A Comprehensive Approach to Factors Affecting Mobile Apps Downloads: The Role of Aesthetic Components

By the emergence of digital communication tools in human life such as smartphones and their apps, we have observed a new revolution in lifestyle. In this situation, hypercompetitive markets are established between designers and developers of mobile apps. Attracting users to download and use mobile apps is a critical issue for designers and developers of such apps, however, the factors affecting the user decision to download an app are scattered in previous studies but this study try to provide a comprehensive approach by attention to different aspects of mobile app design with emphasize on aesthetic variables. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive approach to factors affecting mobile apps downloads by emphasizing on the role of aesthetical components of an app icon. The developed research models try to test all important factors in this regards. The research population consists of game apps at Cafebazaar Play Store in Iran. By using the combined sampling method (both quota and judgmental), the relevant data of 384 apps were collected. MATLAB software package was used to evaluate aesthetical components and, then, collected data was analyzed by stepwise regression test in SPSS software package. The results showed that among identified factors, an app average score, image symmetry, designing style, anthropomorphism, icon complexity, application language and payment methods, all have a significant impact on downloading an app by users.