919551 - Should be able to choose country as part of the submission process

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Developer Pages, defect)

Description

[Donovan Preston [:fzzzy]]

Big companies are paranoid about making sure China is excluded when listing apps. It is possible to exclude China by unchecking "Other" on the "Compatibility & Payments" page, but only after the app has been fully submitted. It would probably be less confusing if the country could be specified as part of the submission process.

Comment 1

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

We'll need some mockups from UX on this one for the submission flow changes.

Comment 2

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

Attachment: marketplace devhub - submit an app, prices & countries - 01

Attached is a fairly obvious way of integrating country selector as part of the submission process.

We can put an additional Step 4 that happens right after developer enters app details. This step contains part of the “Compatibility & Payments” page of the Dev Dashboard.

Here are some alternatives that might be worth considering:

1. If China is the only exception, can we simply put a checkbox that says “I don’t want to sell in China”? Assuming that excluding country is an exception rather than a rule.

2. Can we simply have a list of country to enable and disable, minus the price? Then we’ll say something along the lines of “You can modify this anytime, and you must select your price later”. This might be an alternative that provides a relatively fine-grained level of control, but still simple enough to include.

3. If we include price selection in the UI, don’t we also need to include the UI to sign up for Bango and other payment processor? After all, developer already got to pick a price. But if we include this UI, won’t the page get needlessly complicated too early in the process, dissuading developers from completing the flow and getting a successful submission?

Comment 3

[Christopher Van Wiemeersch [:cvan]]

I'm not a big fan of this; asking for payments information complicates the flow significantly. Are there any alternatives we can think of?

Comment 4

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

I assume that those who are worried about restrictions in the first place (as comment 0 said, big companies) will have worked with our BD and development team, and will have learned from us that they can control distributions later.

Additionally, big companies would almost certainly have gone through our submission flow and tested it, and consequently discovered the ability to exclude China later in the process.

So perhaps it’s not worth it to lengthen our app submission system to assuage worries that would’ve been resolved by our team in the first place?

But if we do want to put something, perhaps we can to put an explanatory text somewhere in the Details page. This text would say “Why can’t I decide on a price and country now?”. Then we could answer “You may set them later. In this process, you’re just completing information that’s going to show up on the Details page.”

Additionally, the Details page is also going to be redesigned so it accurately renders the 320x480 view on a phone, and so editing details can happen inline. When this happens, selecting price and country on a different page actually makes a lot of sense.

Comment 5

[Donovan Preston [:fzzzy]]

(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #4)
> But if we do want to put something, perhaps we can to put an explanatory
> text somewhere in the Details page. This text would say “Why can’t I decide
> on a price and country now?”. Then we could answer “You may set them later.
> In this process, you’re just completing information that’s going to show up
> on the Details page.”

This sounds good to me. I don't mind where the setting is now, but several partners have been confused by the fact that the submission process has to be completed before it can be set.

Comment 6

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

(In reply to Donovan Preston [:fzzzy] from comment #5)
> This sounds good to me. I don't mind where the setting is now, but several
> partners have been confused by the fact that the submission process has to
> be completed before it can be set.

I sympathize with their predicament. In both Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store, countries are selected as part of the submission process. We don’t yet have the ability do this. Payment processors are tied directly to countries, but without a one-payment-account-for-every-country relationship.

Whereas with other app stores, developers would only need to input their payment information once, and it would enable them to select /every/ country on the list —

— in our Marketplace, developers will need to first select a country, then sign up for that country’s payment processor. Several countries might share the same payment processor (or have its own processor). Hence my note about the lack of one-account-to-many-countries correspondence.

Because selecting countries almost certainly means signing up with a payment processor, I had to separate the whole process and give it its own page.

And this is the long reason why we can’t have country selection on the submit an app flow.

Comment 7

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

This came up in triage today.  Bram - are you saying this bug should be wontfixed?  If so, please do.  If not, please push it forward to the next step.  Thanks.