Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar,

00:00:01 ◼   ► a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Armet.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,

00:00:08 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:11 ◼   ► So today I am delighted to report that we are once again

00:00:14 ◼   ► going to be diving into the world of App Store Analytics,

00:00:17 ◼   ► not just because I love spreadsheets,

00:00:19 ◼   ► but because Apple gave us a little pre-WDC present.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Specifically, they now break down in more detail

00:00:29 ◼   ► the source data that we get in App Store Analytics,

00:00:32 ◼   ► which is one of the things that I think I've most longed for

00:00:37 ◼   ► in analytics for years.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Like I remember, I think in my second or third WWDC,

00:00:43 ◼   ► going to the iTunes Connect Lab

00:00:45 ◼   ► and asking if there's something we could ever get,

00:00:47 ◼   ► and then asking the next year, and asking the next year,

00:00:49 ◼   ► you know, and having very polite, you know, like,

00:00:52 ◼   ► well, that's the file of radar, which I've done,

00:00:54 ◼   ► and eventually it finally came, so hooray!

00:00:58 ◼   ► Yeah, this is one thing I didn't,

00:00:59 ◼   ► I never expected them to do this for us,

00:01:01 ◼   ► because, you know, really, for most ways

00:01:05 ◼   ► in which Apple would give us, like, you know,

00:01:08 ◼   ► data on where our sales are coming from,

00:01:10 ◼   ► most of those are both competitively useful

00:01:13 ◼   ► for other app stores, like Google and Amazon, whatever,

00:01:16 ◼   ► so Apple wouldn't want to share that.

00:01:18 ◼   ► And also, it's things that Apple

00:01:20 ◼   ► tends not to be very good about,

00:01:22 ◼   ► like, you know, just general analytics and tracking,

00:01:26 ◼   ► you know, letting people track more about the behavior

00:01:28 ◼   ► of their store, it's the kind of thing

00:01:29 ◼   ► that Apple would not only want to keep private

00:01:32 ◼   ► most of the time, but generally also wouldn't be

00:01:35 ◼   ► even very good at providing,

00:01:37 ◼   ► even if they wanted to, historically.

00:01:38 ◼   ► You know, it's the kind of service

00:01:40 ◼   ► they don't usually do well.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So it's very nice to see it, and, you know,

00:01:44 ◼   ► there's one slightly skeptical angle to this,

00:01:46 ◼   ► which is like, well, maybe this is,

00:01:48 ◼   ► they're trying to drive people to invest more

00:01:50 ◼   ► into search ads because it shows how important search is

00:01:53 ◼   ► for a lot of apps, but overall,

00:01:55 ◼   ► I think they just did this not for that reason,

00:01:58 ◼   ► but just because it's something that a lot of app makers

00:02:02 ◼   ► really need as we take this business

00:02:04 ◼   ► more seriously over time.

00:02:05 ◼   ► You know, like, this is such a big part of technology now,

00:02:08 ◼   ► this whole app business, that it's important

00:02:10 ◼   ► that people are able to get some kind of insight

00:02:13 ◼   ► into where people come from for their apps

00:02:16 ◼   ► just so they can know things like

00:02:18 ◼   ► is it worth investing in search ads,

00:02:20 ◼   ► how important are various parts of the app store experience,

00:02:24 ◼   ► how important is being featured, stuff like that.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And before we had zero insight into that.

00:02:29 ◼   ► Now we have not a lot, but some.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, I mean, getting access

00:02:35 ◼   ► to this kind of data, and we'll dive into it in a minute

00:02:37 ◼   ► for what the actual new data points we got are,

00:02:39 ◼   ► but it's like, I think at its core,

00:02:41 ◼   ► giving developers this kind of data,

00:02:43 ◼   ► it just helps us make informed decisions

00:02:46 ◼   ► rather than just wildly speculating and guessing

00:02:51 ◼   ► and having to do these weird, like,

00:02:52 ◼   ► second order approximations of what we think

00:02:55 ◼   ► might be the case, and any time that we can have,

00:02:59 ◼   ► make informed decisions about this type of marketing

00:03:02 ◼   ► or this type of, you know, these things

00:03:05 ◼   ► that drive downloads of our app,

00:03:07 ◼   ► which is ultimately what most of the app store analytics,

00:03:10 ◼   ► you know, most of, at least from my perspective,

00:03:11 ◼   ► what I'm really looking at is, you know,

00:03:13 ◼   ► what is causing people to download my app,

00:03:15 ◼   ► and is there something that I'm doing wrong

00:03:17 ◼   ► that I could do better, or something that I'm doing right

00:03:20 ◼   ► that I can do more of to make that happen.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And if I have no data, then I'm just guessing.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And I mean, I will get into it probably

