Android Developers Blog: Story

Nexon increases day 60 retention and monetization with pre-registration rewards

13 August 2019

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Google Play Developer Marketing Nexon Korea Company has published several games across PC, mobile, and console. With the launch of their mobile game FAITH, a MMORPG released exclusively in Japan, they wanted to promote the game before launch and find a way to capture early consumer demand that would help boost early installs at launch. What they did Nexon ran a pre-registration campaign on Google Play with a multi-channel marketing campaign driving players to pre-register and receive an exclusive pre-registration reward. Their campaign used consistent creative assets throughout TV commercials, YouTube influencer campaigns, social media, performance marketing campaigns, and more. Offering a pre-registration reward provided an incentive and benefit for players who pre-registered on Google Play during the month-long campaign leading up to launch.

Banner for mobile game FAITH, a MMORPG released exclusively in Japan

“It was very easy to run, since the steps to activate the campaign were very clear and simple. All we needed to do was prepare the store assets and APK, then set them up in the Google Play Console,” said Hyomin Kim, Head of Platform Partnerships at Nexon Korea Corporation. Their exclusive pre-registration reward of 300 diamonds (in-game currency) was set up as a unique managed product as part of the campaign. At launch, Google Play provides the reward to all players who pre-registered, allowing Nexon to consume and grant the reward to players in-game using the Google Play Billing API. Not only did this create additional value for users, but it allowed Nexon to identify those who pre-registered in-game so they could measure the cohort’s performance after launch. Once the game became available on launch day, everyone who pre-registered on Google Play received a notification to install. Results Nexon reported they had historically seen around 50% of Google Play pre-registrations convert to installs. By offering a pre-registration reward for FAITH, they increased their conversion rate by 20%. And not only that, the campaign drove other strong performance metrics with players who pre-registered for FAITH on Google Play having almost 50% higher day 60 retention than those who did not pre-register. This audience has also shown stronger monetization behavior, with over 70% higher ARPDAU than non-pre-registrants. “Google Play pre-registration is now a ‘must-do’ strategy when Nexon launches games. From our previous experience, Google Play pre-registration is one of the most effective pre-registration platforms amongst all the channels we utilize, especially for organic impressions and installation conversion,” said Kim. Get started All app and game developers can run pre-registration campaigns and offer a pre-registration reward. Get started today!

Gesture Navigation: A Backstory

08 August 2019

Posted by Allen Huang and Rohan Shah, Product Managers on Android UI

One of the biggest changes in Android Q is the introduction of a new gesture navigation. Just to recap - with the new system navigation mode - users can navigate back (left/right edge swipe), to the home screen (swipe up from the bottom), and trigger the device assistant (swipe in from the bottom corners) with gestures rather than buttons. By moving to a gesture model for system navigation, we can provide more of the screen to apps to enable a more immersive experience. We wanted to give folks an inside look at how we’ve approached this challenge, the rationale, and some of the trade-offs as well. There is some nerding out on design around gestures ahead, but hopefully it provides some insight into our process and how we balance the developer and OEM ecosystem in service of users. If you’re looking for more detail on how to handle these changes as an app developer, check out Chris’s “Going edge-to-edge” article series. Why gestures? One of the amazing things about Android is the opportunity for app developers and Android partners to try new, innovative approaches on the phone. In the last 3 years, we’ve seen gesture navigation patterns proliferate on handheld devices (though gestures have been around as early as 2009!). This trend was led by innovative Android partners and Android apps trying some very cool ideas (for example: Fluid NG, XDA). When we started researching this more, we honed in on the user benefits:

Gestures can be a faster, more natural and ergonomic way to navigate your phone

Gestures are more intentional than software buttons that you might trigger just by grabbing your phone

Gestures enable a more immersive experience for apps by minimizing how much the system draws over app content, i.e. HOME/BACK buttons and the bar they sit on - especially as hardware trends towards bigger screens and smaller bezels

It wasn’t all roses though - we also saw issues with many of the gesture modes:

