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Developer tips for success with Player Analytics and Google Play games services

Posted by, Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play

Editor’s note: As part of our series featuring tips from developers, we spoke to some popular game developers to find out how they use Player Analytics and Google Play game services to find success on Google Play. - Ed.

Google Play games services, available in the Developer Console, allows you to add features such as achievements and leaderboards to your games. Google Play games services provides Player Analytics, a free games-specific analytics tool, in the Developer Console Game services tab. You can use the reports to understand how players are progressing, spending, and churning backed by a data-driven approach.

Bombsquad grows revenue by 140% per user with Player Analytics

Independent developer Eric Froemling, initially created the game Bombsquad as a hobby, but now relies on it as his livelihood. Last year, he switched the business model of the game from paid to free-to-play. By using Player Analytics, he was able to improve player retention and monetization in the game, achieving a 140% increase in the average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU).

Watch the video below to learn how Eric uses Player Analytics and the Developer Console to improve gamers’ experience, while increasing retention and monetization.

Tips from Auxbrain for success with Google Play games services

Kevin Pazirandeh, founder and CEO of games developer Auxbrain, creator of Zombie Highway, provides insight into how they use Google Play games services, and comments:

“While there are a few exceptions, I have not run into a better measure of engagement, and perhaps more importantly, a measure for change in engagement, than the retention table. For the uninitiated, a daily retention table gives you the % of players who return on the nth day after their first play. Comparing retention rates of two similar games can give you an immediate signal if you are doing something right or wrong.”

Kevin shares his top tips on how to best use the analytics tools in Google Play games services:

1. You get Player Analytics for free - If you’ve implemented Google Play game services in your games, check out Player Analytics under Game services in the Developer Console, you’ll find you are getting analytics data already.
2. Never assume change is for the better - Players may not view changes in your game as the improvement you had hoped they were. So when you make a change, have a strategy for measuring the result. Where you cannot find a way to measure the change’s impact with Player Analytics, consider not making it and prioritize those changes you can measure.
3. Use achievements and events to track player progress - If you add achievements or events you can use the Player progression report or Event viewer to track player progress. You’ll quickly find out where players are struggling or churning, and can look for ways to help move players on.
4. Use sign-in to get more data - The more data about player behavior you collect, the more meaningful the reports in Player Analytics become. The best way to increase the data collected is to get more players signed-in. Auto sign-in players, and provide a Play game services start point on the first screen (after any tutorial flow) for those that don’t sign-in first time.
5. Track your player engagement with Retention tables - The Retention table report lets you see where players are turning away, over time. Compare retention before and after changes to understand their impact, or between similar games to see if different designs decisions are turning players away earlier or later.

Get started with Google Play Games Services or learn more about products and best practices that will help you grow your business on Google Play globally.

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Android Developer Story StoryToys finds success in the ‘Family’ section on Google Play

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

Based in Dublin, Ireland, StoryToys is a leading publisher of interactive books and games for children. Like most kids’ app developers, they faced the challenges of engaging with the right audiences to get their content discovered. Since the launch of the Family section on Google Play, StoryToys has experienced an uplift of 270% in revenue and an increase of 1300% in downloads.

Hear Emmet O’Neill, Chief Product Officer, and Gavin Barrett, Commercial Director, discuss how the Family section creates a trusted and creative space for families to find new content. Also hear how beta testing, localized pricing and more, has allowed StoryToy’s flagship app, My Very Hungry Caterpillar, to significantly increase engagement and revenue.

Learn more about Google Play for Families and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Get the guide to News app success on Google Play and see how Nabd engages readers with Material Design

Posted by Tamzin Taylor - Strategic Partner Lead, Google Play

Today we’re releasing The News Publisher Playbook, where you will learn best practices for developing a successful news mobile strategy on Android. This is a new companion guide to our business playbook for developers, The Secrets to App Success on Google Play, focused on the news apps segment.

The guide includes tips and useful resources to help you optimize your news content on mobile, identifying the best distribution channels to reach the right audience, build your brand and maximize your revenue.

You will find tips on mobile website optimization, how to create a Google Play Newsstand edition, and how to improve your native app. You will also get an overview of ways to acquire and engage your readers as well as how to monetize and grow your revenue.

Once you’ve checked out the guide, we’d love to hear your feedback, so we can continue to improve our developer resources. Please let us know what you think.

Android Developer Story: Nabd improves reader engagement with Material Design

Founded in 2012, Nabd is a personalised Arabic news aggregator app based in Kuwait, reaching over 10 million people, of which, 60% use Android devices. Watch this Android Developer Story to hear Abdur-Rahman El-Sayed, Co-founder and CEO, and Abdullah El-Sayed, Co-founder and VP of Engineering, explain how adopting Material Design increased user engagement and improved ratings.

Get the News Publisher Playbook to help you find success on Google Play.

