app store optimization using math
TRANSCRIPT
• Nathan Mellor
• CritterMap Software LLC
• Follow up at http://eepurl.com/d9tZj
App Store Optimization using Math
• Formerly software engineer at Hewlett-Packard
• Independent App Developer since 2009 as an apprenuer, not a contractor or consultant
• Author of Top grossing Android App
• Trained in Internet Marketing at University of San Francisco online program
• Author of Apps for Profit
My Background
My Office
Objectives
• Review stages of the process of getting users to your app.
• Show the math behind them
• What you can do to improve numbers in all parts
• Make more money
Population Android Activations Per Day 1000000 Per Day 1000000
Target Audience
Searching for your app today 5% 50000 5% 50000
Search See your App’s icon 15% 7500 34% 17000
Discovery Click Through to App Listing 20% 1500 30% 5100
Acquisition Install the app 4% 60 6% 306
Conversion Active user 10% 6 20% 61.2
Monetization
Make money for you $1.40 $8.40 $2.10 $128.52
Loyalty Buy something else later $0 $8.40 $0.34 $149.33
Sharing Influence someone else to buy 1% $8.48 5% $156.79
Target Audience• How many people are looking for an app like yours
today?
int searchesCount = 0;
Searches searchesToday= Today.getAllSearches();
Set<Keyword> keywordSet = searchesToday.getKeywordSet();
foreach(Keyword k in keywordSet){
int frequency = searchesToday.getFrequencyofKeyword(k);
if(app.isKeywordRelevant(k))searchesCount += frequency;
}
Target Market• Can you expect to change the
number of people looking for an app like yours?
• Probably NOT.
• What can you do?
• Measure the relative popularity of you best app ideas
Competitive Analysis
• Find the category your app will be in
• Start at the top
• Find the highest ranking app that has a similar target audience
• Set your goals for how high you want your app to rank.
• Tool: App Annie
Search
• How many times does your app appear in a search?
Searches in Google Play
• 12% search for apps daily
• 50% search weekly
• 6 million unique search phrases are used each week.
• (Source: Google I/O 2013).
Searches showing your appint views= 0;Searches searchesToday= Today.getAllSearches();Set<Keyword> keywordSet = searchesToday.getKeywordSet();
foreach(Keyword k in keywordSet){
int rank = app.rankForKeyword(k);int frequency = searchesToday.getFrequencyofKeyword(k);List<Search> searchesK = searchesToday.forKeyword(k);foreach( Search search in searchesK ){
int L = search.visibleLength();if(rank<L)
views +=1;}
}L = 7+ for Google Play on the phoneL= 24+ for Google Play on the web+ ScrollLength
Which can you know precisely?
RANKING:int rank = app.rankForKeyword(k);
- You can track this.
FREQUENCY:int frequency = searchesToday.getFrequencyofKeyword(k);
- Google’s not telling you this :(
RELEVANCE:app.isKeywordRelevant(k)
- You only think you know this - subjective(see next hour)
• A keyword is generally a multi word search phrase
• You want to estimate
• RELEVANCE
• FREQUENCY
• DIFFICULTY
Keyword Research
ASO tools
• App Store Optimization
• Searchman.com
• mobiledevhq.com
• appnique.com
• sensortower.com
• appcodes.com
What to look for in your ASO Tool
• Done well:
• Track 50+ keywords over time
• Track competitors and their keywords
• Could always be improved:
• Estimate Relative Traffic for a keyword - guess
• Estimate Relative Difficulty for a keyword - guess
• Suggest more keywords
Relevance
• How likely someone using a particular phrase is looking for your app, will install it, keep it, and make you some money
• Determined by your knowledge of the target market of your app.
• Still a guess until you’ve measured it
• Best source: Google Adwords Campaign
Frequency
• How many people are using a particular search phrase (relative to others)
• Estimated with ASO tools - a guess
• Better Measure: Adwords Campaign
Difficulty
• How likely you can actually attain a top position for a particular search phrase
• Is context dependent
• ASO tools have numbers - a guess
Rookie Mistakes
• Thinking that there are only six or so phrases for your app
• Thinking that you already know the two most important ones.
• There are always more phrases than you think
• The ones that you think are most important may not be
• Try for 500, then narrow it down to 50
Broadening your scope
• Come up with a number of seed words
• Think of synonyms and variations
• Think of related products or services that your target customer would search for
• Think of how they would search for your competitor’s app
• Consider common brand names in the field.
