Following a major overhaul of the App Store in iOS 11, Apple has quietly revamped the App Store’s web preview pages to bring them more in line with new iOS design aesthetic. The new layout opens up with a clear banner notifying users that they will need to open the App Store on their iOS device to actually download the app, followed by a cleaner title area with a larger icon, title, subtitle, developer link, ranking/rating information, and price. Below that the new preview page now focuses on screenshots rather than a description, with links to switch between iPhone, iPad, iMessage, and Apple Watch screenshots; Apple TV screenshots are notably absent from the new preview pages, however.
Description and What’s New sections come after the screenshots, followed by a more conspicuous customer reviews section that features a design first introduced in the Apple TV App Store.
Notably, the new preview pages also now feature iPhone X screenshots wherever possible; however since several iPhone X apps we checked still include older screenshots, this seems like this may be based on whether the developer has submitted iPhone X screenshots and not merely whether the app has been updated for the iPhone X. Screenshots are also not clickable, and video previews are available only within the on-device App Store, not on the web-based preview pages. The redesigned reviews section also removes the ability to sort or report reviews or indicate whether they are helpful or not.
Further, only shows three reviews are shown, and it’s unclear what determines which reviews are shown.
Interestingly, listings of apps by developer do not yet appear to have been redesigned, as clicking on a developer’s name on the new pages will take you to an old-style “iTunes Preview” page, complete with a “View in iTunes” button that actually still works to take you to the listing of apps with links that are accessible within iTunes itself — although as of iTunes 12.7 the individual app pages show a greyed out “iOS App Store Only” button in place of the usual download button.
Naturally, the preview pages within iTunes — which shouldn’t be accessible directly in iTunes 12.7 or later — still feature the older design, omitting iPhone X screenshots but providing a button to view Apple
TV screenshots in addition to iPhone, iPad, iMessage, and Apple Watch versions, and preserving the older style ratings view.