Gestures don’t work for every user

Gestures are harder to learn and can take some adjustment

Gestures can interfere with an app’s navigation pattern

But most of all, we realized that there was a larger issue of fragmentation when different Android phones had different gestures, especially for Android developers. Over the last year, we worked with partners like Samsung, Xiaomi, HMD Global, OPPO, OnePlus, LG, Motorola, and many others to standardize gesture navigation going forward. To ensure a consistent user and developer experience, the Android Q gestures will be the default gesture navigation for new Q+ devices. Understanding that these gestures don’t work for every user, especially those with more limited dexterity and mobility, three-button navigation will continue to be an option on every Android device. So why these gestures? We started with research to understand how users held their phones, what typical reach looked like, and what parts of the phone users used the most. From there, we built many prototypes that we tested across axes like desirability, speed-of-use, ergonomics, and more. And we put our ultimate design through a range of studies - how quickly users learned the system, how quickly users got used to the system, how users felt about it. A unique element of Android navigation since the very beginning is the Back button. It is appreciated by many users that find Android easier to navigate and learn (despite many debates on what the “correct” behavior is) -- and it's used a lot! In fact, 50% more than even Home. So one of our design goals was to make sure the back gesture was ergonomic, dependable, and intuitive -- and we prioritized this goal above other less frequent navigation such as drawers and recents. Looking at the reachability charts below, we designed our two core gestures (Back and Home) to coincide with the most reachable/comfortable areas and movement for thumbs.

Phone screen heatmaps showing where users can comfortably do gestures, holding the phone in only one hand As mentioned, we built prototypes of many different gesture models, comparing user ratings and timed user tasks on what ultimately became the Q model to several other navigation paradigms. Here’s a few graphs showing the results of our testing:

Comparison of user ratings for ergonomics and one-handed use across different navigation modes (higher is better)

Comparison of average time required to complete Home/Back tasks across various navigation modes (lower is better)

Comparison of average time required to complete Overview/Recents-based tasks across various navigation modes (lower is better) Users, on average, performed tasks involving Home and Back more quickly than most other models - even faster than they did with buttons. The model did, however, come at the cost of being able to quickly access Overview/Recent apps, which users go to less than half as often as the Home screen. From a more qualitative perspective, users viewed the Q model as more one-handed and reachable, although buttons were still viewed as more ergonomic for more users. App Drawers and other App Swipes Although we arrived at the side swipe as the gesture for back that best balanced many tradeoffs, it is important to note that there were hard decisions, particularly in how that gesture impacted apps. For example, we found that ~3-7% of users (depending on the Google app) swipe to open the App Navigation Drawer - the rest of our users push the hamburger menu to invoke the drawer. This drawer swipe gesture is now overloaded with back and some users will need to adapt to using the hamburger menu. This was a tough choice but given the prolific use of back we optimized for what worked best there. Because it’s never a goal to change out behavior on users, we tried several ways to enable users to distinguish the drawer gesture from the Back gesture. However, all these paths led to users pulling in the drawer when they were trying to go Back and having less confidence that Back would work. Beyond drawers, gestures are a big change for people and it took on average 1-3 days to adapt - in particular, users struggled with patterns like swiping right or left on a carousel and triggering Back. In qualitative studies, we found that after an initial break-in period of 1-3 days, users became fluent and could consistently distinguish between these two gestures. The majority of users did not want to switch back to 3 button nav (even though that remains an option). Additional research showed that there is a clear adjustment phase for users to get used to a new system navigation (across many different navigations). In our Q model, we found that usage of Back goes down for the first 1-3 days. After that period, the average # of Back presses/day ends up being the same as 3-button and our P navigation. So What Does This Mean for Developers? With gestural navigation, we are aiming to move forward and standardize the user experience on Android. The model we landed on is the optimal one for most users, but it also means that some of the gestures conflict with existing app gestures, necessitating developer adjustments to how users interact with your apps. We take our responsibility to Android developers seriously and want to help you in this process. There are three key steps to support gesture navigation:

Go edge-to-edge to enable your app to draw across the entire screen

Handle any visual overlaps with the system user interface (i.e. navigation bar)

Resolve any gesture conflicts with the system gestures

We’ve just published the first article in our “Going edge-to-edge” series on Medium, detailing those steps in turn. The final article in the series will cover some of the common scenarios we’ve seen, and how you can best support them in your apps. Thank you all for the feedback -- all of your comments and interactions have helped us improve the gesture navigation experience in Android Q and, more broadly, help make Android better each day.

