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Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play
With just a few clicks, you can publish an app to Google Play and access a global audience of more than 1 billion 30 days active users. Finding success in global markets means considering how each market differs, planning for high quality localization, and tailoring your activity to the local audience. The new Going Global Playbook provides best practices and tips, with advice from developers who've successfully gone global.
This guide includes advice to help you plan your approach to going global, prepare your app for new markets, take your app to market, and also include data and insights for key countries and other useful resources.
This ebook joins others that we've recently published including href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Google_Inc_The_Building_for_Billions_Playbook_for?id=cJEjDAAAQBAJ">The Building for Billions Playbook and href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Google_Inc_The_News_Publisher_Playbook_for_Android?id=O7T3CwAAQBAJ">The News Publisher Playbook. All of our ebooks are promoted in the href="http://g.co/play/playbookapp">Playbook for Developers app, which is where you can stay up to date with all the news and best practices you need to find success on Google Play.
Posted by Niko Schröer, Business Development, Google Play
Driving installs is important to growing a user base, but it's not much use if your app sits on users' devices and is rarely opened. In a competitive app landscape, it's increasingly important to engage and retain users over the long term to build a successful business. Users who are using your app more will have a higher lifetime value and be more likely to share your app. Watch my Playtime session below to hear about the tools and features other developers are using to increase app engagement. You can also read the summary of my main tips below.
1. Build a high quality app to engage Android users
Building a high quality app is the foundation of a great user experience on Android. The better your app's user experience is, the more engaged your users will be. Optimizing for href="https://developer.android.com/design/material/index.html?utm_campaign=android_discussion_bestpractices_121916&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">material design, for example, can significantly improve user engagement as well as building for Android Wear, Auto or href="https://developer.android.com/training/tv/index.html?utm_campaign=android_discussion_bestpractices_121916&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">TV where it makes sense based on your value proposition.
To achieve high quality, we recommend you to check out the latest Android features, tips, and best practices in our href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.secrets&utm_source=dac&utm_medium=page&utm_campaign=evergreen&utm_source=global_co&utm_medium=prtnr&utm_content=Mar2515&utm_campaign=PartBadge&pcampaignid=MKT-Other-global-all-co-prtnr-py-PartBadge-Mar2515-1&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Playbook for Developers.
The developer of the golf app, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hole19golf.hole19.beta">Hole19, tailored their app's user experience thoughtfully for Android Wear and, as a result, saw a 40% increase in user engagement compared to non-Wear users. href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yBQjkrhACc">Watch a video about Hole19's success.
2. Make your users feel at home
Personalising your app experience to make users feel at home is a good way to start a long lasting relationship. Onboarding new users is a crucial step in this process. Onboarding should be fast and seamless and ask for minimal user input - after all users want to start using your app as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the onboarding should be a core part of the overall product experience. Use images and wording that's true to your brand and only ask for user input when it's actually needed, to reduce friction and avoid losing users.
href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freeletics.gym">Freeletics, a fitness app, created an engaging user onboarding flow in which they tailored imagery and text to male and female users respectively. They also moved the registration process to a later stage in the funnel to reduce friction. The improved onboarding flow increased user activity by 58% within the first 7 days. They also implemented Google Smart Lock to seamlessly sign-in returning users.
3. Optimize feature releases as a way to increase user engagement
Introducing new features is essential to staying ahead of competition and relevant to your users to ensure they keep coming back to your app. To make new feature launches successful drivers for user engagement, follow these simple steps:
Define a clear objective for each release to measure your impact, e.g. increase number of users who edit a photo by at least 10%.
href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213">Use beta testing to gather user feedback and iterate a feature before it's rolled out to all of your users.
href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7002270">Enable the pre-launch report in the Play developer console to spot potential flaws and ensure technical stability in your alpha and beta apps.
Guide users to each new feature as if it is a light onboarding experience. Visually highlight what's new and provide a short explanation why users should care.
Measure performance with href="https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/?utm_campaign=culture_education_general_en_12-19-16&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">analytics to see if the new feature drives engagement (that you've defined as your objective).
4. Use notifications wisely
Push notifications are a popular engagement tool and rightfully so. However, there is a fine line between driving engagement and annoying users (who might then uninstall your app). Follow these guidelines to ensure your notifications are on the right side of the line:
Be relevant and only send messages that matter to the user in context. Be creative and true to your brand, speak your users language and use an authentic tone.
