Presented by Nirmiti Narain, Growth Manager, Education Apps, Google, India, this session focuses on some of the most important questions that a lot of app developers ask such as how do I improve my app’s ranking on the Play Store, what are the little levers or hacks to improve my app’s discoverability, its usability, and lovability.
But before coming to the main theme, let’s take a look and understand how crowded the app market in India is. According to Google, every 4th Indian has a smartphone today. It is said that by the end of 2020, half of the Indian population will be online. It further said that of all the internet traffic, 70% of the traffic comes from mobile. Perhaps, this is the key factor which is building the digital economy in India. It is said that the amount of time people spend on the smartphone has drastically increased from somewhere 3.5 hours per day to 4.3 hours today. But do you know what most people are actually doing when they are on the smartphone? It is said that 88% of the time people spend on their smartphone is on apps. This tells volumes the heightened activity which is taking place in the app ecosystem. No wonder, developers continue to create new apps and people continue to download and use new apps every day. According to report, India has already surpassed the US and has now become the second largest country in the world in terms of app downloads, after China.
So how do you make your app stand out in such a cluttered market?
Nirmiti explained that at Google, they choose to believe that this is not a challenge but an opportunity. She said that if you do some basic fundamentals right, you can actually take care of a lot of things and make your apps more discoverable and usable. To help in this, she explained the two frequently asked questions – why is my app not in the top rankings? How do I manage my ratings and reviews?
Why is my app not in the top rankings?
It is said that 1 in 3 visitors make install decision within 3 seconds. Three seconds to decide whether he wants to install the app or the next app on the listing. So what did you see in those first 3 seconds? What are the top features that get captured in first 3 seconds? The four things that a user can possibly see in those first 3 seconds when he is making the life-changing decision: (1) Logo, app name and few keywords that you put into the title of your app name. (2) Ratings and total downloads. (3) Images, Videos, Portrait, and Landscape etc. (4) Reviews.
So how can you optimize the above 4 things.
- Logo, app name – While logo and app name remained fixed, you can do a lot with keywords. It should be precise, with descriptive keywords. Eg. Vedantu has used LIVE Learning App, Class 1-12, JEE, NEET). This clearly tells you have live classes, caters K-12 and K13 at the max. So it’s very clear who the target segment is.
- Ratings and total downloads – This is a critically important factor because this is your equity. It speaks about the credibility, usage and popularity.
- Videos, Portrait images, Landscape images – As humans, our eyes are trained to always go towards movement, colours, graphics, images, etc. This is something you can really leverage. Put in screenshots which show your app features, main important attractions of your app. This is really important which actually helps in driving the install decision.
- Reviews – Your reviews become really important. You have to curate those experiences, the kind of support when the user comes and sees. What is the kind of response that you are giving to both happy and the disappointed customer?
Some statistics which move when you leverage the above things
25% increase in conversion rates by improving first two screenshots.
35% increase in install rates by switching app screenshots.
23% improvement in install rates by using an app video.
Nirmiti advised to feel free to experiment with various graphics, videos, screenshots, texts, titles, everything and choose how many people will see what and compare the install base, and then take the decision of keeping that specific one as your final app listing.
Localization on the landing page
It is said that if it is a great app, you will see every country has a different landing page. They will always customize and localize it to stand out for the country. For instance, if you go to the US, you will see that the Americans have the shortest attention span, so they will probably spend the least time making the decision. If you go to Brazil, you will see that they prefer English over Portuguese. And if you take a look at India, it has the highest response rate to localized photos, people, and landmarks, because they are very close to the country’s culture.
Understanding this, Nirmiti advised localizing your content towards that specific country, or region if it is catering to a particular community/area. She advised you to experiment with anything and take decisions based on that data.
So what are the basic fundamentals to get everything right on the app listing page and Play Store?
Nirmiti advised to never underestimate but to remember and do the following four things:
- Keyword research – Never underestimate the power of keyword research. Keep checking your brand, generic and competition search terms. This helps in building out the correct text for your store listing.
- Title optimization – Keywords in the title have the most weight on Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This determines how your app’s headline and display will come out when a user is searching for you. Feel free to experiment on this.
- Localization – Customize images, USPs, and use common landmarks. Use common things which are important to the people of that specific region.
- Screenshot optimization – Provide more than just a feature list and screenshot of the app. Design for attention, increase exploration, and provide clear call to action. Have auto play videos, portrait images, landscape images, and try to include as many images as possible to optimize the app store listing.