#IMakeApps - Celebrating app makers worldwide

18 June 2018

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer Marketing, Platforms & Ecosystems The Android developer ecosystem is made up of exceptional individuals with different backgrounds, interests, and dreams. To celebrate the people who make up our community, starting today, and over the coming months, we'll be meeting with developers, founders, product managers, designers, and others from around the world to hear more about their passions and discover what they do when they step away from their computers. Watch stories featuring adventurer Niek Bokkers from Polarsteps (Netherlands), artist Faith Ringgold from Quiltuduko (USA) and chair restorer Hans Jørgen Wiberg from Be My Eyes (Denmark). You can also read more about them and their apps on g.co/play/imakeapps. Share your storyWe'd love to hear from you too. Use the hashtag #IMakeApps on your social channels, sharing the app or game you work on, your role in its creation, and an image that best depicts who you are outside of work. We will regularly select and share some of our favorites on our channels. If you also want to get featured in an upcoming #IMakeApps film, tell us more about yourself and your app or game, by completing this self-nomination form. Stay tuned for more #IMakeApps stories by following us on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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Android Developer Story: Big Fish Games uses open beta testing to de-risk their game launch

31 January 2018

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play Based in Seattle, Big Fish Games was founded in 2002. Starting as a game studio, they quickly turned into a major publisher and distributor of casual games. Leading up to the launch of their hit time management game, Cooking Craze, the team ran an open beta on Google Play. Big Fish Games found that using open beta provided more than 10x the amount of user feedback from around the world, and also gave them access to key metrics and Android Vitals in the Play Console. The ability to monitor game performance metrics pre-launch allowed the team to focus on areas of improvement, which lead to a 21% reduction in crash rate. The larger sample size of beta testers also provided more insights on player behavior and helped achieve a +7% improvement in day 1, day 7, and day 30 retention rates. You can also learn more pre-launch best practices and strategies to improve performance post-launch at our Google Developer Day on Monday, March 19th at GDC. Sign up to stay informed.

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Android Developer Story: Zalando increases installs and revenue by focusing on app quality

01 September 2017

Posted by Adriana Puchianu Based in Berlin, Zalando is Europe's leading online fashion platform. With more than 70% of its traffic now coming from mobile, the company has invested a lot in improving the quality of its app to provide a good user experience. Investing in bridging the online and the offline worlds, as well as providing a seamless cross-platform experience, has had positive results on their user engagement and revenue. Using features like A/B testing, the pre-launch report and the new release dashboard from the Google Play Console, Zalando saw a 6% increase in installs and a 15% increase in the users' lifetime value. Watch Rushil Dave, Senior Product Specialist and Meritxell Rivera, Android Developer discuss how the company has improved user experience and key revenue and engagement metrics by investing in app quality for their Zalando app. How useful did you find this blogpost? ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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Playdemic drives user engagement and revenue with live game operations on Google Play

16 August 2017

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing, Google PlayBased in the UK, Playdemic is a free-to-play mobile games developer. Their leading game Golf Clash is designed to provide a short and fun, competitive experience. It uses a simple and accessible game mechanics based on one-thumb gaming which has generated substantial user engagement, with an average of 44 minutes played over three sessions a day. Golf Clash is now played by more than 1.5 million players every day whilst the average revenue per user is equal to other platforms. Watch Paul Gouge, CEO & Co-founder, and Gareth Jones, Head of Production, discuss how Playdemic uses live game operations ("live ops") to continuously engage players and grow their business on Google Play. Live ops are also referred to as "running games as a service"; they include the strategic distribution of content and interactions with players that are limited in time and are designed to increase engagement and monetization. Watch more developer stories and learn about other features and best practices you can use to succeed on Google Play with the updated Playbook app. How useful did you find this blogpost? ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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App onboarding for kids: how Budge Studios creates a more engaging experience for families