Example: Video Chat App
Video Chat example• describe it in a few ways
• Video chat,Video conferencing, video call, video conference
• Add popular brand names
• skype,google talk,google hangout, facetime,
• Add related apps
• oovoo, tango, and camfrog
• Put in Adwords Google Keyword planner
Adwords Keyword Planner
• Use exact phrase
• Apply to a category
• Many categories are available
• “Computers and Consumer Electronics”
Where can we use these keywords
• Title
• Description
• Outside Links
• Paid Promotions (ie Adwords).
• Organic Promotions
Title
• Most important keyword
• More influential than description
• Only 30 characters (no paragraphs like iOS titles).
Branded Title vs Keyword TitleBranded Keyword
ExamplesPandoraAmazon
BackCountry Navigator
Music PlayerOnline Book Store
GPS and Maps
Recognizable Trademark Yes Often not
Word of Mouth and reputation
Helpful Less helpful
Functional conveyance Maybe Probably
Search term? Only if already familiar Valuable
Can you do both in 20-30 characters?
Description• Your primary and secondary keywords
• Keep it short if you have a small number of very important keywords
• Longer if you need to target more keywords.
• Mentioning a keyword about five times might be about right
• Use the full phrase if possible.
Differences from iOSiPhone Google Play
Apps per page 1 7-8
Reaching app #25 25 flicks 1 Flick
App Title Very Important (approved by Apple)
Very Important30 characters (25
seen)
Tags (secret keywords)Very Important (approved
by Apple)100 characters
Not used.
Description keywords Unclear if used in search Important in search
4000 characters
Other factors in search Unclear
Installs and UninstallsRatings
Links from outside Google Play
Factors Influencinging all rankings
• Installs in the last week (determines your category ranking)
• Active installs
• Long Installs
• Number and quality of ratings
Factors Influencing a Keyword Ranking
• Keyword search history - relevance
• Active Installs
• Long lived installs
• Links from outside web sites with anchor text
Other phenomenon
• Google will make app suggestions for people in Google search.
• These are starting to show up in Google Analytics.
• Keywords used in comments will influence ranking
Sources in analytics
Target Audience(Searching for your an app like yours today)
Search(sees your app name and icon)
What happens later effects what happens earlier
Discovery(see your app Listing )
Conversion(take actions)
Loyalty(repeat revenue)
Advocate(recommends product)
Monetization(give you revenue)
Paradox
• You can’t get enough traffic because you don’t rank well enough for some good keywords
• You don’t rank well enough for some good keywords because you don’t have enough traffic
• How to get the process going?
Are New Apps Special?
• Mostly Not.
• Top complaint of IOS Developers that port to Android
• No human review process like Apple
• Top New Paid/Top New Free
• Last 30 days (globally)
• Ordered by downloads
Discovery: Clicking Through to the listing
• Large App Icon
• Title
• Company
• Overall Rating
Example (icon change)
Acquisition: Getting the install
• Can now be tracked in Google Play console.
Google Play Stats
Getting an install
• Promotional Screenshot
• Stats
• Lead sentence
• Screenshots
• Reviews
• Descriptions
Screenshot
Conversion
• End user changes their religion
• User completes an action that you want them to complete
• Can and should be measured in analytics.
Analytics: study of user behavior
• Attribution = where users come from
• MetaData = attributes of the users or the install
• Events - what users do in your app (can have monetary value)
• Limitation:
• Tells what happened
• Does not say *why* it happened
Analytics homework
• List the major actions you want your users to do
• List
Which analytics?
Library with Analytics Other things
Google Analytics Adwords ads, Admob,Google Play Services,
Facebook Mobile Ads, Fan Pages,
AppsFlyer Attribution, Facebook Marketing Partner
Localytics Attribution, Facebook Marketing Partner, Push Notifications, In app messages, remarking
(Probably more than one)
Monetization
• Won’t happen without Conversion
• Different models
Model Development Effort Flexibility Tracking Best for
Free with Ads Low Medium (with mediation) Fuzzy
High usage scaleable
costs
Paid App Very low Low HorribleSimple, fixed
value proposition
Inapp Purchase: Managed
Medium Medium GoodSmall number
of fixed products
Inapp Purchase:
SubscriptionMedium Medium Okay Service with
willing payers
Inapp: Virtual
CurrencyHigher High Good
Virtual Goods Download
credits
Loyalty
• Will they buy something from you later?