How do I get more user love and how do I manage my ratings and reviews?
Do you know how critical user opinion is for app installs? According to Google, the following are top 5 considerations that users take into account when installing an app:
53% on app’s rating
49% on reviews of the app
44% amount of memory left on their phone vs size of the app
43% the number of installs the app has
40% cost of the app
This is the kind of impact the ratings and reviews can have on the install decision of the users. Nirmiti said even one or two bad reviews can create a harmful effect, and undo your hard work. One may have 100 or 200 great reviews, but she said that even one bad review is bad enough. Ratings and reviews not only impact on app install decisions, but also significantly on sales. It is said that highly rated apps generate significantly more sales. According to the research, when compared with the sales and business of an app which is rated at 2-2.9 stars vs an app which is rated at 4-5 stars, there is a 36X difference in sales in actual business. Understanding this impact, Nirmiti said that as marketers, advertisers, and app developers, it is always important to continuously monitor and see what is happening on the part of ratings and reviews.
Strategies to help achieve great ratings and reviews
Nirmiti suggested the following three basic strategies to help achieve great ratings and reviews:
- Personalize Response: (1) Quick and customized responses – You will always get both happy and bad responses from your customers. How and when you respond to both of them matters a lot. Nirmiti said any response more than two hours is actually a battle lost, as customers will not be there for so long. She said that the first response should come within 15 minutes, if not, it should come definitely within two hours. (2) Adding the ‘Human Element’ – It always matters the kind of empathy you’re showing to the customer. When you are responding to the customer, call out his name, not hi/dear customer/user. Call out that full name and ensure you spell it correctly. When you do that, you are showing empathy to the customer. You can convert unhappy customer to a happy one.
- “Always On” Ears: (1) Identify ‘happy’ moments to ask for reviews (2) Drive positive user sentiment at the identified moments of joy (3) Identify most engaged users and encourage for review. Train your AI algorithm within the app to find out those happy moments for the customers. Find out your most engaged customers and prompt them at the right time.
- Tell them “What to expect”: (1) Educate the user about your app offering right when they install (2) Integrate tutorials for better understanding (3) Incentivise staff for customer delight. As app developers, we create great apps and we think that these are intuitive apps and they will be very easy for anyone to use. But that’s not really the case. If somebody is new to your app, when they first open it, that moment is the first moment of truth. That is the time when they first interact with you as a brand and as an app. Do not leave them right away at that point of time, hand hold them for some time. Tell them what to expect in the app. Show them a tutorial, give them a tour of the app. All this creates a lot of positive sentiment around the brand. Because they know what to expect, which are the most important features, how they can access customer service, it will go a long in giving great ratings and reviews.
Nirmiti concluded her session by giving this advice: “Even when you get all the basics right, don’t be satisfied and stop! Experiment with data and improve each day – your app is getting new customers, every day; and they all matter.”
Sharing their insights on massive growth in Indian edtech during the last few months and how they see in future when things become normal in a panel discussion with Kiran Bapna, Head – VC Partnerships, Google, India, GV Ravishankar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital, said it has pushed adoption of technology by consumers and schools by two or three years forward and the adoption is here to stay even in future. Sajith Pai, Director, Blume Ventures, predicts drop in numbers after physical learning comes back, and said retention has to be managed post COVID.
When asked some of the real opportunities that he sees in Indian edtech sector in future, GV said that while lot more action has been on the test prep and K-12, there are other aspects which have not been addressed well enough. He said that we are seeing newer models with focus on employability skills, vocational education, upskilling and reskilling and will continue to come up in future. With several opportunities opening up, he said we are still in early days in edtech and there will be lots of innovations ahead of us. Sajith seconded that and shared how he believes higher education B2B software space has a void that makes him excited; and also how he sees K-12 non-curricular (life as a CV model) & daycare as a big opportunity.
On being asked to share one piece of advice to the Indian edtech startups to manoeuvre the current times successfully, and the younger ones that are just beginning to explore the market, Sajith advised to intensely focus on consumer needs and not to get worried by existing models, what’s getting funded, etc. GV, emphasizing on the younger ones, advised to ask whether they have a reasonably differentiated solution to the problem. He asked them to focus on area or field that is less addressed today. He also advised them to focus on opportunities of tomorrow and not what is hot now, and to think of having the licence to win in a market, not just having the licence to play.