00:03:27 ◼   ► in the second half of the show,

00:03:28 ◼   ► but there's already been some really interesting

00:03:31 ◼   ► and useful tidbits that I've been able

00:03:33 ◼   ► to pull out of this data that, you know,

00:03:35 ◼   ► is now going to be, as I make my next updates to my apps,

00:03:38 ◼   ► like, I can tweak and change the way, you know,

00:03:41 ◼   ► the other app store pages work to try and enhance for this,

00:03:44 ◼   ► because now I have actual information that I'm basing on,

00:03:48 ◼   ► which is just tremendously useful.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, like one of the big questions

00:03:53 ◼   ► when you're trying to figure out how to market your app,

00:03:55 ◼   ► or how to advertise for your app,

00:03:57 ◼   ► are things like, should I buy ads on websites,

00:04:01 ◼   ► or in podcasts, or like, outside of the app store?

00:04:04 ◼   ► And there's been bits and pieces of ways

00:04:07 ◼   ► that we can track that different, like,

00:04:09 ◼   ► you know, affiliate campaigns first,

00:04:11 ◼   ► and then more recently they added, like,

00:04:12 ◼   ► the whole, the app store analytics campaigns,

00:04:15 ◼   ► so you can track inbound links.

00:04:17 ◼   ► But we, but all we could tell from that

00:04:20 ◼   ► is that these things provide a small percentage

00:04:23 ◼   ► of our total downloads, and there was always

00:04:27 ◼   ► this giant black hole of, well, we know that, like,

00:04:30 ◼   ► you know, five or 10% or whatever it is for your app,

00:04:34 ◼   ► you know, that's coming from web referrals,

00:04:35 ◼   ► and we have some ways to track those,

00:04:38 ◼   ► but where's the other 90%?

00:04:40 ◼   ► You know, like, it's just the app store,

00:04:43 ◼   ► and now we have a very slight way to break that down,

00:04:45 ◼   ► which is nice.

00:04:46 ◼   ► One thing, though, that I've noticed,

00:04:47 ◼   ► and we're gonna get into this in a little bit,

00:04:49 ◼   ► but one thing I've noticed is that, you know,

00:04:52 ◼   ► the reason I'm giving such, like, vague numbers here

00:04:55 ◼   ► is that as we got this ability over the, you know,

00:04:59 ◼   ► last week when this rolled out,

00:05:01 ◼   ► and I started seeing developers posting

00:05:05 ◼   ► their pie graph breakdowns of, like, you know,

00:05:08 ◼   ► this percent came from app store browse,

00:05:10 ◼   ► this percent from search, this percent from app refer,

00:05:12 ◼   ► this percent from web referrers.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Everyone had extremely different percentages,

00:05:19 ◼   ► and especially as you go down between the various metrics

00:05:22 ◼   ► that we're gonna get into of things like, you know,

00:05:23 ◼   ► how many times did you see it versus download it

00:05:26 ◼   ► versus pay for it, the numbers vary wildly

00:05:30 ◼   ► between different apps, and some of that you can kind of

00:05:33 ◼   ► explain by things like paid versus free,

00:05:36 ◼   ► but a lot of that is just, it seems like every app

00:05:39 ◼   ► has extremely different numbers.

00:05:42 ◼   ► There's only a few kind of general, you know,

00:05:45 ◼   ► patterns we can derive from these,

00:05:47 ◼   ► from the limited numbers that we've seen,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but I don't know, but have you found the same thing?

00:05:51 ◼   ► Like, every set of numbers I see is completely different

00:05:53 ◼   ► from every other one.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - Sure, and I mean, I even have, so I have, you know,

00:05:57 ◼   ► a several handfuls worth of apps myself,

00:06:02 ◼   ► and going through app to app, I mean, even among, like,

00:06:06 ◼   ► the plus plus health apps that I have, you know,

00:06:08 ◼   ► which are ostensibly fairly similar,

00:06:11 ◼   ► there's wide variations between

00:06:14 ◼   ► where people are coming from, and I think,

00:06:17 ◼   ► like, that is a useful thing to point out, too,

00:06:19 ◼   ► that what's so great about this is, say Apple published a,

00:06:24 ◼   ► you know, I think we've had this a little bit

00:06:27 ◼   ► every now and then where they'll say,

00:06:28 ◼   ► most people come from search, I think is what they said

00:06:31 ◼   ► when they were starting the search ads system.

