Inside AdMob
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Shoot for the stars: 6 principles to optimize app quality
April 30, 2015
As an app developer, you know that improving your app’s rating to 4 stars or more could increase discoverability and convince more users to download it.
Google Play research
also shows that higher rated apps earn more revenue:
* Revenue includes all app business model on Play: IAP, paid app, ads advertising
But how can you achieve that 4+ star score? Once you have set up your regular cycle of collecting, reviewing and actioning feedback from user reviews and ratings, the next key strategy is to optimize the quality of your app.
6 principles to improve app quality
1. Stability: no crashes.
Read user error reports often, and take action quickly to help you improve stability and eliminate bugs.
2. Responsiveness: speed matters.
Minimizing the complexity of your layouts is a simple way to improve your app speed.
3. Usability: be thumb friendly.
Two common, easy-to-fix problems are addressing small tap targets and fonts that are too small. Make sure links are easy to tap.
4. Appearance and aesthetics.
If you don't have the luxury to work with a designer, try using Photoshop, GIMP and other image editing tools to make your app look better.
5. Less is more: launch the right features.
Listen to your users by collecting and responding to feature requests, but remember, you don’t always need to build every suggestion.
6. Integrate with the system and third-party apps:
make users happy by including system features like
Home screen widgets
,
rich notifications
,
global search integration
, and
Quick Contacts
; or leveraging other apps’ functionality.
Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our
Google+
page and
Twitter
page.
Posted by Amelia Walkley
Marketing Communications Specialist, AdMob
3 steps to earn higher user ratings
April 20, 2015
Need to raise your app’s ratings and increase downloads? Gimmicks and hacks to get higher ratings and more reviews won’t get your app meaningful long-term growth. Instead, the best way to get better ratings is to build authentic relationships with your users–truly listening and responding to their feedback. This leads to a better product experience, loyal users, and ultimately sustainable growth.
Here are three steps to use reviews and ratings to improve your app and increase user engagement.
Step 1: Read and address ratings comments
Book an hour in your calendar each week to read through ratings comments.
Reply to user reviews to help address their concern or gather more detailed feedback.
Pay extra attention to those who gave you 1 or 2-star ratings as their comments will give you more insights for improvement.
Step 2: Create user friendly opportunities to collect feedback
To make sure you’re getting feedback from the most appropriate users, define the signals that prompt your target audience like “reached Level 10”, “completed the first booking”, or “opened 3+ times in a week”
Choose a placement in your app where you don’t interrupt user experience. Unexpected pop-up messages asking for a rating can bother users. Instead, place the review request after a user has had a positive interaction with your app, like successfully completing a task or level.
Ask about the user’s happiness level first. Depending on their happiness level, provide different channels to escalate their feedback:
Step 3: Analyze and act on user feedback
Apply filters to see feedback by rating, written language, app version, and/or device.
Understand your user better by interpreting comments against user-related metrics such as download sources, retention rates, and in-app behavior.
Update your app with users’ feature requests and fix issues they have raised. Be sure to respond to the comment directly in the Play Store, sharing the positive changes you’ve made.
The hard work of building relationships and responding to user’s concern won’t pay off instantly, but it can lead to longer term success. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our
Google+
page.
Posted by Amelia Walkley
Marketing Communications Specialist, AdMob
Lowdown: Best ways to monetize your messaging app
April 13, 2015
Lowdown is a regular series that brings you tips and tricks on how to best use AdMob to grow your app business, directly from members of the Google AdMob team.
It’s a fantastic time for messaging apps. Massive company valuations, global user bases, and strong demand for wifi-based communication have incentivized mobile developers to throw their hats into the messaging arena. We’ve seen the features and functionality for these apps become more sophisticated, expanding to delivering virtual goods, coupons, app-discovery, and even social networking. As functionality has expanded, so have the monetization potentials. Here are a few ways to best monetize your messaging app and tips to optimize your setup.
Banner Ads:
The nature of messaging apps make it very conducive for banner ad units. User spend large quantities of time on their menu, contacts and messaging pages, making it easier for users to interact with ads and drive higher engagement from anchored banner units. AdMob’s strong global coverage and year over year eCPM growth in this format can help monetize the market your users operate within.
Interstitials Ads:
Interstitial ads are not just for gaming apps. Messaging apps also have natural transition points within their user’s flow, perfect for eCPM-driven ad units like interstitials. For example a perfect place for an interstitial ad may be the moment once a user completes a phone or video call and the app transitions back into the main screen. See examples below.
Targeted In-App Purchases
Messaging apps could offer In-App Purchases (IAPs) in the form of more minutes, credits or virtual goods. Although the traditional conversion rates for these offers have been very low, AdMob automatically figures out which of your users are likely to spend, based on Google’s proprietary data and models. AdMob offers robust IAP functionality, making it easy for you to create IAP offer units and target high potential spenders. You can learn more about this feature
here
.
A diversified, metrics driven approach can help you to better monetize your messaging app. Visit our
website
to learn more about how AdMob can help you grow your app business. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our
Google+
page.
Posted by Jeff Salvitti
Strategic Mobile Partner Manager
How FGL helped indie game developers increase their revenue by 50%
April 7, 2015
Adam Schroeder
Co-Founder, FGL
FGL
is not your average app company. They don’t build apps themselves, instead they help independent game developers grow their business and generate more revenue. So far, they’ve earned over $20M in revenue, guiding over 30,000 registered developers from 105 countries around the world. Using AdMob well is one of the secrets to their success. We recently got to discuss their business with co-founder Adam Schroeder. To check out
FGL’s success story
, or any other of our other success stories, visit us at
http://www.google.com/admob/success.html
. Until next time, be sure to stay connected on all things AdMob by following our
Google+
page.
Posted by
Desiree Motamedi
Product Marketing, AdMob
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