Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play

With just a few clicks, you can publish an app to Google Play and access a
global audience of more than 1 billion 30 days active users. Finding success in
global markets means considering how each market differs, planning for high
quality localization, and tailoring your activity to the local audience. The new
Going
Global Playbook provides best practices and tips, with advice from
developers who’ve successfully gone global.

This guide includes advice to help you plan your approach to going global,
prepare your app for new markets, take your app to market, and also include data
and insights for key countries and other useful resources.

This ebook joins others that we’ve recently published including The
Building for Billions Playbook and The
News Publisher Playbook. All of our ebooks are promoted in the Playbook for Developers app, which is
where you can stay up to date with all the news and best practices you need to
find success on Google Play.

Posted by Niko Schröer, Business Development, Google Play



Driving installs is important to growing a user base, but it’s not much use if
your app sits on users’ devices and is rarely opened. In a competitive app
landscape, it’s increasingly important to engage and retain users over the long
term to build a successful business. Users who are using your app more will have
a higher lifetime value and be more likely to share your app. Watch my Playtime
session below to hear about the tools and features other developers are using to
increase app engagement. You can also read the summary of my main tips below.

1. Build a high quality app to engage Android users

Building a high quality app is the foundation of a great user experience on
Android. The better your app’s user experience is, the more engaged your users
will be. Optimizing for material
design, for example, can significantly improve user engagement as well as
building for Android
Wear, Auto or TV where it
makes sense based on your value proposition.

To achieve high quality, we recommend you to check out the latest Android
features, tips, and best practices in our Playbook
for Developers.



The developer of the golf app, Hole19,
tailored their app’s user experience thoughtfully for Android Wear and, as a
result, saw a 40% increase in user engagement compared to non-Wear users. Watch a video about Hole19’s
success.



2. Make your users feel at home

Personalising your app experience to make users feel at home is a good way to
start a long lasting relationship. Onboarding new users is a crucial step in
this process. Onboarding should be fast and seamless and ask for minimal user
input – after all users want to start using your app as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, the onboarding should be a core part of the overall product
experience. Use images and wording that’s true to your brand and only ask for
user input when it’s actually needed, to reduce friction and avoid losing users.

Freeletics,
a fitness app, created an engaging user onboarding flow in which they tailored
imagery and text to male and female users respectively. They also moved the
registration process to a later stage in the funnel to reduce friction. The
improved onboarding flow increased user activity by 58% within the first 7 days.
They also implemented Google Smart
Lock to seamlessly sign-in returning users.



3. Optimize feature releases as a way to increase user
engagement

Introducing new features is essential to staying ahead of competition and
relevant to your users to ensure they keep coming back to your app. To make new
feature launches successful drivers for user engagement, follow these simple
steps:

• Define a clear objective for each release to measure your impact, e.g.
  increase number of users who edit a photo by at least 10%.
• Use
  beta testing to gather user feedback and iterate a feature before it’s
  rolled out to all of your users.
• Enable
  the pre-launch report in the Play developer console to spot potential flaws
  and ensure technical stability in your alpha and beta apps.
• Guide users to each new feature as if it is a light onboarding experience.
  Visually highlight what’s new and provide a short explanation why users should
  care.
• Measure performance with analytics to see if the
  new feature drives engagement (that you’ve defined as your objective).

4. Use notifications wisely

Push notifications are a popular engagement tool and rightfully so. However,
there is a fine line between driving engagement and annoying users (who might
then uninstall your app). Follow these guidelines to ensure your notifications
are on the right side of the line:

• Be relevant and only send messages that matter to the user in context. Be
  creative and true to your brand, speak your users language and use an authentic
  tone.
• Make notifications actionable for your users and don’t forget to deep link
  to content where applicable to save your users time.
• Remember that not all your users are equal so personalize your message to
  different user cohorts with Firebase
  Notifications.
• Consider timeliness of your messages to get users the right notification at
  the right time and with the right frequency. For example, it might be better to
  send a notification about something interesting to read at a time when the user
  normally gets out their phone – like during their commute – instead of the
  middle of the day, when they might be busy and dismiss a new notification.
• Finally, give users control over what notifications they receive so that
  they can opt-in and opt-out of the notifications they like and don’t like
  respectively. If users get annoyed about certain types of notifications and
  don’t have a way to disable them, they might uninstall your app.