00:06:34 ◼   ► They're like, you know, the majority of app downloads

00:06:35 ◼   ► come from search, I think.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It sounds familiar anyway, but like,

00:06:39 ◼   ► if they make a blanket statement like that,

00:06:41 ◼   ► or you hear someone else's data,

00:06:44 ◼   ► it isn't actually potentially very useful to you,

00:06:46 ◼   ► because your app may, you know,

00:06:50 ◼   ► they may respond very differently.

00:06:51 ◼   ► You know, some of my apps are being heavily,

00:06:55 ◼   ► you know, most of their downloads are coming

00:06:57 ◼   ► from web traffic, from Google searches.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Others are from browse, or from search,

00:07:01 ◼   ► or from, you know, app referrals from other apps, like,

00:07:04 ◼   ► knowing the actual breakdown is way more important

00:07:08 ◼   ► than knowing what the average is for the app store at large,

00:07:12 ◼   ► because every app is very unique,

00:07:13 ◼   ► and I mean, none of my apps have at all similar

00:07:17 ◼   ► distributions, which I think is telling.

00:07:19 ◼   ► It's telling that, you know, the app is unique,

00:07:22 ◼   ► and the reason people are downloading it is somewhat unique,

00:07:25 ◼   ► and so you need to, there's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all

00:07:28 ◼   ► solution for the marketing side of this.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So, specifically, it's probably worth diving into

00:07:36 ◼   ► what the actual things we're talking about are.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So, the big, the key new area that we got,

00:07:41 ◼   ► so if you go into iTunes Connect,

00:07:42 ◼   ► and you go to the analytics area,

00:07:44 ◼   ► there's now an area called, under sources,

00:07:47 ◼   ► that now breaks down your, all kinds,

00:07:50 ◼   ► all the different metrics, all the,

00:07:51 ◼   ► and so you get things like impressions,

00:07:54 ◼   ► which is the number of times that your app was viewed

00:07:56 ◼   ► in the app store, you know, in all kinds of variations,

00:08:00 ◼   ► it can be on the featured page, categories,

00:08:01 ◼   ► top chart, search, like, overall impressions.

00:08:05 ◼   ► - And it's just like, at times that your app, like,

00:08:06 ◼   ► breezed by somebody, too, like,

00:08:08 ◼   ► if they're scrolling through a list,

00:08:09 ◼   ► and your app breezed through that list,

00:08:11 ◼   ► like, that counts as an impression,

00:08:13 ◼   ► not necessarily, they clicked on it, that's something else.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, if they click on it, then you get to the next one,

00:08:18 ◼   ► which is the product page views,

00:08:20 ◼   ► which is the number of times that your actual

00:08:22 ◼   ► full product page was loaded.

00:08:24 ◼   ► This is in the app store, or in another app

00:08:27 ◼   ► that's using the StoreKit APIs,

00:08:29 ◼   ► like the SK products view controller,

00:08:31 ◼   ► I think is what they're talking about there.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - And then app units, or, which we can probably

00:08:37 ◼   ► sort of summarize as downloads,

00:08:39 ◼   ► but it's important to note that this is only

00:08:41 ◼   ► first time downloads of the app.

00:08:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's new people downloading the app.

00:08:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so if you, if someone downloaded your app,

00:08:50 ◼   ► installed it, and then deleted it,

00:08:52 ◼   ► and then a couple months later went and installed it again,

00:08:55 ◼   ► with a little, from the little, like,

00:08:56 ◼   ► cloud with a down arrow icon in the app store,

00:08:58 ◼   ► they wouldn't count as a new unit,

00:09:00 ◼   ► even though they were downloading it.

00:09:02 ◼   ► But the key thing now is that we can take that data,

00:09:07 ◼   ► so those are the three main ones that I look at,

00:09:09 ◼   ► impressions, page views, and downloads.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And I can break those down now by,

00:09:14 ◼   ► for the four different ways that people can get to there.

00:09:18 ◼   ► So they can be browsing, so if someone is viewing your app

00:09:21 ◼   ► or tapping to download or whatever,

00:09:23 ◼   ► from, like, their starting point was a featured list,

00:09:26 ◼   ► a category list, or a top chart in the app store,

00:09:29 ◼   ► essentially those first three tabs

00:09:31 ◼   ► going along the bottom of the app store app.

00:09:33 ◼   ► - It's basically any part of the app store

00:09:35 ◼   ► that isn't search.

