• 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

Book

• http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GJHIGY0

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