Hi! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's
take a look at the new Google Play Console.
Okay, so coming to you today from
my house, from my kitchen. I'm not on the road. I'm not in the office. But I had
some stuff to do at home today. So, I'm here. Today, what I want to do is
talk about some of the - well some of the big news, at least for me, is the new -
because I spent so much time in Google Play Developer Console and they -
yesterday they released the new look and feel, and I don't know if
it's been released globally or if it's just been, you know, if it's done by
region. But this is when I start to notice it yesterday afternoon,
just go in there and start doing things. It's strange when this happens. When you
use the app stores a lot and you notice like almost immediately when they happen.
Like last week iTunes Connect me to change on test flight and it was like
literally that morning I was putting some test flight builds up for clients,
and then that afternoon it wouldn't go, up load something else's, oh yeah, that'll
be ready in about 20 minutes. And you go, and well everything's
different. You have to figure everything out really quickly because you told them
whatever. So, anyway, let's have a look at this other new Google Play
Console. Have a look at my screen here, a lot of things still
look the same and a lot of things are different. I think one of the main things
that they've done is because I've been adding so many good tools on the Google
Play Console, some of them not so - actually not all of them add value. Any
tool adds value, you know, if you know how to use it properly. But they've
added so much that it started getting really cluttered. So, a lot of these
things are just sort of consolidating bits of information. Here you can see
my Google Play Console. You've got my policy violation here at the top and i
think the only way I'm ever going to get rid of this thing is to actually fix the
app set it applies to, but some of them it apply, some of them have
policy violations that have actually been suspended. And I have three
suspended apps now. I have two suspended apps and they're really old, so I can't
actually fix them. So, I'm just always gonna have this policy violation there
unless I - I don't know. Maybe I should contact them. But,
everything here looks kind of the same. Over here on the left, they got, you
know, they've gotten rid of a lot of that stuff.
Just sort of group them together. So, we've still got the all applications,
we've got the game services here and somebody asked me a question about,
actually it was iTunes Game Center yesterday and you know, we we set up game services on
a lot of our games and I just I found it to be more trouble than it was worth. So,
even though in it, it just slowed down the whole release process.
A lot of - a lot of them, we don't really do lately. I mean, you see, there's
not a lot of users on a lot of these things. And i still think a lot of my
core users are not necessarily gamers, so, when the app first opens up and
it says "log into your Google Play", give us your details, and
no, I don't know if I like that. Anyway, we don't do that so much order
management. I mean, order management was brought over months ago into
Google Play. Which is it's nice having it here better than when you
had to go into Google wallet and check things. Download reports - now this is
something that's kind of, you know, it's the financial reports were there
before. So, you go in there and I said, "I want to download the CSV file," so
like with me my accountant meets the csv files of you know so they could do the
VAT moss you know some pay that for all the different regions everything which
is apparently they complain about it because it's kind of like difficult for
them but this is where i could go in to do that but we've got these new ones
here we got crashes and a and ours well we've got reviews and we've got
statistics and for me none of them show anything yet and might because it's new
maybe it's it gets updated daily or whatever i don't really know what these
are my hope I mean the reviews is what what interests me the most because one
of my big complaints about Google Play and iTunes is you know that if you have
a lot of apps and not even a lot if you have like ten you know you have to keep
track of how many reviews are being kept there so you can respond to them like in
the past before I had my team it was me doing all of them and I'll you know it
when we have like you know 20 or 30 apps it was trying to keep track of how many
reviews we had on each one so you see if it went up by one so like one of them
has like 294 reviews i have a spreadsheet of all the apps in the in
the tallies so i could go through and update that each time and then you know
you know so then that's what my with maribel on my team that's what she
does every day so we can find out so we can respond to these reviews because
before we started doing this I would get people complaining about something they
would say like who through severe sickness or something or they would just
say something you know inflammatory about the app which you have to respond
to immediately or maybe even sometimes they say this is terrible what a ripoff
I want a refund and we always say you always say student I'll give you a
refund I'm sorry didn't work for you you know calm down right buddy if you wait
like a week or two weeks because you haven't seen it then that's it never
goes over well so I knew it that would be hopefully that's what that is so
hopefully that shows up something if we go back to all applications you know if
I go into weddings applications all the things that are still the same but this
this out this app doesn't do very well by the way this is just the first on the
list it's one of my lesser performers so you know we still got the same things
over the left you know we got statistics you know the same as before I don't see
any new reports here at least not none that I've noticed development tools so
this takes the other crashes and anr's the obfuscation files which is said
what's out there before it may been may have actually been in another well yet