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Learn top tips from Kongregate to achieve success with Store Listing Experiments

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play

Editor’s note: This is another post in our series featuring tips from developers finding success on Google Play. We recently spoke to games developer Kongregate, to find out how they use Store Listing Experiments successfully. - Ed.

With Store Listing Experiments in the Google Play Developer Console, you can conduct A/B tests on the content of your store listing pages. Test versions of the text and graphics to see which ones perform best, based on install data.

Kongregate increases installs by 45 percent with Store Listing Experiments

Founded in 2006 by brother and sister Jim and Emily Greer, Kongregate is a leading mobile games publisher specializing in free to play games. Kongregate used Store Listing Experiments to test new content for the Global Assault listing page on Google Play. By testing with different audience sizes, they found a new icon that drove 92 percent more installs, while variant screenshots achieved an impressive 14 percent improvement. By picking the icons, screenshots, and text descriptions that were the most sticky with users, Kongregate saw installs increase by 45 percent on the improved page.

Kongregate’s Mike Gordon, VP of Publishing; Peter Eykemans, Senior Producer; and Tammy Levy, Director of Product for Mobile Games, talk about how to successfully optimise mobile game listings with Store Listing Experiments.

Kongregate’s tips for success with Store Listing Experiments

Jeff Gurian, Sr. Director of Marketing at Kongregate also shares his do’s and don’ts on how to use experiments to convert more of your visitors, thereby increasing installs. Check them out below:

Do’s	Don’ts
Do start by testing your game’s icon. Icons can have the greatest impact (positive or negative) on installs — so test early!	Don’t test too many variables at once. It makes it harder to determine what drove results. The more variables you test, the more installs (and time) you’ll need to identify a winner.
Do have a question or objective in mind when designing an experiment. For example, does artwork visualizing gameplay drive more installs than artwork that doesn’t?	Don’t test artwork only. Also test screenshot ordering, videos, and text to find what combinations increase installs.
Do run experiments long enough to achieve statistical significance. How long it takes to get a result can vary due to changes in traffic sources, location of users, and other factors during testing.	Don’t target too small an audience with your experiment variants. The more users you expose to your variants, the more data you collect, the faster you get results!
Do pay attention to the banner, which tells you if your experiment is still “in progress.” When it has collected enough data, the banner will clearly tell you which variant won or if it was a tie.	Don’t interpret a test where the control attribute performs better than variants as a waste. You can still learn valuable lessons from what “didn’t work.” Iterate and try again!

Learn more about how Kongregate optimized their Play Store listing with Store Listing Experiments. Learn more about Google Play products and best practices to help you grow your business globally.

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Find success on Google Play What app developers can learn from games

Posted by Matteo Vallone, Business Development Manager at Google Play

(As a way to reach more app developers and help them grow successful businesses on Google Play, this post was first published on The Next Web – Ed.)

There is much common ground between freemium apps and games businesses when it comes to achieving success. Users are, however, more used to paying for games than apps, stemming from the history of traditional gaming consoles. Moreover, mobile games are also able to easily offer ‘virtual goods’ across a range of price points to suit every pocket. This means that game developers have had plenty of opportunity to learn about how to improve onboarding, conversion, and ultimately the user Lifetime Value (LTV). So what can app developers learn from game developers? Here are some best practice tips and insights from successful game developers that can be applied to many apps, today.

Drive app success the game developer way:

1. Optimize retention before investing in acquisition

Retention is king, and retention drives conversion. For games developers, retention is the key measure of game quality and whether it appeals to players.

Most game developers will “soft launch” to beta testing communities or test markets. During this phase, the game is tweaked to optimize retention by looking into specific areas, such as tutorial completion, level difficulty and conversion. Developers can then track retention using the Cohorts reports in Google Analytics. Once retention is satisfactory, the developer can go to full launch and start investing in user acquisition.

2. Retain users with step-by-step engagement

The first seven days after install are the most critical for retention: users install several apps to try them, and decide in the first few days which ones they want to keep using. If you can retain for that time span, your app is more likely to become part of the user’s daily routine.

There are some simple ways to progressively build user engagement. It’s important to present a strong story that explains why that app is relevant to the user, while introducing them to key features. Then place features that offer the user value early, so they can be found without much effort.

This is a not a one-size-fit-all. To find the right solution, a developer needs to first make assumptions on what user flows can improve retention and then run A/B tests to validate or correct them. For example, a developer could think that introducing sign-in later in the user flow might improve retention. Also, the developer needs to keep in mind what the key long term engagement metrics are for the individual app (such as photos uploaded or the number of articles read) and measure the impact of the different onboarding flows on those metrics as well.

In general, these principles are good places to start optimizing your onboarding:

• Look for ways to let the users experience the app straight away, rather than taking them through a long, complex setup.
• Present “activation moments” — such as registering an account, uploading a video, or finding friend — gradually
• Start by requiring minimal investment by the user, then ask them for more details as they are needed to use the apps features.
• Treat permissions as a service for the user. For example, if you want users to register, show them in advance that, by making their experience more personal, they’ll get more value from the app.

