App rejected twice due to 'Minimal Functionality'. What to do?

[Chris6743166]

Hi all,

I posted this app to the iOS app store but they've rejected it twice now citing this reason:

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Guideline 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality

We still found that the usefulness of your app is limited by the minimal amount of content or features it includes.

Next Steps

We encourage you to review your app concept and incorporate different content and features that are in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

We understand that there are no hard and fast rules to define useful or entertaining, but Apple and Apple customers expect apps to provide a really great user experience. Apps should provide valuable utility or entertainment, draw people in by offering compelling capabilities or content, or enable people to do something they couldn't do before or in a way they couldn't do it before.
/pre

I have successfully submitted almost identical apps for other schools 24 times, but not they won't let this one in. This is very frustrating, because the schools and parents are very happy with the functionality, but Apple says it's not enough.

Does any one have any helpful suggestions for how I might improve the app functionality? Anyone else had a similar issue?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

[Bruce Stuart]

Chris ,

I clicked through the app and on brief review I found that most of the items on the menu - upper left - contained ‘blank’ or fake lore ipsum pages ....

I believe that they would object to this - and would reject the app based on that.

Here’s what I saw...

Fix all of those dead links - and there are several - try again.

Bruce

[Chris6743166]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated.

Sorry. That content has only been added this afternoon as a result of some tweaks I was making to the backend. I've restored the content to that which was displayed when the app was rejected. Basically, text and images related to the respective titles in the menu.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again.

Chris

[Bruce Stuart]

Have they posted any photos of the reason for rejection ?

Generally - some explanation accompanied the rejection — so details ?

You can also appeal to get more detail .....

Finally - in thinking ‘if i were them’ and you have dozens of apps that are esssentially the same except for the school and the related data - I’d likely reject it and ask you to create one app - and vary the logos and the data based on the logon credentials .... you’re taking up a lot of space on their store - for essentially one app.

Best,

Bruce

[Chris6743166]

Hi Bruce,

No. All that I can see in the rejection is the text provided above. No photos and no specific explanation.

I've sent an appeal. Just waiting for a response. In the meantime, trying to jazz up the design a little and add more features, such as share buttons to the posts.

You might be right that they don't like dozens of apps that look the same but there are multiple large businesses in the UK alone which provide the same service to schools and have considerably more apps than I do, each of which is more-or-less identical to the rest.

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. I'll keep pushing until the app is admitted to the store or I'm admitted to an asylum!

Chris

[Bruce Stuart]

Chris,

another thought - if you are publishing all of the Apps under your Apple account - have the schools you are dealing with - get an Apple account with their names or one person on their team - for the $99 USD option.

Then - publish the app under their credentials.

That should alleviate the issue they are having.

Best,

Bruce