• New inapp purchase
• Your next app
Viralization
• Sharing your app via an unpaid sales force
• Users can contribute in multiple ways:
• Give you a good rating in google Play
• Google Plus the page
• Like or share your app link in social media
Going Viral: the dream
• You only have to tell one person about the app.
• They each tell two friends
• In 32 days, everyone with an Android phone will have your app!
Installations(t) = 2^(t)
More realistic goal.
• In real life, a viral ratio > 1.0 is rare.
• Think compound interest
p = number of people 100 people can influence to buy
Installations(t)=n*(1+p/100)^t
Encouraging Sharing
• Multiple ways:
• Make invitations - within the app
• Get users to join a network
• Make invitations within the network
Questions
• Nathan Mellor
• CritterMap Software LLC
• Follow up at http://eepurl.com/d9tZj
App Store Optimization using Math Part 2
Objectives
• How to perform experiments that will improve the performance of your app
• Use the knowledge to improve the app
• Paid advertising for small or large budgets
Target Audience(Searching for your an app like yours today)
Search(sees your app name and icon)
The App Marketing Funnel
Discovery(see your app Listing )
Conversion(take actions)
Loyalty(repeat revenue)
Advocate(recommends product)
Monetization(give you revenue)
Experiments
• Free: Developer Console
• Free or paid: in app or push messaging
• Expensive: dynamic app behavior
• Paid: advertising
Google Play Experiments
• In console
App Messaging
• Could cost money depending on provider
Dynamic App Behavior
• Multiple Implementations of the same feature
• Dynamically chosen
• Expensive because of development cost
Disadvantage:
• You are limited to the traffic you already have.
Paid Advertising
• Perception: throwing money at problem
• Reality: you can invest as much creativity in advertising as in coming up with apps or features
Goals for paid advertising
• Optimize your app’s marketing funnel
• Find out your app’s true value
• Bring in a positive ROI
• Buy your way into the top ranks (or higher ranks)
• Not be at the mercy of free traffic
Prerequisites
• Including the proper libraries
• Tracking events
• Determining LTV (long term value), short term value, or estimated value
Math
• Revenue(Install) and Cost(Install) are not static numbers.
Cost(install)<Revenue(install)
• Optimizing App for Conversions
• Targeting the right audiences
• Targeting
• Pruning the tree
• Bidding
• Optimizing
• Timing
Cost(install)<Revenue(install)
Math
ExampleSource CPI ARPU
January, Organic 0.26
Facebook Installs, Free App 0.40 0.07
November, Organic 0.19
Google Adwords Installs, Free App 0.37 0.12
Continuum
• Experimentation - R < C
• Some Profitability- R > C (sometimes)
• Consistency - R > C (more often)
• Scaleability - R > C for extremely large values of C.
Less Effective Structure
• Linked List
All possible target
audiencesOne Message One graphic
More Effective Structure
• N ary treeAd
Campaign
Targeting
Ad
Where to try -what to learn
• Google Adwords
• Behavior based targeting
• Keyword relevance
• Refine messaging
• Facebook Mobile Install Ads
• Profile based targeting
• Refine images
• Refine message
• Learn more about your target audience
Targeting
• Behavior based targeting
• Example: keyword search
• contextual targeting
• Apps on a relevant website or app
• Behavior targeting converts 3X better
Targeting
• Demographics
• Location
• Age and Gender
• Likes
• Past behavior
• Profile
Bidding types
• CPM - cost per 1000 impressions
• CPC - cost per click
• CPI - cost per install
• CPA - cost per action
Bidding
• Your objective:
• CPI
• Or CPA - specific action
• Track your objective.
Bidding Approaches• Bid directly on your objective
• Usually not guaranteed
• Not always possible
• Not always cost effective
• Trust level of network:
• Just give me as much as you can at the best price
• Let the network track your objective
• Micromanage and track results
Other ways to control cost
• Daily or lifetime budgets
• Improve targeting
• Prune the tree
• Timing
Using keywords in Paid advertising
• Test keyword phrases
• Test Calls to Action
• Find the perfect message for your first line
• Test out images and icons
Adwords keyword targetting
Defining install as a conversion
Paid Advertising - ROI
Text
Drop the losers and keep the winners
Results from paid experiments
• Find the high converting keywords
• Target them more aggressively in Google Play
• Use them in internet marketing promotion and links
Facebook Examples
• Campaign
Facebook Targeting
• Lookalike Audiences
Facebook bidding
Some results
• Rankings in Different Countries
Questions