In this example, OkCupid tried different onboarding flows and found the most engaging version increased seven-day retention by over 20 percent.

Finally, ensure the user can understand the value of your app before you start asking them to pay. Game developers are particularly good at letting their users try most or all product features for free in in a set number of days or sessions.

A great tool to help analyze how users are engaging (or not) with the app is through the Flow Report in Google Analytics. Using this report, a developer can see how users navigate through the app and where they leave to identify potential roadblocks.

3. Target the right offers at the right users

Understanding different groups of users in-app purchase behavior is the key to devising strategies to encourage them to spend.

Start by identifying groups of users by how they spend and much they are likely to spend. It may be by age group, the channel that brought the install, or in-app behaviour. Use the Segment builder in Google Analytics to identify and define these groups of users. Then, tailor in-app purchase offers to match the segments spending behavior. For example, for segments where multiple users tend to spend more in one go, but spend infrequently, offer them in-app features bundled together.

4. Offer in-app purchases when users are most likely to spend

Users are also more likely to spend, if the purchasing experience is frictionless, and even more so when they can see how the expenditure will add value. So:

• Present purchase opportunities to users when they’re most likely to need or want it — and explain to the user why it’s relevant.
• Make purchasing accessible easily from within the app with a minimum number of taps. For example, offer an upgrade button on the footer of relevant screens.

TomTom added a countdown to indicate when the free service runs out (counted in kilometers travelled). The counter includes a button to upgrade offering a one tap in-app purchase.

Like all good game developers, they focus on building good experiences that retain and engage users through constant testing and analytics. First impressions are important, so users need to be able to quickly understand the importance of the app and easily navigate through the onboarding experience. And to start generating revenue, it is important to be thoughtful about how to make in-app purchases actionable.

Watch Matteo’s Playtime 2015 session ‘The rules of games, for apps’ to hear more in-depth insights which app developers can learn from games with best practices and developer examples:

You can also watch the other sessions from Google Playtime 2015 to learn more about tools and best practices which can help you find success with business on Google Play.

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Get the guide to family app success on Google Play and see how BabyFirst increased installs by 50

Posted by Lily Sheringham, The Google Play Apps & Games team

We recently released the second edition of The Secrets to App Success on Google Play with more best practices for finding success growing an app or game business on Google Play. Today we’re sharing our first companion guide for developers, The Family Playbook, which includes information on developing high-quality apps and games for kids and families, along with advice from other developers.

The guide includes advice to help you optimize your user interface design for children, build interactive features that both educate and entertain, develop a business model, understand legal considerations, and plan age-appropriate marketing.

If you create family apps, opt-in to the Designed for Families developer program to designate your apps and games as family-friendly. Apps that meet the program requirements will be featured through Google Play’s family-friendly search and browse experiences and help parents discover great, age-appropriate content and make more informed choices.

Once you’ve checked out the guide, we’d love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve our developer resources, please let us know what you think.

Android Developer Story: BabyFirst increases installs by 50% with Google Play

BabyFirst was founded to create good educational content for babies, toddlers and their parents. Their apps now have over 30 million downloads, with 40% more downloads on Google Play than other platforms.

Watch this Android Developer Story to learn how opting-in to Designed for Families on Google Play, implementing Store Listing Experiments, and localizing the store listing into 10 languages helped them increase installs by 50% across their portfolio of apps.

Find out more about the Designed for Families program and download our new Family Playbook to help you find success on Google Play.

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An updated app guide and new video tips to help you find success on Google Play

Posted by Dom Elliott, The Google Play Apps & Games team

Last year, we introduced our first playbook for developers, “The Secrets to App Success on Google Play”, to help you grow your app or game business, which has been downloaded more than 200,000 times.. Many new features have since been announced on the platform – from Store Listing Experiments and beta testing improvements to App Invites and Smart Lock for Passwords.

Get the second edition of “The Secrets to App Success on Google Play”

Hot off the press, you can now download the second edition to learn about all the new tools and best practices for improving the quality of your app, growing a valuable audience, increasing engagement and retention, and earning more revenue.

Get the book on Google Play in English now or you can sign-up to be notified when the booklet is released in the following languages: Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, español (Latinoamérica), le français, português do Brasil, ti?ng Vi?t, ??????? ?????, ???, ???, ?? (??), ?? (??), ???. Based on your feedback, the guide was updated to work seamlessly in the Google Play Books app. If you prefer, you can also download a PDF version from the Android Developers website.

New videos with tips to find success on Google Play

To accompany the guide, watch the first two episodes in a new ten-part video series of actionable tips you can start using today to achieve your business objectives. Subscribe to the Android Developers channel on YouTube and follow +Android Developers to watch the new videos as they’re released weekly.

Two new videos will be released each week in the ten-part series
on the Android Developer YouTube channel.

Let us know your feedback

Once you’ve checked out the guide and the videos, we’d again love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve our developer support, please let us know what you think.

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