Hi, I'm Shazia Makhdumi from the Google Play for Education team.
I work with developers like yourselves
who are building great Edu apps and help
them be successful in Android.
So you know that idea you have for an amazing educational app,
the one that will change how kids think,
empower them to build totally new things,
or even revolutionize how a school is structured?
I've got some good news about your idea-- its time has come.
So in this video, I want to share learnings and best
practices from other Edu app developers that
will help you get started on building
a great educational app.
Today, we're in a disruptive moment
in the evolution of education content in schools and tools
as you know well.
It used to be nearly impossible for small developers
to get an educational app into a school,
no matter how amazing or transformative it was.
But with the Google Play for Education marketplace,
we've actually made it easy to get
your app into the hands of educators that want to use it
and for those educators to get it
into the hands of their students.
And for the record, that's a lot of hands we're talking about.
Currently, over 30 million teachers and students worldwide
use Google Apps for Education, which
means that Google can help you have a huge presence.
So as you can tell, our team is really
excited about this opportunity, but more importantly educators
are really excited about what we're
doing with Google Play for Education,
especially about the access to enriching content for students
as well as the tools that help them be more
productive in the classroom so they can focus on teaching.
Google Play for Education already
includes thousands of apps ranging from curriculum
supplements to help students learn math and English
and science, as well as how to create videos, make a book,
annotate notes.
Teachers find tools that help support students,
create presentations, and even manage classroom behavior.
So thousands of apps in Google Play for Education
means thousands of developers have
built great educational apps on Android.
And they have a lot of nuggets to share.
So what we did was, we distilled those into the top five tips
that developers consider the most important
when building an education app.
Their experience is your advantage.
Tip number one-- users will pay for quality,
so get testers to submit ratings and reviews early.
One of the primary metrics that users judge an app with
is quality.
And they use app star rating to measure quality.
When the star rating increases, the purchase rate increases.
And as you can see, four star apps
earn almost three times what three star apps are earning.
So to make sure that your app's quality is reflected
in the rating, ask early evaluators
of your app, especially the educators,
to submit their ratings and reviews for it.
Teachers really care about what other teachers specifically
think about an app because that is
a big factor in their purchase decision.
Tip number two-- alpha and beta test groups as well as
staged rollouts help you collect user feedback quickly.
So instead of simply publishing your newest app
to the entire world, Google Play allows
developers to test the app with small groups
of alpha testers or beta testers.
And this is a great opportunity for you
to get feedback on your app without it
affecting its current rating.
The folks who built Book Creator invited 20 teachers
to try the beta app in the classroom.
This gave them early visibility into issues
and also allowed them to test on a wide variety of devices
but within a classroom environment.
And they recommend for paid apps like theirs,
create a separate free version just for the beta phase.
Why?
So that teachers don't have to pay to test your app.
Also, consider using staged rollouts in Google Play
to gradually push new features and updates to a slow percent
of the user base and get their feedback.
So if your rating stays the same,
great, roll it out to more users and repeat.
But what this does, it helps you catch problems early
before they can have a huge impact on your ratings.
Tip number three-- we've all heard the expression,
you only have one chance to make a first impression.
So optimizing for tablets from the start
helps you make a good first impression with your users.
Given the growth of tablets in schools,
it's really important that educational apps work well
on tablets since that directly impacts user experience, which
then impacts purchase rates.
For instance StudyBlue, an online flash card creation app,
did not initially test the app on 10 inch devices.
And what they found was they had a lot
of bugs especially related to tablet specific issues
around orientation and rotation.
And usability was poor.
So now that they know that, they're
actually using responsive layout techniques such as fragments
to build a multi-pane layout for their tablet app, which
allows them to make additional use
of the additional tablet real estate,
to minimize the number of screens,
and also to improve usability.
They wish they had known this and done this
from the beginning.
So learn from their mistake.
Use core tablet guidelines early and often.
Make sure that your app is optimized
for tablets from the start.
Tip number four-- designing for Android
allows you actually to stay engaged
with users even when the app is not open.
So Google Play offers a lot of Android specific design
elements such as rich notifications
and widgets and live wallpapers.
And what these do is allows a user
to be engaged with your app even without them opening it.
It's unlocking marketing channels for your app,
but without spending a dime on expensive marketing.
ClassDojo, which is a classroom management app,
actually took advantage of notifications
for ClassDojo messaging.
And they found an increased number of read messages.
And now they're experimenting with Jelly Bean's expanded
notification and actions to make the app even
more useful to their core audience, teachers, students,
and parents.
Similarly, developers at Wunderlist for Education,
which is an app for managing to-do lists, integrated
location reminders to remind students
to do their homework when they're getting home.
Not sure how much students like that, but what they had found
was reminders help keep the pace of work and location reminders
especially adapt to a student's routine.
Tip number five, something that you probably know, but your app
listing is really important, maybe
even more important than you realize.
Because remember, your app listing
is what helps attract users and helps
them understand how to use your app.
So create a compelling listing with a clear title
and descriptions.
Use high-res shots and previews.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Use a great icon, because that's what users will see first
and remember about your app.
It helps build your brand.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words,
a video is actually worth a thousand screenshots.
StudyBlue found using good videos in the listing
to demo your app features actually
leads to better conversions, since these days users are very
attuned to watching videos to learn how an app or a game
works.
So where possible, include a video, especially one
of your app being used in a classroom setting,
because that's what's going to get
students and educators excited about your app.
OK, I know I said five tips, but I
have a bonus tip or self-evident truth.
Be patient and be prepared to dig in for the long haul.
And as most of you have probably discovered,
the Edu app space is not for the faint of heart.
Agnitus, which is an adaptive learning system for kids,
cautions that Edu app development
needs time and resources and stamina and commitment.
Understand your customer, both the one paying for the app
as well as the one consuming the app.
Understand curriculum, data, and analytics.
Think about scalability, both in the data structure side
and on the database side.
Intellijoy, a company that makes math and English apps for kids,
says to developers, resist the temptation to "appify"
a lot of textbook content.
Instead, focus on making a quality app or game because
as tablet penetration ramps up in schools, quality apps
will rise to the top.
So building a solid Edu app will take significant planning,
multiple types of resources including education,
engineering, domain, and design.
But we've given you all this information
to make it as easy as possible for you
to bring your idea to fruition sooner.
So now that you know what to do, what are you waiting for?
Get started now.
Visit developer.android.com/edu to get more information
on the program as well as access to helpful resources.
We're really excited to see how the apps you build
will help educators and students and really enable
this next generation of learning.
Thank you.