00:09:36 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, and so if they were just browsing around,

00:09:39 ◼   ► there was no explicit user intent

00:09:41 ◼   ► that they were putting out

00:09:44 ◼   ► and then the app store was responding to.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And then there's search, which is the fourth tab

00:09:49 ◼   ► in the app store app,

00:09:50 ◼   ► where someone is searching for something

00:09:52 ◼   ► and then going through a list

00:09:53 ◼   ► and, you know, tapping to download from there.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Then we have app referrals,

00:09:57 ◼   ► and so this is where somebody is clicking on a link

00:10:01 ◼   ► in an app that is then opening them in the app store,

00:10:05 ◼   ► or any app that uses those store-cared APIs

00:10:10 ◼   ► to launch the app.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And this includes many of Apple's apps as well,

00:10:13 ◼   ► so things like messages count in this,

00:10:16 ◼   ► but it doesn't include Safari

00:10:17 ◼   ► because the last type that we get broken out

00:10:20 ◼   ► is web referrals,

00:10:22 ◼   ► which are where a customer taps a link from a website

00:10:25 ◼   ► and that then takes them to the app store.

00:10:27 ◼   ► And this would be inside of Safari on iOS,

00:10:32 ◼   ► but it's important to point out that non-Safari browsers,

00:10:34 ◼   ► things like Chrome, would be attributed as app referrals

00:10:38 ◼   ► rather than web referrals.

00:10:39 ◼   ► Web referrals only includes Safari itself.

00:10:43 ◼   ► - And in fact, Google Chrome is my top app referral.

00:10:47 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and so that,

00:10:51 ◼   ► by breaking it down that way,

00:10:55 ◼   ► essentially we can now take all of the metrics,

00:10:58 ◼   ► I mean, I think there's seven or eight different metrics

00:11:01 ◼   ► that are available in the app store analytics area,

00:11:03 ◼   ► beyond just impressions, page views, and downloads.

00:11:05 ◼   ► You can get into active sessions, paying customers,

00:11:08 ◼   ► you can get, there's a whole bunch of deeper dive

00:11:13 ◼   ► kind of things, but for the most part,

00:11:15 ◼   ► you can take a look at those top three

00:11:17 ◼   ► and you can look and see where your customers

00:11:19 ◼   ► are coming from, and you can see,

00:11:21 ◼   ► for some of my apps, it's like the vast majority

00:11:24 ◼   ► of my downloads are coming from search.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So something like search ads maybe makes sense,

00:11:29 ◼   ► or focusing on app store optimization

00:11:32 ◼   ► or focusing on the way that I peer in searches

00:11:35 ◼   ► makes a lot of sense.

00:11:36 ◼   ► If browse, and some of them come up mostly in browse,

00:11:39 ◼   ► like that's a different thing,

00:11:40 ◼   ► or some of them come up in web traffic,

00:11:43 ◼   ► like one of my apps comes up is really high hit in Google

00:11:46 ◼   ► for if you search for that app name,

00:11:48 ◼   ► and so that actually drives a fair bit of traffic.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And I can segment all these other metrics about that,

00:11:53 ◼   ► and you can, the interesting thing is,

00:11:55 ◼   ► now that you have the segmentation,

00:11:58 ◼   ► you can, in some ways, like customize your thinking

00:12:01 ◼   ► for each of those four little, like, I don't know,

00:12:04 ◼   ► there's these four different distinct types of users

00:12:07 ◼   ► that are coming into your app,

00:12:09 ◼   ► because their experience is very different.

00:12:11 ◼   ► If someone is browsing the app store,

00:12:13 ◼   ► they are sort of, by their nature,

00:12:15 ◼   ► they're not specifically looking for your app,

00:12:19 ◼   ► or an app that is exactly like yours.

00:12:22 ◼   ► I mean, maybe if they're going to the categories,

00:12:24 ◼   ► and then they go to like,

00:12:25 ◼   ► you know, some of those top charts,

00:12:27 ◼   ► category, health and fitness,

00:12:29 ◼   ► like maybe that's how they would go about

00:12:30 ◼   ► looking for a step counter, like maybe.

00:12:32 ◼   ► But more likely than not, they would just go to search,

00:12:34 ◼   ► and they would search for step counter or pedometer,

00:12:37 ◼   ► in my case, and, but if someone's browsing,

00:12:40 ◼   ► like they have a slightly different perspective

00:12:42 ◼   ► than someone who's searching,

00:12:43 ◼   ► and I mean, this bears itself through in,

00:12:46 ◼   ► you know, in a lot of my analytics,

00:12:48 ◼   ► where I see, you know, for example, my conversion rate,

00:12:50 ◼   ► you know, so from someone having an impression of the app

00:12:53 ◼   ► to actually downloading it is three times higher

00:12:56 ◼   ► on search impressions rather than on browse impressions,

00:12:59 ◼   ► which makes sense, like if someone types in step counter

00:13:02 ◼   ► in the search, then they're far more likely probably

00:13:06 ◼   ► to download a step counter than someone

00:13:08 ◼   ► who's just wildly browsing in the app store,

00:13:09 ◼   ► and happens to, you know, my app happens to cross their path.