The Norwegian news app Aftenposten
implemented a new onboarding flow that clarified which notifications were
available, allowing readers to manage their preferences. This reduced uninstalls
by 9.2.% over 60 days and led to a 28% decrease in the number of users muting
notifications completely. Read
more about Aftenposten’s success.



5. Reward your most engaged users

Last but not least, you should find ways to reward your most loyal users to
retain them over time and to make it desirable to less engaged users to engage
more. These rewards can come in many shapes and forms. Start by keeping it
simple and make sure the reward adds real value to the user and fits in your
app’s ecosystem. You can do this by:

• Giving sneak peeks of new features by inviting them to a beta
  group.
• Decorating user accounts with badges based on their behaviour.
• Offer app exclusive discounts or promo
  codes that can only be redeemed in your app.

Generally, the more you can personalize the reward the better it will work.

Find success with ongoing experimentation

A great Android app gives developers a unique opportunity to create a lasting
relationship with users and build a sustainable business with happy customers.
Therefore optimising apps to engage and retain your users by following these 5
tips should be front and centre of your development goals and company strategy.
Find more tips and best practices by watching the sessions at this
year’s Playtime events.

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play

Working at Google Play, we’re on the front line watching developers build, polish, and launch their dreams for millions of users to experience. While it’s exciting to be a part of so much creativity, we’re often asked how small startups can stand out in such a competitive field. We recently had Josh Elman & Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners speak at our events, sharing their experiences working in Product Marketing and Engineering at major tech companies including Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Below are four tips to hit the ground running and create a business built for success.

Set goals, both large and small

Every startup has an ultimate goal, but don’t forget to create micro-goals. Breaking your larger goal down into smaller milestones creates checkpoints to review progress and ensure momentum is heading in the right direction. This also allows for flexibility if teams need to course correct along the way, not to mention micro-accomplishments to celebrate!

Create stickiness

The first level in Sarah’s Hierarchy of Engagement is to identify the core action for users to perform in your app. Once you have engagement with this core action, level 2 is driving retention, getting users to come back and perform the core action more and more. The ultimate goal is to hook users with your app creating accruing benefits, whereby deeper and more frequent engagement creates habits and product dependencies.

“As companies move up the hierarchy, their products become better, harder to leave, and ultimately create virtuous loops that make the product self-perpetuating,”
– Sarah Tavel, Partner at Greylock

Example: For those looking to improve on organizational skills, Evernote can be a lifesaver. The more lists users create, the more they rely on the product. Evernote becomes such an ingrained habit that it naturally transcends between personal and professional worlds.

Drive virality

When launching a new app, look for ways to achieve virality. Find hooks to make users fall in love with your app and strive to make it part of their regular habits. But watch out, not all types of virality are treated equally.

“Whenever you’re thinking about engineering virality, you need to be sure that you’re reaching the right people, getting them interested for reasons that align with the intrinsic value of your product, and leading them to the right actions,”
– Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock

Example: Whether you’re lucky enough to convert happy users into product evangelists or catch fire through social media, outbreak virality has driven tremendous success for apps like Pokémon GO and Prisma.

Measure cohorts

While monitoring traditional mobile metrics such as installs and DAUs provide a high level overview of app performance, cohort analysis is key to understanding user behavior and optimizing for growth. When rolling out changes in your app, make sure to track cohorts for an extended duration. Initial results may tell one story at D7, but hold tight, as things could turn a corner by D15 or even later. Give users time to adapt and get comfortable with the changes before making any final product decisions.

Read more tips on how to find success for your app or game start up in the Playbook for Developers app.

Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play

The upcoming Android Wear 2.0 experience will introduce standalone apps, expanding your potential reach to both Android and iOS audiences with Wear devices. Users will be able to search, install, and use apps without ever leaving their device. See how other developers are enhancing their user experience with standalone apps for messaging, travel & local, and health & fitness.

Glide



Having a watch app further simplifies video messaging with Glide.
Using the Wear Complications
API, Glide is now able to live broadcast directly from the watch face. By
tapping contact shortcuts from the watch face, you can now launch directly into
a conversation. This experience brings speed and intimacy to the world of
messaging, making wrist-based communication more accessible and effortless.