Make notifications actionable for your users and don't forget to deep link to content where applicable to save your users time.
Remember that not all your users are equal so personalize your message to different user cohorts with href="https://firebase.google.com/docs/notifications/?utm_campaign=culture_education_general_en_12-19-16&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Firebase Notifications.
Consider timeliness of your messages to get users the right notification at the right time and with the right frequency. For example, it might be better to send a notification about something interesting to read at a time when the user normally gets out their phone – like during their commute – instead of the middle of the day, when they might be busy and dismiss a new notification.
Finally, give users control over what notifications they receive so that they can opt-in and opt-out of the notifications they like and don't like respectively. If users get annoyed about certain types of notifications and don't have a way to disable them, they might uninstall your app.
The Norwegian news app href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.cita&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Aftenposten implemented a new onboarding flow that clarified which notifications were available, allowing readers to manage their preferences. This reduced uninstalls by 9.2.% over 60 days and led to a 28% decrease in the number of users muting notifications completely. href="https://developer.android.com/distribute/stories/apps/aftenposten.html?utm_campaign=android_discussion_bestpractices_121916&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Read more about Aftenposten's success.
5. Reward your most engaged users
Last but not least, you should find ways to reward your most loyal users to retain them over time and to make it desirable to less engaged users to engage more. These rewards can come in many shapes and forms. Start by keeping it simple and make sure the reward adds real value to the user and fits in your app's ecosystem. You can do this by:
Giving sneak peeks of new features by inviting them to a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213?hl=en">beta group.
Decorating user accounts with badges based on their behaviour.
Offer app exclusive discounts or href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6321495">promo codes that can only be redeemed in your app.
Generally, the more you can personalize the reward the better it will work.
Find success with ongoing experimentation
A great Android app gives developers a unique opportunity to create a lasting relationship with users and build a sustainable business with happy customers. Therefore optimising apps to engage and retain your users by following these 5 tips should be front and centre of your development goals and company strategy. Find more tips and best practices by watching the sessions at href="http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/watch-sessions-from-the-playtime-2016-events-to-learn-how-to-succeed-on-android-and-google-play.html">this year's Playtime events.
Posted by Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play
Working at Google Play, we’re on the front line watching developers build, polish, and launch their dreams for millions of users to experience. While it’s exciting to be a part of so much creativity, we’re often asked how small startups can stand out in such a competitive field. We recently had Josh Elman & Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners speak at our events, sharing their experiences working in Product Marketing and Engineering at major tech companies including Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Below are four tips to hit the ground running and create a business built for success.
Set goals, both large and small
Every startup has an ultimate goal, but don’t forget to create micro-goals. Breaking your larger goal down into smaller milestones creates checkpoints to review progress and ensure momentum is heading in the right direction. This also allows for flexibility if teams need to course correct along the way, not to mention micro-accomplishments to celebrate!
Create stickiness
The first level in Sarah’s Hierarchy of Engagement is to identify the core action for users to perform in your app. Once you have engagement with this core action, level 2 is driving retention, getting users to come back and perform the core action more and more. The ultimate goal is to hook users with your app creating accruing benefits, whereby deeper and more frequent engagement creates habits and product dependencies.
“As companies move up the hierarchy, their products become better, harder to leave, and ultimately create virtuous loops that make the product self-perpetuating,” – Sarah Tavel, Partner at Greylock
Example: For those looking to improve on organizational skills, Evernote can be a lifesaver. The more lists users create, the more they rely on the product. Evernote becomes such an ingrained habit that it naturally transcends between personal and professional worlds.
Drive virality
When launching a new app, look for ways to achieve virality. Find hooks to make users fall in love with your app and strive to make it part of their regular habits. But watch out, not all types of virality are treated equally.
“Whenever you’re thinking about engineering virality, you need to be sure that you’re reaching the right people, getting them interested for reasons that align with the intrinsic value of your product, and leading them to the right actions,” – Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock
While monitoring traditional mobile metrics such as installs and DAUs provide a high level overview of app performance, cohort analysis is key to understanding user behavior and optimizing for growth. When rolling out changes in your app, make sure to track cohorts for an extended duration. Initial results may tell one story at D7, but hold tight, as things could turn a corner by D15 or even later. Give users time to adapt and get comfortable with the changes before making any final product decisions.
