Jul 21, 2016

App Icon (ASO part 4)

There is only one chance to make a first impression: the app icon is what users see first. So I figured my app icon should be good. But what makes a good icon?

While there are many ways to design the app icon and you can sink an infinite number of hours into design exercices, it's fairly easy to test different colors for an existin app icon design. The impact of colors can be significant and I wanted to know what the bottom line impact is. So I went ahead and checked a set of different icon colors.

Setting up an A/B test for icons in the Google Play store provided the following results.

Three alternative colors tested


Best option would give 20% more downloads


Daily stats rather erratic


Result stabilizes over time


Applying the result


Result: Testing different app icon colors may increase downloads by 20%.