an article with more tips on making app screenshots that sell.

 

If you’re not a fan of Photoshop there’s another alternative packaged in a useful iPhone app called Screenshot Editor by Mayank Sanganeria that makes screenshot creation simple and easy for almost anyone.

As you can see above you just pick a template you like and then you can change the text, change the device shown in the image, insert your screenshot, then easily export to your Camera Roll or Dropbox.  Screenshot Editor is free to use and currently there is a $3.99 in app-purchase that you can buy to unlock the capability to Save and Edit your past screenshot projects.

It is so easy to use Screenshot Editor that there’s no reason you shouldn’t try using it on your next new app - or refresh the App Store screenshots of apps you’ve already developed.

Hopefully these tips will help you make better iOS app screenshots next time you’re making a new app.  Tweet us your favorite screenshots @716labs so we can all see the great new screenshots that you’ve created.