00:13:13 ◼   ► But it's good to know, and it's good to know

00:13:14 ◼   ► that it's about three times, which is honestly

00:13:16 ◼   ► a little bit lower than I would have thought it would be,

00:13:19 ◼   ► the difference, like, and this is where I love

00:13:20 ◼   ► having the data for it, it's like, my gu--

00:13:22 ◼   ► I would have guessed that it would have been,

00:13:24 ◼   ► the conversion rate for search would have been way higher

00:13:26 ◼   ► than for browse, but turns out maybe not.

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00:16:05 ◼   ► - So the other kind of really cool thing

00:16:07 ◼   ► that I've been doing, so as you imagine,

00:16:09 ◼   ► and this is something I'd honestly recommend

00:16:10 ◼   ► that everyone do if you have an app

00:16:12 ◼   ► that you have access to this data,

00:16:13 ◼   ► is you should take the data, export as much as you can

00:16:16 ◼   ► into Excel or Numbers, whatever your preferred

00:16:20 ◼   ► spreadsheet of choice is.

00:16:22 ◼   ► - Are there others?

00:16:24 ◼   ► I guess Google Sheets.

00:16:26 ◼   ► - Google Sheets, Lotus one, two, three.

00:16:29 ◼   ► - Is that still a thing?

00:16:30 ◼   ► - I don't know, maybe it's a thing, or maybe VisiCalc.

00:16:32 ◼   ► That's an oldie but a goodie.

00:16:34 ◼   ► - The original.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - So I do know, you take all this data in

00:16:38 ◼   ► and then what I tend to do is I just start dividing numbers

00:16:41 ◼   ► by each other, right?

00:16:43 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of these things in absolute terms

00:16:46 ◼   ► aren't particularly useful, like knowing the exact number

00:16:49 ◼   ► of impressions you have, it's kinda nice I guess,

00:16:52 ◼   ► but mostly what you need to know is the ratios

00:16:55 ◼   ► between things because then you can really reason

00:16:57 ◼   ► and compare between all the various types

00:17:00 ◼   ► of traffic sources.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And one of the things that I noticed that I think

00:17:05 ◼   ► so far was the biggest insight that I think is actually

00:17:08 ◼   ► like operative to me was that the majority

00:17:11 ◼   ► of my app store downloads are coming from users

00:17:15 ◼   ► who never actually view the full app store page

00:17:19 ◼   ► for my apps.

00:17:20 ◼   ► But the way I'm inferring that is that the app units number

00:17:25 ◼   ► is higher than the page view number.

00:17:28 ◼   ► So, but obviously still less than the impressions number.

00:17:32 ◼   ► So in some ways, my naive thought for how the app store flow

00:17:37 ◼   ► would work is that someone sees my app, they tap on it,

00:17:42 ◼   ► they look at the page, and then they hit download.

00:17:45 ◼   ► That is actually not, for the vast majority of the case,

00:17:48 ◼   ► is not what I'm seeing.

00:17:49 ◼   ► What I'm seeing is people are downloading straight

00:17:51 ◼   ► from those top level lists.

00:17:55 ◼   ► So from the top charts, from the search results,

00:17:58 ◼   ► like in all of those, there is a download button

00:18:00 ◼   ► right there, you don't have to tap through

00:18:02 ◼   ► in order to view it.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And so what's important about that is they're downloading it

00:18:09 ◼   ► entirely based on the name, the icon, the star ranking,

00:18:12 ◼   ► and the price.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And in the case of search, they also get three,

00:18:18 ◼   ► sorry, the first two screenshots as well.

00:18:22 ◼   ► That is all they are ever seeing

00:18:24 ◼   ► before they download the app.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Which is kind of interesting to me.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:18:29 ◼   ► - It's, like seeing that number pulls out,

00:18:31 ◼   ► it's like there's so many of these things

00:18:33 ◼   ► that I think we've talked about,

00:18:33 ◼   ► and I think a couple weeks ago we even had an episode

00:18:35 ◼   ► where we were like diving into this kind of stuff,

00:18:37 ◼   ► where it's important to have a good app store description,

00:18:41 ◼   ► and your fourth and fifth screenshot are probably,

00:18:43 ◼   ► you know, are somewhat, they're things you want to

00:18:46 ◼   ► take advantage of and do well.