Foursquare



Travelers around the world use Foursquare’s
Android Wear app to discover hidden gems and be in the know about the best
places to eat, drink and explore. With their upcoming 2.0 app, the team has a
clean new canvas for rich notifications giving users an immersive experience
with Foursquare content.

“The standalone nature of the Android Wear 2.0 app will offer a big boost in
search performance and app responsiveness so you spend less time staring at the
screen and more time exploring the world around you,” said Kyle Fowler,
Software Engineer at Foursquare.

Lifesum




Lifesum
helps users make better food choices, improve their exercise, and reach health
goals. The upcoming 2.0 experience complements the existing Lifesum mobile app
and as a standalone app, it will allow users to more easily track water and
meals throughout the day.

“It’s all about increasing access and being there for the user in a quick
and simple way. We believe a simplified way of tracking meals and water will
make it easier for our users on their journey of becoming healthier and
happier,” said Joakim Hammer, Android Developer at Lifesum

Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation about the recently released Android Wear Developer Preview 4.

Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play

We’re constantly working on ways to make Google Play a great place for users to
discover apps and games they’ll love. We know this is crucial to most developers
ongoing success. There are steps you can take to ensure your app is primed for
success – that’s why we’re sharing a reminder of some of our top tips for
getting your app discovered on Google Play.



Build for quality



First, build for quality. Android users expect high-quality apps. App quality
directly influences the long-term success of your app – in terms of installs,
user rating and reviews, engagement, and user retention. These are some of the
factors that go into our search and discovery systems that help discern what
apps to recommend and surface across our Google Play experiences. When building
your app, check against the quality
criteria, and use what you need from the material design guidelines to make
sure you are delivering a highly usable experience. Also, be sure to test your
app for functional quality. Opt-in to the pre-launch
report for your alpha and beta apps in the Google Play Developer Console and
you’ll receive a report for each APK showing how it performs on real devices. This will help you identify crashes and other issues before you release your app.

Example: Designing for high usability through Google Material Design.


Request only the permissions you need



Second, be considerate on which permission settings to enable for your app. We
see that there are some apps that ask for very sensitive permissions, even when
the app doesn’t use them. (For example, a camera app asking for read and write
permissions to call logs.) Excessive app permissions may dissuade users from
installing your app. In fact, one study, in which users
were shown two unbranded apps with similar ratings that had the same
functionality but different sets of permission requests, showed that users were,
on average, 3 times more likely to install the app with fewer permissions
requests. And a similar
study showed that users are 1.7 times more likely, on average, to select the
application with fewer permission requests. The rule of thumb is to enable
permissions that are only essential to your app. Read the best
practices for app permissions.

Chart:
Distribution of permission groups use across Arcade Games category.

If you’re building an arcade game, you many only need a very few permission
settings, if any.


Listen and respond to your users



Lastly, be attentive to user feedback. It’s ultimately the users who drive our
search and discovery systems. When you hear user feedback about bugs or other
issues, we recommend engaging with the feedback and, if needed, updating your
app in a timely manner. Having an up-to-date app that reflects your user’s
feedback can help you gain more installs, engagement, and higher ratings. Beta
testing is a good way to get feedback from real users before launch. You can
also check the ratings
and reviews section of the Developer Console to see an analysis of what
users are saying about your app and how that is affecting your rating compared
to similar apps.

Review benchmarks in the Developer Console uses machine learning to give you
insights about what users are saying about your app and how it affects your
rating.


Google Play strives to help users find and discover the most safe, high quality,
useful, and relevant apps. Building apps that put user’s interest first will
help you be successful in Google Play. For more tips and best practices for
building a successful app business on Google Play, get the Playbook for Developers app.

Maxim Mai, Business Development Manager, Google Play



Maintaining sustainable growth is difficult for even the highest quality apps.
In this video and through the 5 steps below you can find out how some of our
leading Android developers are tackling growth.

1) Understand and define your app’s objectives

Depending on your product lifecycle stage you will most likely focus on these 3
growth goals with varying intensity:

• Acquire new users
• Increase engagement and retention
• Grow revenue

2) Track and measure your tactics against each of your
objectives

List out the tactics you’re using to achieve each objective and keep track of
their performance. You can visualize it using a scorecard like in the example
below created by Mobile Growth
Stack.

