Publish a privacy policy when required
For all Windows 8 application which uses internet connection, under the certification requirement 4.1.1, you are required to include a privacy policy in your application description page on the Windows Store Application Page and also in the Setting Charms of the application. By default, all application would have one of the following capabilities selected:
- internetClient
- internetClientServer
- privateNetworkClientServer
Submit valuable apps
Others might face certification failure on the certification requirement 1.1, which say “Your app must offer customers unique, creative value or utility in all the languages and markets that it supports“.
This include application which just re-package the code samples provided by Microsoft and submit them onto the Windows Store. These code sample available are for developers to get started with Windows 8 fast but not use for purpose of re-packaging and upload as an new application. Those application which are re-packaged directly from code samples would fail in this requirement.
Here are a few more examples of apps that fail this requirement:
- Individual e-books as individual application, if you are intending to upload numerous e-books as individual application, you might face problem with this requirement. Windows Store would request for you to package all the e-books into a single application and use the in-app payment scheme, if you wish to charge additional for each separate download of an e-book within a single application.
- Apps whose only purpose is to display a limited set of static images (sometimes as little as one image— of a flag or a celebrity for example). One good example for this would be infamous “I am rich” application which was debut on the Apple Store.
Submit complete apps and avoid misleading app descriptions
All application submitted onto the Windows Store have to fully function application, so to conform the certification requirement 1.2, that says “Your app must be fully functional when the customer gets it from the Windows Store“. When an app fails this requirement, it’s usually for one of the following reasons:
- Misleading description text or screenshots. The app description must only list features and content that are actually implemented in your app. If you know that some of your app features will not work in certain geographies or in the absence of certain hardware sensors or peripherals, explicitly mention those restrictions in the app description. The goal is to give customers all the information they need before acquiring your app.
- Including non-functional user controls, broken links, or placeholder sections. The goal here is to avoid giving customers the perception that the app is not finished. In a lot of cases, our testers find placeholders for functionality that a developer intends to provide in a future update. We will reject any app that has such placeholders.
- Not providing enough details for Microsoft to test your app. If your app requires special instructions to test thoroughly, such as a username and password, you need to include that information when you submit the app.
Properly localize the app submission
The following certification requirement 6.5 and 6.8, which says ”You must localize your app for all languages that it supports” and “You must provide localized screenshots of your app for each language it supports” respectively, would only apply to your application if you have selected more then one supported language for the application.
If you have done so, you need to ensure that the Store’s submission information (such as the Screenshots, descriptions, etc) are done up with all the variant of the languages which you have declared for. This is to ensure that people from that market could easily understand information of the application, which is supposedly localised to their language of preference.
If you have any other certification requirements which are unsure or not clear about, drop a comment and as much as I could I will check them out for you and offer some solution or quick tips to it!