Read more tips on how to find success for your app or game start up in the Playbook for Developers app.
Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play
The upcoming Android Wear 2.0 experience will introduce standalone apps, expanding your potential reach to both Android and iOS audiences with Wear devices. Users will be able to search, install, and use apps without ever leaving their device. See how other developers are enhancing their user experience with standalone apps for messaging, travel & local, and health & fitness.
Glide
Having a watch app further simplifies video messaging with href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glidetalk.glideapp&hl=en_GB">Glide. Using the Wear href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/complications.html">Complications API, Glide is now able to live broadcast directly from the watch face. By tapping contact shortcuts from the watch face, you can now launch directly into a conversation. This experience brings speed and intimacy to the world of messaging, making wrist-based communication more accessible and effortless.
Foursquare
Travelers around the world use href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=7953007503920441591&hl=en_GB">Foursquare's Android Wear app to discover hidden gems and be in the know about the best places to eat, drink and explore. With their upcoming 2.0 app, the team has a clean new canvas for rich notifications giving users an immersive experience with Foursquare content.
"The standalone nature of the Android Wear 2.0 app will offer a big boost in search performance and app responsiveness so you spend less time staring at the screen and more time exploring the world around you," said Kyle Fowler, Software Engineer at Foursquare.
Lifesum
href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sillens.shapeupclub&hl=en_GB">Lifesum helps users make better food choices, improve their exercise, and reach health goals. The upcoming 2.0 experience complements the existing Lifesum mobile app and as a standalone app, it will allow users to more easily track water and meals throughout the day.
"It's all about increasing access and being there for the user in a quick and simple way. We believe a simplified way of tracking meals and water will make it easier for our users on their journey of becoming healthier and happier," said Joakim Hammer, Android Developer at Lifesum
Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation about the recently released Android Wear Developer Preview 4.
Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play
We're constantly working on ways to make Google Play a great place for users to discover apps and games they'll love. We know this is crucial to most developers ongoing success. There are steps you can take to ensure your app is primed for success – that's why we're sharing a reminder of some of our top tips for getting your app discovered on Google Play.
Build for quality
First, build for quality. Android users expect high-quality apps. App quality directly influences the long-term success of your app - in terms of installs, user rating and reviews, engagement, and user retention. These are some of the factors that go into our search and discovery systems that help discern what apps to recommend and surface across our Google Play experiences. When building your app, check against the href="https://developer.android.com/distribute/essentials/quality/core.html">quality criteria, and use what you need from the material design guidelines to make sure you are delivering a highly usable experience. Also, be sure to test your app for functional quality. Opt-in to the href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7002270?hl=en">pre-launch report for your alpha and beta apps in the Google Play Developer Console and you'll receive a report for each APK showing how it performs on real devices. This will help you identify crashes and other issues before you release your app.
Example: Designing for high usability through href="https://material.google.com/">Google Material Design.
Request only the permissions you need
Second, be considerate on which permission settings to enable for your app. We see that there are some apps that ask for very sensitive permissions, even when the app doesn't use them. (For example, a camera app asking for read and write permissions to call logs.) Excessive app permissions may dissuade users from installing your app. In fact, href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2556978">one study, in which users were shown two unbranded apps with similar ratings that had the same functionality but different sets of permission requests, showed that users were, on average, 3 times more likely to install the app with fewer permissions requests. And a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/soups2014/soups14-paper-lin.pdf">similar study showed that users are 1.7 times more likely, on average, to select the application with fewer permission requests. The rule of thumb is to enable permissions that are only essential to your app. Read the href="https://developer.android.com/training/articles/user-data-permissions.html">best practices for app permissions.
href="https://developer.android.com/training/articles/user-data-overview.html">Chart: Distribution of permission groups use across Arcade Games category.
If you're building an arcade game, you many only need a very few permission settings, if any.
Listen and respond to your users
Lastly, be attentive to user feedback. It's ultimately the users who drive our search and discovery systems. When you hear user feedback about bugs or other issues, we recommend engaging with the feedback and, if needed, updating your app in a timely manner. Having an up-to-date app that reflects your user's feedback can help you gain more installs, engagement, and higher ratings. href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213">Beta testing is a good way to get feedback from real users before launch. You can also check the href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/138230?hl=en">ratings and reviews section of the Developer Console to see an analysis of what users are saying about your app and how that is affecting your rating compared to similar apps.