20 April 2017

Posted by Josh Solt (Partner Developer Manager, Kids Apps at Google Play) and Noemie Dupuy (Founder & Co-CEO at Budge Studios)

Developers spend a considerable amount of resources driving users to download their apps, but what happens next is often the most critical part of the user journey. User onboarding is especially nuanced in the kids space since developers must consider two audiences: parents and children. When done correctly, a compelling onboarding experience will meet the needs of both parents and kids while also accounting for unique considerations, such as a child's attention span.

Budge Studios has successfully grown their catalog of children's titles by making onboarding a focal point of their business. Their target demographic is three to eight-year olds, and their portfolio of games include top titles featuring Strawberry Shortcake, Hello Kitty, Crayola, Caillou and The Smurfs.

"First impressions matter, as do users' first experience with your app. In fact, 70%¹ of users who delete an app will do so within a day of having downloaded it, leaving little time for second chances. As an expert in kids' content, Budge tapped into our knowledge of kids to improve and optimize the onboarding experience, leading to increased initial game-loop completion and retention." - Noemie, Founder & Co-CEO at Budge Studios

Three key ways Budge Studios designs better onboarding experiences:

1. Make sure your game is tailor-made for kids

When Budge released their app Crayola Colorful Creatures, they looked at data to identify opportunities to create a smoother onboarding flow for kids. At launch, only 25% of first-time users were completing the initial game loop. Budge analyzed data against gameplay and realized the last activity was causing a drastic drop-off. It required kids to use the device's microphone, and that proved too challenging for very young kids. Budge was able to adjust the initial game loop so that all the activities were accessible to the youngest players. These adjustments almost tripled the initial loop completion, resulting in 74% of first-time users progressing to see additional activities.

2. Earn parents trust by providing real value upfront

Budge has a large of portfolio of apps. Earning parents' trust by providing valuable and engaging experiences for kids is important for retaining users in their ecosystem and achieving long term success.

With every new app, Budge identifies what content is playable for free, and what content must be purchased. Early on, Budge greatly limited the amount of free content they offered, but over time has realized providing high quality free content enhances the first-time user experience. Parents are more willing to spend on an app if their child has shown a real interest in a title.

Working with top kids' brands means that Budge can tap into brand loyalty of popular kids characters to provide value. To launch Strawberry Shortcake Dreams, Budge decided to offer Strawberry Shortcake, the most popular character in the series, as a free character. Dress Up Dreams is among the highest converting apps in the Budge portfolio, indicating that giving away the most popular character for free helped conversions rather than hurting it.

3. Test with real users

Budge knows there is no substitute for direct feedback from its end-users, so Budge involves kids every step of the way. Budge Playgroup is a playtesting program that invites families to try out apps at the alpha, beta and first-playable development stages.

The benefits from early testing can be as basic as understanding how the size and coordination of kids' hands affect their ability to complete certain actions or even hold the device, and as specific as pinpointing a less-than-effective button.

In the testing stages of Strawberry Shortcake Holiday Hair, Budge caught an issue with the main menu of the app, which would not have been evident without observing kids using the app.

Prior to Playtesting:

After Playtesting:

In the original design, users were prompted to start gameplay by audio cues. During testing, it was clear that the voiceover was not sufficient in guiding kids to initiate play, and that additional visual clues would significantly improve the experience. A simple design change resulted in a greatly enhanced user experience.

The onboarding experience is just one component of an app, but just like first impressions, it has a disproportionate impact on your users' perception of your app. As Budge has experienced, involving users in testing your app, using data to flag issues and providing real value to your users upfront, creates a smoother, more accessible onboarding experience and leads to better results.