for pro guard services an API so if you do the iaps and all that kind stuff and
a firebase cloud message or Diagnostics which I don't think was there before I'm
not actually using fireplace cloud messenger yet i'm still using i'm just
using google cloud message and apns the apple one so so i haven't actually
started yet that's i get release management the same kind of thing is
before like a few months ago they roll that they brought in this manage
releases thing and and I feel so on the 18th it was the last day you could use
the APK tab right and i use it i like up until the last day it was like you have
to pry it from my cold dead hands right so and i use the manage releases one for
an app that we did so I when I went to on on the trip to Oslo and I didn't
bring my laptop with me it turns out one of the apps that I'd released just
recently Korean bubble bath has like this huge bug in it right and I just
released that out to everybody and didn't look at the reviews because
there's no kind holiday to review things if I had I
would have noticed it before and Maribel was ill or something and so we didn't
really catch it before I left and then so I had the whole weekend of reading
all these emails and review singing you know it's we get this big error once we
open it straight you know so so as soon as I got back I i fixed it because it
was such a simple fix and released it and went through manage releases rather
than the APK and and emailed everybody who have emailed me is that a key please
try it again as an update and some most everyone said yes some people said it's
still not working and so what you have to go to Google Play there's an update
you know and then they said no it's still not working and then I think well
they don't know what they're talking about and it turns out that the manage
releases what I've done is somehow I release it's only fifty percent of the
population so fifty percent for like another week still have the bad one
we're still leaving bad reviews so and that's just I mean that's down to me not
using it right I was kind of in a hurry and ultimately I think all this manage
released stuff I'm such a I guess I just don't like change that much maybe it's
cuz i'm getting older I don't know it is but that's you know ultimately I think
it's going to be better in the long run so you get test out changes with like a
smaller group of people right in the pre-launch report this is something I've
seen this and I don't know what it does yet so you know I'll have a play around
this you know with this later on we got the store present stuff so you get store
listings the pricing and distribution all that kind of stuff there before
store listing experiments when we had experiments before but it's nice if they
put this a bit more prominently there to play around with it content rating
in-app purchases and sales the sales is something I don't know what this is yet
because I thought it was the financial reports but it's not because the
financial reports are done here and so far I just haven't had a chance to play
around with that yet user acquisition this part is really cool I mean it but
it's not new and we had used you know acquisition reports before promotions
optimization tips all of that was there before but they put it into one section
one thing I've always wanted with user acquisition is just to know what
keywords people were finding my appt with I mean you can find if I go into
this I'm going into this and I know that is not a very good app I mean in terms
of downloads so you know I could see how many visitors has had how many people
actually installed it which is a thirteen percent conversion rate of a
whopping 58 in the last week so it's like not really good and I can see what
where they come from but what we really great is to be able to see what keywords
they actually come in on so you know and I there may be reasons why they can't
show you that I know like with Google Analytics you know they've started to
cut back on that because so many people were gaming the system so when they got
the financial reports which is good if you go on a you know on a nap by appt
basis to find out which ones making the most money and then the user feedback so
you can see ratings reviews analysis reviews and then beta feedback if you're
doing the debate it releases so ultimately I think it's all pretty good
I mean there there's a few things I would really like to see in the google
play console some of it does exist in apple or in the iTunes Connect and some
of it doesn't my big one is I'd like to see how much money I'm making each day
not per app yeah if i go into if I go in to the if I go in to order management
and I download the CSV was so this is what I do every few weeks or download
the CSV and then I put it into like a pivot table so I can like see the the
sales minus the the Google's thirty percent per day take out all the taxes
on that guys I've just so I have like a running tally of how much has been made
each day so I can have some progress reports but it's just so tedious this
kind of thing that they can tell you immediately the same way that the iTunes
Connect does the second thing I'd really like to see on google play console like
I said it's just the reviews i want to see all the reviews in one place and
hopefully that report does that you know we'll find out I guess and then and then
third I'd like to see the I'd like to see a bit more analytics about how
people are actually finding my app and that might be something that fits
intentionally left off because people are gaming the system or whatever I
don't know anyway that's it for today I mean let me know if you guys see it let
me know what you guys think about this new of this new look and feel ultimately
I think it's I think it's a good thing it cleans up the interface a bit and
but I don't see too much added that's new at least not yet and uh you know I
don't think I think it would be cool I spent so much time in google play
console that any change is like you know it's like rearranging the furniture in
my house every time I come into Italy oh oh yeah yeah so anyway that's it for
today I will talk to you guys on Monday