[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
JOSH SOLT: My name is Josh Solt. I am partner development
manager at Google Play.
And I manage kids apps and games.
So today, I'll be talking about optimizing
for a post-install world.
Namely, how do you retain and engage
families in your ecosystem?
So you've spent a lot of time, effort,
resources getting a user to ultimately download your app,
right?
It's quite the process.
There's motivation, discovery, expectation, search, filter,
and then finally the download.
So what about after the download?
So let's look at the user funnel.
We've got the view listing, install, open the app.
Today, I really want to focus on the bottom two-- engaging
with your app and retention.
I have a number of different case studies.
Partners have been willing to share with us,
and hopefully some great facts and data that you'll
find interesting for your businesses.
So since acquisition costs are high,
it's really important to engage your most loyal users.
Optimizing the lifetime value of your traffic
is key for acquisition campaigns and making it most
cost effective.
So this is a pretty staggering stat.
50% to 90% of app users have churned after just 30 days.
So just let that sink in for a moment.
No matter how great your app is, that's just how it is.
And that's really the struggle that a lot of developers
find and lays the groundwork for what we're
going to talk about today.
So what are some of the key reasons for churn?
First of all, there's poor technical quality.
Another one is inefficient or unclear value proposition.
Thirdly, outdated content or functionality.
Not personalized, and also too many push notifications.
All of these can cause major headaches for your business.
And we're going to address them today.
So the format of this presentation
is really threefold.
I'm going to start off by talking about user onboarding.
We actually just had a great presentation from 01 Digital.
They talked about how they're thinking through onboarding.
And we have some great data from Budge Studios as well.
Second of all, we're going to talk about successfully
releasing new features and content,
how PBS kids is thinking through that, and other partners.
And then finally, we're going to talk about reengaging users.
So to start off, how to make user onboarding great.
And thank you, again, for your presentation.
So now that you've had a user download your title,
it's time to make sure they keep using it.
And thinking through your tutorial and registration
is key.
On the tutorial side, focus on the value
and make it fun and simple.
Also allow users to skip the demo
and see it later as an option.
And be sure to explain ancillary features
and make sure it's relevant to the user
and focus on your top metric.
And then-- this will be a common theme through today
is just really testing, testing, testing, and iterate
for your best D1 and D7 retention.
On the registration side, be sure that you
show value for the information asked.
So what does the user get?
And don't bar access.
And optimize your onboarding value proposition.
So you really have to focus on getting your user to engage
with your app in an instant.
It's a very competitive world out there, as we know.
We were just talking about how much competition there
is in the market, so you really have
to differentiate yourself that way.
So familiarize new users with your app
by designing a simple and easy onboarding process.
Make it fast and seamless, contextual, and part
of the product experience.
Also, ask for minimal input, while gathering the information
you need to create engagement.
So one great example is a developer out of Montreal,
Canada called Budge Studios.
Budge Studios has created their own IP
and they're also licensing such prominent IP
as Hello Kitty and Caillou, as well as Thomas the Train.
So a few of the things that Budge Studios thinks
through-- one is fast time to fun.
Really, how do you get someone into the app quickly?
How do you get them having fun right away?
The first playable moment is really critical here.
An early win to build a user's confidence is key.
We'll touch about this later as well.
So be sure to cut the unnecessary steps
to your process.
And for effective onboarding, you also
need a check for dropoffs.
So in terms of Budge Studios, they
want to get players in the game faster and be wary of drop off.
And really, one key metric here is
to find the right value for first time user experience.
And this actually was not the case originally
with Miss Hollywood.
They found that it was too hard--
this title-- for preschoolers.
So by making the first time experience easier,
they actually increased their first time retention by 11%.
That 11% actually accounts for millions
of additional minutes of play.
And test, test, test.
Like we were saying, you've got to keep testing.
Budge Studios, through their rigorous testing,
was able to find that an initial game loop included
five characters, one of which had
issues with their microphone permissions.
So after adjusting this permission and fixing it,
they saw an increase to 74% of first time users in this loop,
compared to 25% in the previous loop.
And we had the honor of having Play Kids present here earlier
today.
They're another great example, in terms
of focusing on user onboarding.
And they've spent a lot of time running tests
to update their onboarding value proposition.
So here you have the old onboarding, and then
the new one that they rolled out.
The new version actually took their conversion rate from 0.4%
all the way up to above 0.7%.
And this pop up that you see, which really laid out
their value proposition in a more clear fashion, that
increased their sales by 81%.
So 81% increase in sales by just improving your pop up
is a pretty staggering number.
So in terms of onboarding, you can test using onboarding flows
with Firebase remote config.
You can run A/B tests experiments
or change app behavior, control custom key value pairs
from the console, and make changes that are instant.
Another key factor that not everyone is really taking
advantage of are avatars.
I love this quote from Play Science.
It says, "When children were asked to design their own app,
the feature that they listed as the most important
was the ability to create their own avatar.
Yet few at the top playful games offer this unique feature,
suggesting a great opportunity for developers."
And here, I'd like to point to Roblox,
another prominent developer based in the US.
They have been really focused on their avatar.
And as soon as a user interacts with their app,
they give them control to customize it.
So what have been the results?
Well, this is pretty staggering once again.
60% of new sign ups customize their avatar.
And out of that 60%, they're seeing
that the retention rate is 1.8 times better-- almost
2x the other user group.