00:18:47 ◼   ► But a very high percentage of people are just downloading

00:18:51 ◼   ► based on just the name, icon, and star rating and price.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And that's kind of crazy in some ways.

00:19:00 ◼   ► I think in A, it means that you need to have

00:19:02 ◼   ► a really good name, you need to have a really good icon,

00:19:05 ◼   ► make sure your rating's high, and honestly,

00:19:07 ◼   ► probably be free.

00:19:08 ◼   ► Like, being free I'm sure drives this a lot.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I haven't dug into deeply yet comparing free and paid,

00:19:14 ◼   ► but I would expect that the ratio there is massively off.

00:19:18 ◼   ► But if you're a free app, people will just, on impulse,

00:19:21 ◼   ► they see it, get it, they're done.

00:19:23 ◼   ► They don't even have to dive into it,

00:19:25 ◼   ► which I think is really, you know,

00:19:28 ◼   ► that it's a compelling thing to see.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And especially interesting is when people are searching,

00:19:38 ◼   ► they click through to the detail page even lower rate.

00:19:42 ◼   ► I think it was 11% of my impressions turned into page views

00:19:47 ◼   ► in search, whereas 45% of them turned into page views

00:19:53 ◼   ► from browsing.

00:19:54 ◼   ► So in the search area, those first two screenshots

00:19:59 ◼   ► are very important because 90% of people

00:20:03 ◼   ► aren't actually going any farther

00:20:05 ◼   ► than that initial search list.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So that's like the first insight that I pulled out

00:20:12 ◼   ► of my data that I'm like, "Huh, that is really interesting."

00:20:15 ◼   ► I mean, I think it makes me definitely emphasize

00:20:18 ◼   ► a little bit the importance of preserving

00:20:22 ◼   ► and maintaining my star rating in a way that I,

00:20:25 ◼   ► well, I knew it was important.

00:20:26 ◼   ► It's like, wow, that is probably very important

00:20:28 ◼   ► because I can't really change the name at this point.

00:20:32 ◼   ► The icon is pretty set, so really all I can change

00:20:35 ◼   ► is making sure that I have a good star rating.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And if I don't, and that ratio starts to go down,

00:20:42 ◼   ► that's problematic in a significant way.

00:20:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think many of us have suspected

00:20:49 ◼   ► for a long time that not a lot of people read

00:20:52 ◼   ► the description and stuff like that

00:20:53 ◼   ► and viewed the whole page, but I don't think we ever had

00:20:56 ◼   ► anything to really back that up until now.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And now it's very clear what you're saying.

00:21:00 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, search matters a lot,

00:21:02 ◼   ► and everything else matters a little bit.

00:21:05 ◼   ► But really, you need to optimize your app

00:21:07 ◼   ► for visibility in search rankings.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And seeing these numbers, on one hand,

00:21:14 ◼   ► it's like, oh, thanks, Apple,

00:21:15 ◼   ► for finally providing this information.

00:21:16 ◼   ► On the other hand, it's like, oh, man,

00:21:18 ◼   ► what a shame that App Store search is so mediocre.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Like, it really, this really shows quite how much

00:21:24 ◼   ► of an effect on the ecosystem search has.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And it is really unfortunate that the actual

00:21:31 ◼   ► relevance ranking of App Store search continues

00:21:35 ◼   ► to be so, so mediocre.

00:21:38 ◼   ► But that's the world we're living in, I guess,

00:21:41 ◼   ► so might as well work within it.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And one way to work within it is search ads.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And this has been, they launched back in, what,

00:21:48 ◼   ► October or something like that?

00:21:50 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I think it was in beta over the summer,

00:21:52 ◼   ► and then in the fall it went live.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been doing search ads every week,

00:21:57 ◼   ► and we should do a whole episode about following up

00:22:00 ◼   ► on doing them well.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But basically, this shows me how many downloads

00:22:06 ◼   ► of my app come from search total,

00:22:08 ◼   ► and I can correlate that with my search ads numbers,

00:22:11 ◼   ► 'cause when you do search ads,

00:22:12 ◼   ► it gives you lots of useful reports of things like

00:22:14 ◼   ► how many clicks you're getting,

00:22:15 ◼   ► and through what type of queries,

00:22:18 ◼   ► and what it considers relevant to you, and everything.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And so I'm getting about 12% of my search downloads

00:22:25 ◼   ► are coming from search ads.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I can now see that.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And because my app gets so much from search,

00:22:33 ◼   ► about 10% of all my installs are coming from search ads.

00:22:36 ◼   ► So that's worth knowing.

