How We Doubled Our Android Install Rate in One Hour

http://www.dwellable.com/blog/How-We-Doubled-Our-Android-Install-Rate-in-One-Hour

by gurgeous • 14 years ago

105 23 14 years ago

dwellable.com

gurgeous3• 14 years ago

Inept designer here. Happy to chat.

adrianr• 14 years ago

Inept designer here too. It's really awesome to see a success story like this, it gives me hope

badusername• 14 years ago

Way to advertise yourself :)

gurgeous3• 14 years ago

I'm an engineer/entrepreneur type guy. Everything else is just by accident.

dwwoelfel• 14 years ago

I don't buy the inept designer act. Your project page is very good and your new promo artwork is like a miniature version of it: http://www.dwellable.com/h/26684/Oahu/East-Oahu/Kailua/Alii-...

programminggeek• 14 years ago

Note that the most important factor here is that they already were being featured on the front page. Making awesome promo art is a good idea, but if they weren't featured on the front page, this promo image wouldn't make a whole lot of difference.

danshapiro• 14 years ago

I disagree: it seems clear that the CTR on the new design was 2x the old. Now, granted that 2x of a featured spot is a much bigger absolute number than 2x of typical placement. But 2x is 2x. This is a great reminder of the impact of design for anyone trying to optimize their app store presence (large or small).

Bakkot• 14 years ago

I'm not sure, honestly: I imagine the differential of a new design varies depending on how users come across it. If when not being featured Dwellable mostly gets new installs from word-of-mouth, say, I bet that the new design doesn't have as much impact. (I'm sure it would still be a big difference, but maybe on the order of 1.5x instead of 2x, say.)

stoney• 14 years ago

As they are being featured their promo art is shown to users before they get to the page for that particular app (see the screenshots for their new and old images - you can see it is part of a scrolling bar of promo images).

If they weren't being featured, the promo art would only be seen by users that clicked through to the app's page - users would only have seen the app's icon before getting the app's landing page.

So I think featured vs not featured makes a big difference to the importance of the promo art.

31reasons2• 14 years ago

>"instantly DOUBLED our install rate"

They are talking about their install rate not CTR.

martian• 14 years ago

It helps that the design of the new Dwellable is very similar to the popular magazine Dwell. I wonder how much of the gain is due to brand recognition of a different brand?

- Similar san-serif lowercase font

- Large-format images of modern homes

- Almost-identical name :-)

Of course, you should always be A/B testing, and congrats on the conversion increase.

[edit: formatting]

ajross2• 14 years ago

If one data point matters: I occasionally rent vacation homes and am probably in the target demographic for that app. But I've frankly never heard of "Dwell" and certainly wouldn't recognize their brand artwork.

This is an app targetted at essentially the whole of the US upper middle class; is copying a niche magazine really going to matter much?

cpeterso• 14 years ago

> This is an app targetted at essentially the whole of the US upper middle class;

That is pretty much Dwell's market demographic, too.

martindale• 14 years ago

A/B testing on Google Play is fairly difficult, as you can only ever have one version uploaded and it takes a few hours for any changes to be made available publicly.

zem• 14 years ago

i've never seen or even heard of dwell, but my eye would have glided over the first image without even noticing it, and been arrested by the second one.

shazow• 14 years ago

Really simple and effective example, thank you for sharing!

I wonder how much of it has to do with the objective "quality" of the design versus the effect on the audience's psychology of connecting "real life" (vacation rentals) to an app that lives in your phone.

I'd love to see further experimentation with:

1. Lower quality "real life" asset designs.

2. Higher quality abstract designs.

gurgeous3• 14 years ago

I'm sure that's a huge part of it. Aspirational vs. functional. Since the app was designed to be in large part aspirational, the new artwork actually matches our intent better than the orange monstrosity.

limejuice• 14 years ago

I'm not sure if it is the artwork or the message. The previous promo art had tagline "Vacation rentals and reviews" which targets a specific audience, while second artwork just says "Dwellable" which is more mysterious and so you might have more people download it to check it out. Maybe it helps to have a broader message to get more people to try it, but expect to have a higher % of those curious windoshoppers try it and then shelve it/uninstall it.

dmethvin• 14 years ago

That's the way it seems to me as well. With the second one that has no tag line I'd think that Dwellable might be a competitor for Trulia, Zillow, or Redfin.

graue• 14 years ago

This just shows how pictures communicate more efficiently than text. On a busy screen filled with apps, the words "Vacation reviews, photos and more" don't get read, they just get tuned out. But a picture of a beautiful vacation home grabs the eye. There's almost an automatic "I want that" response.

31reasons2• 14 years ago

I don't think I learned anything from the blog post. It was already being featured by Google. May be this is just an ad.

diego• 14 years ago

Without telling us the install rate, "doubled" is just lying with statistics. Did you go from 10 to 20 daily or from 10k to 20k? Play says that you have 10k+ installs total (not a lot), so it looks more like the former.

If your initial number is really low, minimal work can double it. If you are doing well, the same work may give you a small percentage improvement, or even nothing. It's called "law of diminishing returns."

What I learn from this post: you had lots of low-hanging fruit, and probably still do.

How We Doubled Our Android Install Rate in One Hour

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