3) Apply your growth tactics.

Here are a few examples of specific tactics developers have successfully used to
drive sustained growth.

Tactic: Clue,
a female health app, invests in the Play store listing to increase
conversions.

Results: 24% aggregate increase in install conversion rate over
a period of 6 months.

How they did it:

• Built a continuous flow of global and localised store
  listing experiments.
• Monitored changes in the user
  acquisition performance report for target countries and channels.
• Gathered insights from what users are saying from the reviews
  analysis.

Which phone screenshot do you think drove increase in install conversion for
Clue?



Tactic: ShareTheMeal,
a non-profit app developed by the World Food Programme, uses public relations as
a free sustainable acquisition channel.

Results: 50% of their
total installs to date were driven by media coverage.

How they did
it:

• Developed an excellent messaging.
• Boosted installs impact by combining PR with celebrity outreach and
  distribution partnership.
• Learned that TV coverage has the highest impact on installs but print is a
  useful door opener to amplify TV coverage.

Tactic: Viral growth.
Virality is a core
growth tool for apps and games that focus on sharing and usually the mechanic is
built into the core user experience of the product. However, even if sharing
isn’t a key component of your app, you can still influence two key variables to
create an appropriate environment to encourage virality.



How to do it:

• Increase the number of additional users that a single user brings to the
  app, by boosting the number of invitations sent.
• Decrease your “cycle time”, how long it takes between inviting a user and
  that user sending out the next round of invitations to their friends.
• Offer more incentives for users to share the app or its content while
  they’re using it will help shorten the cycle time and kickstart viral growth!

Tactic: Freeletics
Nutrition, an app to adjust your nutrition to your individual needs and
goals, uses cross-promotion to accelerate the launch of a new product.

Results: 96% of new Nutrition app sales generated by users who
originally registered for the developer’s Bodyweight
training app.

How they did it:

• Surface meal advice in the Bodyweight app’s activity feed with the goal of
  raising awareness for the approaching launch of their new Freeletics Nutrition
  app.

4) Build a strong growth culture

To make sustainable growth work for your app, it needs to be a part of your
culture. Runtastic
is one of the leading health and fitness app developers in Europe and 95% of
their approximately 76M total app installs on Google Play have been generated
organically. Mario Aichlseder, VP of Growth, believes this is the result of a
strong growth culture and the growth principles according to which all teams
operate. For example, product managers, designers and engineers at Runtastic
deliberately chose a mixture of qualitative and quantitative feedback loops
during the app development process to ensure they stay true to their growth
principles.

5) Adjust along the way

It’s important to track your tactics against real metrics to measure your
impact. That will help you make decisions about where to increase or decrease
your efforts. Your priorities will also change based on the evolution of your
business and product lifecycle as well as due to external factors such as new
techniques becoming available, so be open to regularly adjusting your tactics.

Get more tips and best practices in the sessions from this
year’s Playtime events.

Posted by Patricia Correa, Head of Developer Marketing, Google Play

We’re wrapping up our annual global Playtime series of events with a last stop in Tokyo, Japan. This year Google Play hosted events in 10 cities: London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gurgaon, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Tokyo. We met with app and game developers from around the world to discuss how to build successful businesses on Google Play, share experiences, give feedback, collaborate, and get inspired.

You can now watch some of the best Playtime sessions on our Android Developers YouTube Channel, as listed below. The playlist opens with a video that celebrates collaboration.

Keynote
What’s next for Google Play

Learn how we’re helping users discover apps in the right context, creating new
ways to engage with users beyond the install, and powering innovative
experiences on emerging platforms like virtual reality, wearables, and auto.

Develop and launch apps & games

Android
development in 2016

Android development is more powerful and efficient than ever before. Android
Studio brings you speed, smarts, and support for Android Nougat. The broad range
of cross-platform tools on Firecase can improve your app on Android and beyond.
Material Design and Vulkan continue to improve the user experience and increase
engagement.

Daydream
& Tango

Daydream View is a VR headset and controller by Google that lets people explore
new worlds, or play games that put them at the center of action. Learn how we’re
helping users discover apps in the right context and powering new experiences
with Daydream and Tango.