00:22:38 ◼   ► But again, these new metrics that we got

00:22:42 ◼   ► really strongly illustrate quite how important

00:22:46 ◼   ► App Store search is for a lot of apps.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And again, I will say, as we said at the beginning,

00:22:52 ◼   ► this does vary a lot for different apps,

00:22:54 ◼   ► but one thing I've seen pretty consistently

00:22:57 ◼   ► among most of the people's little donut charts

00:23:00 ◼   ► that we've been passing around is that

00:23:03 ◼   ► search is pretty important for most apps.

00:23:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think the thing with there is especially

00:23:09 ◼   ► that search is important,

00:23:11 ◼   ► like it's important in a way that you can control and change

00:23:17 ◼   ► because if your app is ranking well,

00:23:20 ◼   ► if you're high in the top charts

00:23:21 ◼   ► and being featured all the time,

00:23:23 ◼   ► like your browse side of things is going to go up,

00:23:28 ◼   ► but that is not something that you have direct control over.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And so in some ways, like for me, some of my apps,

00:23:36 ◼   ► browse is more important than search,

00:23:39 ◼   ► just the way the numbers come out.

00:23:41 ◼   ► But the reality is when I look at that,

00:23:42 ◼   ► I think it's like, well, okay,

00:23:44 ◼   ► I wanna do cool things that Apple is going to feature.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Like that's something that I can sort of control maybe.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And I wanna have lots of downloads

00:23:51 ◼   ► so that I can rank highly in the top charts.

00:23:55 ◼   ► But none of those are really direct things,

00:23:56 ◼   ► whereas search is the only area

00:23:59 ◼   ► where we have much more direct control over.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Still not complete control, but we choose keywords.

00:24:05 ◼   ► We choose what are those first two screenshots are.

00:24:08 ◼   ► We choose a lot of things that will impact our ability

00:24:12 ◼   ► to convert well in search.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And so even if your app has higher impressions

00:24:21 ◼   ► on the browse side, search is still, I think,

00:24:23 ◼   ► probably a more important area to focus on,

00:24:26 ◼   ► just because it's an area that I think we can have

00:24:28 ◼   ► the biggest impact on in terms of actually affecting change.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the other thing, though,

00:24:34 ◼   ► like this does show you quite,

00:24:37 ◼   ► it shows you in kind of broad relative terms,

00:24:41 ◼   ► like maybe it isn't worth investing a ton of time

00:24:45 ◼   ► into trying to get featured,

00:24:47 ◼   ► because it looks like the value of getting featured,

00:24:50 ◼   ► I mean, obviously it varies

00:24:51 ◼   ► depending on what kind of feature you get,

00:24:53 ◼   ► but the value of getting featured is not amazing in this.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Although, I'll tell you what,

00:24:57 ◼   ► one thing I would love so badly to have

00:25:00 ◼   ► is one of those little badges in search results

00:25:03 ◼   ► that says like Editor's Choice,

00:25:04 ◼   ► or like Best of the Outfit, or Essentials,

00:25:06 ◼   ► like all those, there's a couple of very high level features

00:25:10 ◼   ► that if you get one of those ever,

00:25:12 ◼   ► I think you get that badge in your search result forever.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And that, obviously, now that we see

00:25:17 ◼   ► the importance of search,

00:25:19 ◼   ► and especially like how your little listing looks

00:25:21 ◼   ► without clicking through to your product page,

00:25:24 ◼   ► the value of that would be immense.

00:25:25 ◼   ► And I so badly want one of those badges on mine.

00:25:28 ◼   ► But otherwise, yeah, I think it's very clear.

00:25:31 ◼   ► The other thing I wanted to mention

00:25:32 ◼   ► before we run in too much out of time

00:25:34 ◼   ► is that a lot of the metrics that we get in App Analytics,

00:25:38 ◼   ► including many of these new ones

00:25:40 ◼   ► for sources of people and stuff, are opt-in only.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And what this means is basically that only people

00:25:48 ◼   ► who selected Send Data to Apple on the setup screen

00:25:52 ◼   ► during the OS installation,

00:25:54 ◼   ► only those people's data is being counted here.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And for my app, that's a very low percentage.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And the impression I get from most of the developers

00:26:03 ◼   ► I've talked to is that for their apps,

00:26:04 ◼   ► it seems to be a pretty low percentage too.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And now you can even see, you can compare your numbers here,

00:26:09 ◼   ► and you can see like, yeah, this,

00:26:11 ◼   ► it's showing me a graph of this metric

00:26:14 ◼   ► that says it's representing people,

00:26:15 ◼   ► but then it says opt-in only,

00:26:16 ◼   ► a little small text next to it.

