IMO: If you are finishing up a side project iOS / Android app, don't bother with a website. Just get it out of the door! Traffic doesn't drive itself to the website. If you drive traffic somewhere, you may as well drive it directly to the App Store.<p>There is no reason a quickly cobbled together website that has the same screenshots your App Store listing has will convert any better than the App Store.<p>Plus, the iTunes web page is pretty good at SEO and will probably turn up before your own page for relevant keywords.<p>In fact, the time you save by not building a Landing Page, you can invest into:<p>a) Writing a great description of your app. Also includes relevant keywords for your niche, you may want to use a keyword-research tool. <a href="https://searchman.com/" rel="nofollow">https://searchman.com/</a> seems to be the best free tool atm(?).<p>b) Make sure your screenshots not only show meaningful data, but also clearly communicate why/what your app is useful for, e.g. how a problem is solved. Explainer texts can make it A LOT easier to communicate that. Shameless plug of a side project of myself: <a href="http://www.screenscott.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.screenscott.com</a><p>c) When the app is live, make sure it gets downloaded and reviewed. Tip: Ask friends / family to download the app and give you feedback. If you get criticism -> Great, you'll know what to do next. If you get positive feedback -> Great, they've already written the review! Now you just need to ask them to post it in the App Store :-)
It's amazing how much non-programming work is required to get an application release-ready. Add to that list domain acquisition, email configuration, staging environments, legal documentation, status pages, error tracking, user and subscription management and feedback mechanisms.<p>Our startup is tackling this domain, and we'd love to hear more of these "petty issues" web and mobile apps need to resolve before shipping - we've found that, while seemingly minor, they present a huge hindrance to the launch of developer side projects.
Side projects for me are weekend projects. I toss them onto my personal site and watch it for a few months to see if it gets used and if I get any feedback. If it does, I'll polish it some more and try to do something with it.<p>But I'm not going to go make up branding, set up a new domain, and build a bunch of marketing when I don't even know if the project works for people or not.<p>So in my mind, Part 1 of releasing a side project is: Have a personal site with enough traffic to act as a testing ground for your ideas.