Next, I would like to talk about how to engage and retain
families through successfully releasing new features
and content.
Once again, Roblox is a great example here.
They have a systematic release methodology.
They test it with beta users, so making sure
that you're really getting out there,
testing it with the right user community that's
appropriate for your ages, right?
Making sure it's technically stable, show what's new.
And lastly, analyze that performance.
PBS Kids is really a great example
of a developer out there who's refreshing content and updating
it on a regular basis.
They add new games weekly.
They have seasonal updates around big moments-- Halloween,
Christmas.
Here it can be Day of Kids, a number of other moments.
And be sure to update around that.
And be sure to update your icons.
We saw some of the results that Play Kids had in terms
of updating their icons.
And that's low hanging fruit.
If you can improve your conversion rate 78%,
like they are saying, that's pretty tremendous
and not a tremendous amount of work.
So the key question is, is there enough value in your app?
I wanted to point to this example of Budge Studios.
This is a graph that showed retention.
The top number is when they gave away three free items,
and the bottom is when they gave away two.
So as you can see, that really spiked their numbers.
This isn't necessarily what a lot of developers think.
There is usually the perception that you
have to limit a lot of the free content,
but we're actually finding otherwise.
And this is some great data from Budge Studios,
that the first time experience was better
and that actually led to greater retention, engagement,
and ultimately revenue by actually giving away
that third character.
And the third part I'd like to talk about
is reengaging users and leveraging your key channels.
So be sure to ensure that all your organic channels are being
clearly marketed using Android and update your existing
channels, including e-mail, website, social, and YouTube.
Here, we have some examples from Roblox.
They have an inbox in their app.
And so they're able to push notifications directly
to the user.
Some other examples include what they're doing
on social media and YouTube.
A lot of developers aren't really leveraging
the About page on their YouTube page,
so that About page is a great place
to link to your Google Play listing.
You can also link to your website, social media accounts.
It's easy.
And we've seen some strong results out of that.
Roblox is also using social media, as I mentioned before.
Form a Facebook, Twitter, and they're also
doing YouTube cards.
YouTube cards can pop up on the side of your videos
if you're running different videos on YouTube.
Those are free to use and another great way
to reengage users, bring them back to your store listing
page on Google Play.
Toca Boca also provides a great example
of how a top premium developer is leveraging their ecosystem
to really push new titles out.
And a great example of that is their Toca Life series.
They have a number of different Toca Life apps,
including Toca Life Town, Toca Life Vacation,
and they actually just released Toca Life Farm,
which is one of our top premium titles
currently on Google Play.
So Toca Life is a series of apps that gives kids access
to a role playing universe filled with everyday fun.
It's uniquely created for kids and it was really
a direct result of communicating with their fan base
and taking user feedback.
So since the release of the first app in May 2014,
Toca Boca has received more than 60,000 feature requests
and reviews from kids all over the world.
And it's feedback that has informed their Toca Life series
and has brought us these titles.
And this title, Toca Life Vacation,
was their most successful launch ever.
And it's really because they leveraged
their previous ecosystem.
So 32% of users downloading Toca Life Vacation
had downloaded all of the previous three apps.
And 38% of users downloading Toca Life Vacation
had downloaded one or two of those previous apps.
So be sure that your cross-promotion is really
on point.
Once again, text and make sure that it's
relevant in driving the benefits that you're going for.
Another one is using rich notifications
to bring users back to your app.
So a few best practice here here is include actionable content,
deep linking to the right part of your app,
stacking similar notifications, and avoid spamming,
and testing.
So what are the things to do with notifications?
Well, one, get users familiar.
Two, consider re-activation.
Three, try to make an emotional connection.
Four, include actionable content.
Five, deep link.
And six, really consider your audience.
This is especially important in the kids and family space.
And then just four things that you
want to avoid and not do with notifications are
don't push spam notifications.
Don't forget to expire notifications.
Don't push ads.
House ads are permitted, though.
And don't leave notifications up to guesswork.
So the case study here that I wanted
to highlight on the notification and messaging side
is SpeakaBoos.
They utilize a combination of notifications, emails, push,
and social media to reinforce a message that
furthers their brand.
For SpeakaBoos, each touchpoint is
designed to motivate a love of reading by connecting children
to their interests.
So SpeakaBoos' push notification, this example,
it's fun.
It's relevant.
They said, did you know it's world pasta day?
So that really activated their user base.
They also time it with new content releases,
exclusive content, holiday events, and discounts.
And they've seen strong results from their push notifications,
as well as from their messaging.
They regularly test A/B results, analyze those metrics,
and optimize based on a variety of factors.
And this has resulted in a nice uplift.
So news story day for SpeakaBoos is
an e-mail that promotes a special and exclusive content.
That has driven a 5% increase in click rates.
And content that makes use of appropriate hashtags
is another key to this.
Overall, they've seen a 60% increase with web traffic
when it's paired with social accounts
for 5% of monthly traffic.
So I hope that was helpful.
I know we covered a lot of things,
wanted to include a lot of case studies and data
from some of our top partners.
Hopefully, in the next presentation,
next time we come down here, we'll
include more data from a lot of you guys.
We know this is collaborative, but just to reiterate,
the three key things that we really
encourage you to think through are
onboarding, new features and content releases,
and reengaging your users.
So thank you very much.