Fireside
chat – Wayfair & Pokémon GO on augmented reality

Augmented reality engages and delights people everywhere. In this fireside chat,
online furniture seller Wayfair and Niantic’s Pokémon
GO share their experiences with AR and discuss how other developers can make
the most of the platform.

Building
for billions, featuring best practices from Maliyo Games

Learn how to create apps and games for emerging markets, which are expected to
drive 80% of global smartphone growth by 2020, by recognizing the key challenges
and designing the right app experiences to overcome them.

At minute 16:41, hear tips from Hugo Obi, co-founder of Nigerian games developer
Maliyo.

Launch
smart on Google Play

Set your app up for success using experimentation and iteration. Learn best
practices for soft launching and adapting your app for different markets and
device types.

Apps

Sustainable
growth solves most problems for apps, featuring best practices from
SoundCloud &
Peak

Planning and executing a great growth strategy involves a complex set of choices
and mastery of many tools. In this session we discuss topics including key
business objectives, tools, and techniques to help you solve the growth puzzle
with our partner, SoundCloud.

Also, check out some growth
best practices from Peak.

Creating
sustainable user growth for startups, by Greylock

User growth isn’t just about growing the number of users you have. The key to
sustainability is creating and delivering core product value. In this session,
VC Greylock discusses how to identify your core action to focus on and shows you
how to use these insights to optimize your app for long term growth.

App
engagement is the new black, featuring best practices from Lifesum

As the app marketplace becomes more competitive, developer success depends on
retaining users in apps they love. Find out which Google tools and features can
help you analyze your users’ behaviors, improve engagement and retention in your
app and hear insights from others developers including Lifesum.

Predicting
lifetime value in the apps world

Deepdive into lifetime value models and predictive analytics in the apps ecosystem.
Tactics to get the most out of identified segments and how to upgrade their
behaviors to minimize churn.

Subscriptions
update

Learn about Google’s efforts to enable users, around the world, to seamlessly
and safely pay for content. This session provides updates on Google Play billing
and recent enhancements to our subscriptions platform.

Games

One
game fits all, featuring best practices from Space Ape Games

Customize your game’s experience for different users by targeting them with lifetime value
models and predictive analytics. Hear how these concepts are applied by
Space Ape Games to improve retention and monetization of their titles.

Promoting
your game and growing your user base, featuring best practices from Seriously

Learn how to use Google’s latest tools, like Firebase, for benchmarking,
acquiring users and measuring your activities. Also, hear game
developer Seriously share their latest insights and strategies on YouTube
influencer campaigns.

Creating
long-term retention, loyalty and value with engaging LiveOps events, featuring
best practices from Kabam &
Creative Mobile

Learn how successful developers keep their games fresh and engaging with Live
Operations. In this talk, the LiveOps expert on Marvel: Contest of Champions
discusses tips about the art and science of running an engaging LiveOps event.

Also check out the tips and best
practices to run successful LiveOps from games developer Creative Mobile.

Panel
– Play fair: Maintaining a level playing field in your game, featuring Space Ape
Games and Kongregate

Ensuring that your game is fair is critical to success. Find out how game
developers are achieving this and some ways Google Play can help.

Families

Why
you need to build for families

Family-based households with children have higher tablet and smartphone
ownership rates than the general population. These families are more likely to
make purchases on their mobile devices and play games. Learn about how parents
choose what to download and buy, and how you can prepare for maximum conversion.

Two
keys to growth: user acquisition & app engagement, by Cartoon Network

Hear how Cartoon Network leverages their network to cross-promote new titles,
acquire new users and keep them engaged through immersive experiences.

Go
global: Getting ready for the emerging markets revolution, by
Papumba

Papumba has a clear vision to grow a global business. Hear how they work with
experts to adapt their games to local markets and leverage Google Play’s
developer tools to find success around the world.

Optimizing
for a post install world

You’ve spent time and resources getting users to download your apps, but what
happens after the install? Learn how to minimize churn and keep families engaged
with your content long term.

Monetization
best practices on freemium, by 01 Digital

Learn how 01 Digital uses In-App-Purchases (IAP) to effectively monetize their
apps while maintaining a safe environment for families.

Building
a subscription business that appeals to parents, by PlayKids

PlayKids has been at the forefront of the subscription business model since
their inception. See how they best serve their subscribers by refreshing their
content, expanding their offerings and investing in new verticals.