Review benchmarks in the Developer Console uses machine learning to give you insights about what users are saying about your app and how it affects your rating.
Google Play strives to help users find and discover the most safe, high quality, useful, and relevant apps. Building apps that put user's interest first will help you be successful in Google Play. For more tips and best practices for building a successful app business on Google Play, get the href="http://g.co/play/playbook">Playbook for Developers app.
Maxim Mai, Business Development Manager, Google Play
Maintaining sustainable growth is difficult for even the highest quality apps. In this video and through the 5 steps below you can find out how some of our leading Android developers are tackling growth.
1) Understand and define your app's objectives
Depending on your product lifecycle stage you will most likely focus on these 3 growth goals with varying intensity:
Acquire new users
Increase engagement and retention
Grow revenue
2) Track and measure your tactics against each of your objectives
List out the tactics you're using to achieve each objective and keep track of their performance. You can visualize it using a scorecard like in the example below created by Mobile Growth Stack.
3) Apply your growth tactics.
Here are a few examples of specific tactics developers have successfully used to drive sustained growth.
Tactic: href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clue.android">Clue, a female health app, invests in the Play store listing to increase conversions.
Results: 24% aggregate increase in install conversion rate over a period of 6 months.
How they did it:
Built a continuous flow of global and localised href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/topic/7046704?hl=en&ref_topic=6299676">store listing experiments.
Monitored changes in the href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6263332?hl=en">user acquisition performance report for target countries and channels.
Gathered insights from what users are saying from the href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/138230">reviews analysis.
Which phone screenshot do you think drove increase in install conversion for Clue?
Tactic: href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.sharethemeal.app">ShareTheMeal, a non-profit app developed by the World Food Programme, uses public relations as a free sustainable acquisition channel.
Results: 50% of their total installs to date were driven by media coverage.
How they did it:
Developed an excellent messaging.
Boosted installs impact by combining PR with celebrity outreach and distribution partnership.
Learned that TV coverage has the highest impact on installs but print is a useful door opener to amplify TV coverage.
Tactic: Viral growth. Virality is a core growth tool for apps and games that focus on sharing and usually the mechanic is built into the core user experience of the product. However, even if sharing isn't a key component of your app, you can still influence two key variables to create an appropriate environment to encourage virality.
How to do it:
Increase the number of additional users that a single user brings to the app, by boosting the number of invitations sent.
Decrease your "cycle time", how long it takes between inviting a user and that user sending out the next round of invitations to their friends.
Offer more incentives for users to share the app or its content while they're using it will help shorten the cycle time and kickstart viral growth!
Tactic: href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freeletics.nutrition">Freeletics Nutrition, an app to adjust your nutrition to your individual needs and goals, uses cross-promotion to accelerate the launch of a new product.
Results: 96% of new Nutrition app sales generated by users who originally registered for the developer's href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freeletics.lite">Bodyweight training app.
How they did it:
Surface meal advice in the Bodyweight app's activity feed with the goal of raising awareness for the approaching launch of their new Freeletics Nutrition app.
4) Build a strong growth culture
To make sustainable growth work for your app, it needs to be a part of your culture. href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8438666261259599516">Runtastic is one of the leading health and fitness app developers in Europe and 95% of their approximately 76M total app installs on Google Play have been generated organically. Mario Aichlseder, VP of Growth, believes this is the result of a strong growth culture and the growth principles according to which all teams operate. For example, product managers, designers and engineers at Runtastic deliberately chose a mixture of qualitative and quantitative feedback loops during the app development process to ensure they stay true to their growth principles.
5) Adjust along the way
It's important to track your tactics against real metrics to measure your impact. That will help you make decisions about where to increase or decrease your efforts. Your priorities will also change based on the evolution of your business and product lifecycle as well as due to external factors such as new techniques becoming available, so be open to regularly adjusting your tactics.
Get more tips and best practices in the sessions from href="http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/watch-sessions-from-the-playtime-2016-events-to-learn-how-to-succeed-on-android-and-google-play.html">this year's Playtime events.
href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc-XoJTVgYBviYbgxgSJqBws">Check out more sessions from our global Playtime events to learn best practices for your app and game businesses. Also, stay up to date with more videos from events, product news, and tips to help grow your business on Google Play with the Playbook for Developers app.