00:26:17 ◼   ► And if you look at the absolute numbers on the graph,

00:26:20 ◼   ► compared to the numbers in the ones that are not opt-in only,

00:26:22 ◼   ► you can see it's a pretty small percentage.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So I would say that any metric that says opt-in only

00:26:29 ◼   ► is not incredibly useful,

00:26:31 ◼   ► because it's such a small percentage,

00:26:33 ◼   ► and it probably is not like a random sample.

00:26:36 ◼   ► It's probably not completely representative of the whole.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So those metrics I would not put a lot of weight in.

00:26:42 ◼   ► But the ones that are not opt-in only,

00:26:43 ◼   ► I think that's great to have.

00:26:45 ◼   ► - Sure, I mean though, the reality is, it is what it is,

00:26:48 ◼   ► and that's the best we have.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So like, I definitely love diving

00:26:53 ◼   ► into some of those opt-in only ones.

00:26:55 ◼   ► And fair enough, it's a small,

00:26:57 ◼   ► perhaps not random distribution,

00:26:59 ◼   ► but at least it's something.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You know, and getting insight into 20% of my users

00:27:05 ◼   ► is better than getting insight into 0%.

00:27:08 ◼   ► And I think too, it's, the biggest thing that I think of

00:27:13 ◼   ► when I look through these numbers though,

00:27:14 ◼   ► like is how massive of an opportunity, in theory,

00:27:19 ◼   ► and you know, it's a very big in theory,

00:27:21 ◼   ► a lot of my apps have,

00:27:24 ◼   ► that I'm currently not taking advantage of.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And by that I mean, like when I look at this,

00:27:29 ◼   ► I can't help but look at the impression to download number.

00:27:33 ◼   ► So essentially like my conversion rate from, you know,

00:27:36 ◼   ► the number of times my app icon slid past someone's eyes

00:27:40 ◼   ► to when they downloaded.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And a lot of those are, you know, pretty low.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I think for browse, for Panorama++, it's about 11%.

00:27:49 ◼   ► For search, it's 28%, which is good.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I'm not saying like that's not,

00:27:54 ◼   ► it's not a terrible number.

00:27:55 ◼   ► It's not, you know, fractions of a percent.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But when I see that, I see it as a massive opportunity.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And I think that's the thing that I probably would leave

00:28:04 ◼   ► towards the end of the show,

00:28:05 ◼   ► sort of for everybody to think about is

00:28:07 ◼   ► using this kind of data,

00:28:10 ◼   ► you have a tremendous opportunity to increase your,

00:28:13 ◼   ► you know, your user base, your download numbers.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Because, you know, if right now only one out of 10 people

00:28:20 ◼   ► who are browsing around and see my app icon download,

00:28:23 ◼   ► like if I can turn that into two out of 10,

00:28:27 ◼   ► which is, you know, the actual numbers involved

00:28:29 ◼   ► aren't actually that dramatic,

00:28:32 ◼   ► like, or the increase isn't that dramatic,

00:28:34 ◼   ► but the numbers involved would actually be very significant.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And so it's a very big opportunity.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I'm like, well, what if, you know,

00:28:40 ◼   ► what do I have to do to make it to affect that number?

00:28:43 ◼   ► And what I love is that I can, as I make changes, you know,

00:28:46 ◼   ► so I'm actually going through and making a few tweaks

00:28:49 ◼   ► to some of the, like I'm actually making a few,

00:28:52 ◼   ► a tweak to the apps icon,

00:28:54 ◼   ► and gonna be changing around a little bit

00:28:56 ◼   ► the first two screenshots in some of my apps.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And what I love is I can make those changes

00:29:00 ◼   ► in the next update, and then now I can go into this area,

00:29:04 ◼   ► and I can see, did that change anything, right?

00:29:06 ◼   ► Like I can, it's not quite A/B testing,

00:29:09 ◼   ► which would be, you know, lovely in its own way,

00:29:11 ◼   ► but also terrifying.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But I could also, but I could very least,

00:29:14 ◼   ► I can make a change, I can measure its impact,

00:29:17 ◼   ► and then, you know, iterate on that,

00:29:19 ◼   ► and hopefully increase these numbers, you know,

00:29:23 ◼   ► ever so slightly, and you know,

00:29:24 ◼   ► these small changes in conversion rate

00:29:26 ◼   ► can have a pretty significant impact

00:29:29 ◼   ► ultimately to my bottom line, which is really cool.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Thanks for listening, everybody,

00:29:33 ◼   ► and we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - Bye.

00:29:36 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]