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SARAH KARAM: So do you have any guidance for how
to build a strong business case for investing
in foundational user experiences?
CASEY WINTERS: Yeah, absolutely.
This is something I prioritize heavily,
but it does depend on the stage of the company you're at.
So if you're an early stage startup,
you shouldn't be building super scalable experiences.
You should be willing to take on tech debt
and design debt to validate that your strategies work
and to be able to grow fast enough to secure
that next milestone, whether it's more funding or whatever.
But later stage companies need to balance investment
in growth versus scalability.
And as a Chief Product Officer, I
think my core responsibility is to understand
this allocation of resources across things
that help the product scale, things that
grow products usage, things that make the product more valuable,
et cetera.
And that portfolio mix needs to shift dramatically over time.
And what I find is almost all companies under-invest
in the scaling the product piece once they've
found product market fit.
Features have to become valuable to your users.
And you don't get to work on new things
until the last feature either proves it has feature product
fit-- it's made the product more valuable--
or you delete it because it didn't get there.
Engineering velocity is just the purest form of leverage
a software company can have.
So the faster engineers can build things, the more
value we can then create for the customer,
the faster we can learn, the more the business can grow,
et cetera.
SARAH KARAM: How do you balance prioritizing
new features with your team, versus investing
in fixing foundational basics?
When you think of excellence in terms of app experience,
what comes to mind for you?
CASEY WINTERS: Yeah.
I tend to focus on, does the app provide clear value
to the user?
And how obvious is it to get to that value?
And that could be you have this amazing intuitive experience,
or that you're just very direct to the user on how
to get to that value.
ZUZANNA DZIECIATKOWSKA: Well, this
should come as no surprise, but great app experiences
are great for business.
They translate into new users, into higher conversion rates,
into increased retention and, as a result,
into successful monetization for your business.
And what we see in our internal data
is that nearly three quarters of Android app users who
leave a five-star review on Google Play
mention the quality of their experience with the app?
The most frequently mentioned aspects are speed, usability,
and design.
So here are five ways in which you
can empower your organization to deliver app excellence.
Firstly, by making app quality a company-wide priority, then
assigning respective metrics and KPIs.
Another one is about organizing teams
around features or journey stages,
then thinking about the whole user lifecycle
and bringing app quality to every user interaction,
and eventually, taking into account
the full range of devices used by your customers.
BEN WEISS: Today, we want to talk about app startup
performance.
Why?
Because users don't like to wait for your app to launch.
Clicks on the launcher icon should very quickly
cause a UI response.
Why does app startup performance matter to you?
WEN ZHAO: Yeah.
First of all, as a company, Lyft wants to wow our customers.
So app launch time is a very important factor
in the user experience.
NAM NGUYEN: That, and the hope is that Google Maps
cares a lot about performance.
And also, we have run experiments
in the past where we increase performance,
or we decrease performance.
And we have seen that user engagement metrics increase
when the app is faster and startup is faster.
MANUEL VICENTE VIVO: Having a good architecture in place
for your app allows it to scale, improve its quality
and robustness, and make it easier to test.
This has a direct impact on the Android developers
of the team, who will be happier and more productive,
and end users, who will enjoy a stable and high-quality
application.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
With me, I have great Android engineers
from Duolingo and Headspace that are
going to share their experience on how they refactor their app
architecture and how important it was for their company.
What about the result of the refactoring for the end users?
Can you tell us about the results
and how it has increased the Android quality,
has benefited your users?
Greg?
GREG RAMI: So the improvements to the app,
in terms of business, it led already
to a 20% increase in paid subscriber between operating
system, so which was pretty good.
LEON RABINOVICH: Yeah.
So for us, the gains are a lot more metrics-based
in terms of performance.
So we dropped our ANR rate by 41%, which was huge.
Our slow frames, which we consider a key metric--
so this is essentially when a frame doesn't render fast
enough at 60 frames per second--
Android winds up letting it go long,
which winds up dropping other frames.
So this is a key metric for all of our screens.
And that, we reduced by 28%.
And then scrolling in a lot of our scrollable screens
is 40% faster.
LIAT BERRY: Firebase has app quality tools
to take a lot of the busy work and mystery out of the picture.
Firebase Crashlytics helps you track, prioritize,
and fix crashes faster.
What can you do to gain confidence in your app quality?
You can use test lab to validate your app on various devices,
so you don't have to do this manually.
App distribution will help you distribute pre-release versions
of your app to trust the testers so that you can get feedback
from real people on the experience you created.
To understand your app's crashes,
Crashlytics is there to help you analyze and fix
stability issues in your app that erode app quality.
And Firebase performance monitoring
takes it a step farther, to help you find and fix
additional technical performance problems
in your app with quick and actionable insights.
SCOTT GORDON: With store listing experiments,
you can find this feature right in the Play console,
and it's easy to use.
I recommend starting with your most important asset, that
app icon.
But no matter where you start, make sure you only
test one element at a time.
You may be tempted to play it safe,
but I'd encourage you not to be shy.
You'll learn the most by testing assets
with distinct differences.
Oh, and let your experiments run for two weeks,
to make sure you capture enough data.
LAUREN MYTTON: You should use the new revenue
metrics in Reach and devices instead of installs.
These metrics can help you make decisions
from a revenue perspective.
For example, how much of my revenue
is affected by this technical issue?
What's the revenue impact of changing my min spec?
What's the subscription revenue potential of this segment?
THERESA KHUU: We've heard that you
want to explain your data safety practices to users clearly
and simply.
This is why we've added the data safety section to apps Play
store listings.
Now, you can share how your app collects, shares,
and protects user data.
In late April, users will start to see the data safety
section in Google Play.
So make sure to submit your data safety form in console soon.
Also, as a reminder, you will need
to have an approved form for all updates, starting July 20.
You can stay up to date with all the latest news and information
on the Privacy Sandbox on Android
by signing up for the newsletter.
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