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%.

Messing it all up with typos (ASO part 3)

I guess I shouldn't have maintained my app store listing late at night, while everyone in my family was asleep. Late at night people are sleepy and when the're sleepy they make mistakes.

So somehow I ended up with a typo in my app's title in the store listing. I listed a "Baby" app instead of a "Babi Monitor" app, just missed the second word. Probably a copy-&-paste issue. The impact is pretty obvious:

typo in
this week

While downloads did not completely vanish a decrease is clearly visible. Lesson learned: do your homework and avoid typos.

App Store Optimization - A Language Trap (ASO part 2)

Looking at Google Play download statistics I noticed the following in the early days:

For some reason English downloads, with the US the biggest user space, are low compared to the peer group of similar apps. Typically, US-English should represent 20-25% of app downloads according to Google Play. I am seeing 2%. This is not good.

Lost in Translation
I am German. In Germany we use the term ‘babyphone’ - everyone knows what a babyphone is even though ‘phone’ is an english word. Pah! A quick check on the web reveals that ‘babyphone’ is not actually an english term, at least not one commonly used. It should be ‘baby monitor’, this is what I really meant. I stepped right into a language trap ... how could this happen? To me?

A/B Test
Before I change texts in the app store listing I'll give this idea a verification. Another A/B-test is set up quickly in Google Play, this time it's a localized test to compare different texts in the English listing.

 

However, this A/B test is not showing any meaningful results. Either actual download numbers in the US are too small to produce meaningful statistics, or the text doesn't make a difference at all. Maybe parents in the US are not checking on their babies? Hm...

 

Looking at this for a while I noticed that in the A/B tests only the description texts can be changed while the app title remains:

 

 

Probably, the app's title is actually what users look at most but the title cannot be A/B-tested. I went to try something different. Fortunately, there is a separate language provisioned for 'English - United Kingdom'. So there is a separate English language to play around with while keeping US unchanged. The app's English-UK downloads should acommodate for 7% of overall downloads according to public Google Play overall statistics, whereas I am seeing 3% for my app.

 

Testing with English-UK

I added a new language entry in the Google Play listing for English-UK and also updated the apk file to contain English-UK texts, changing 'Babyphone Wifi' to 'Baby Monitor Wifi'. After a few days UK downloads have increased to match the expected overall share of 7%:

 

Interestingly, also US downloads have increased a little but. It seems that some users in the US have set their phone to English-UK.

Doing the Change
With all the testing there now was enough confidence to change the name of the app from 'Babyphone' to 'Baby Monitor' for English users. With this change, cumulated downloads of English-US and English-UK users increased significantly - by approximately 200%.

 

 

Result: App store optimization is not always straight forward and may require a second thought.

 

Update: Not only 'Baby Monitor' is a good description of the app, I also use 'Baby Alarm' meanwhile

Google Play App Store Optimization (ASO)

The Google Play app store uses various pictures (icons, photos) to detail an app offering. Some pictures may appear more attractive to users while others well tend to draw users away. But which are the right ones to use?

Google offers a feature to try various pictures and pick the best. You simply add different pictures and see what catches best with users. Google is using such optimization througout their business ever since their early days, check this CNET article for more info.

With such A/B-testing embedded in Google Play it is fairly straight forward to give different pictures a try. What can possibly be the impact of changing a few pictures, or is there an impact at all? I am not expecting much...

After a few days of testing the following impact is projected by Google Play: 

• Using picture #3 instead of the current picture #1 would give a 20% download advandage (228 vs. 190)
• Using picture #2 instead of the current picture #1 would give a 36% download advandage (260 vs. 190)

That's not too bad, improving downloads by >30% is a pretty clear result. Furthermore, an info is shown about more data being required:

Probably, the overall downloads of my app are not constant enough for Google to calculate a statistically robust result so Google show this info. However, during the few days of testing the percentage values appeared to be fairly stable. For now I'll finish the test nevertheless, want to look at another change to test.

Result: 30% increase in app downloads by using a better background image.