For more best practices on developing family apps and games, please check out The Family Playbook for developers. And visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

1.http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/mobile-app-retention-5-key-strategies-to-keep-your-customers/

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Android Developer Story: Robinhood uses Android Studio to quickly build and test new features

05 April 2017

Posted by Christopher Katsaros, Developer Marketing, Android

Robinhood allows users to buy and sell stocks commission-free* in the US. It is designed to make financial investment easy for all users, even if you’ve never traded before.

With a team of two Android developers, the company has relied on fast tools like Android Studio to build rich new features, which have helped make Robinhood the highest-rated stock brokerage app on Google Play.

Watch Robinhood's Joe Binney, VP of Product Engineering, and Dan Hill, Android Developer, talk about how Android Studio is helping them achieve strong growth on Android.

The top Android developers use Android Studio to build powerful and successful apps on Google Play; learn more about the official IDE for Android app development and get started for yourself.

Get more tips and watch other success stories in the Playbook for Developers app.

*Free trading refers to $0 commissions for Robinhood Financial self-directed individual cash or margin brokerage accounts that trade U.S. listed securities via mobile devices. SEC & FINRA regulatory fees may apply.

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5 tips for indie game success, from indie game developers

31 March 2017

Posted by Sarah Thomson, BD Partnerships Lead, Indies, Google Play Games

Mobile gaming is a fun place to be right now. It's a landscape seeing tremendous success year after year with great potential for additional growth and innovation. It's also a space where developers can express themselves with creative game styles, mechanics, design and more. This is what the indie community does best.

Here are 5 tips for indies by indies, shared by our gaming partners at 505 Games, About Fun, Disruptor Beam, Klei Entertainment, and Schell Games.

1. Embrace being indie

Indies are inherently smaller operations and should embrace their agility and ability to take risks. Petr Vodak, CEO at About Fun, recommends getting your product out there so you can start taking feedback and apply your learnings to future projects. Don't be afraid to fail! Remaining flexible and building in modularity so you can evolve with the business needs is a strategy embraced by Pete Arden, CMO at Disruptor Beam. For instance, with their game Star Trek Timelines, the initial user experience was tailored to avid Star Trek fans. Over time, as user acquisition costs increased, they've changed the new player experience to appeal to their evolving user base of gamers looking for a fun entertainment experience and less the specific Star Trek IP.

2. Find a way to stand out

To help stand out in the ultra competitive mobile space, Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games, recommends doing something clever or very different. This strategy has led them to explore the growth areas of new platforms such as AR & VR. While new platforms present a field for opportunity and creativity, they're best to be approached with the long term in mind allowing you to sustain the business until critical mass is reached.

3. Build a community

There are many ways to build communities. If you have an existing fan base on other platforms, cross-promote to drive awareness of your mobile offerings. You can also look at porting titles over, but be aware of the differences in mobile gaming habits and ensure you adapt your game accordingly.

4. Engage after install

Both 505 Games and Klei Entertainment recommend running your premium titles as a service. Through monitoring user reviews you can gain invaluable feedback and trends helping you better understand user pain points and desires. In addition, by releasing regular content updates and in-game events you create reason for users to get back in the game. This not only drives reengagement, but 505 Games also sees strong spikes in new installs aligned with major game updates.

5. Monetize in different ways

Similar strategy to above, dropping regular content refreshes and game updates while offering a variety of monetization options gives users more ways to engage with your game. Keeping your games fresh gives users reason to come back and builds loyalty so you can cross-promote to your users with future game launches.

If you're looking for a fun new game to play, check out the great selection on Indie Corner on Google Play. And if you're working on a new indie game of your own, nominate your title for inclusion.

Watch more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YouTube channel to learn tips for success. Visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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5 tips for building communities on mobile

27 March 2017

Posted by Dave Geffon, Partnerships Manager, Google Play Games

The most successful games usually have the strongest communities. They are a powerful force in driving additional engagement and increasing awareness for your titles. At GDC 2017, we spoke with a few game developers about best practices for successfully building their own communities. Watch the panel session below to hear advice from Seriously, Social Point, and Super Evil MegaCorp.

1. Be authentic

Community is a mindset; be honest, transparent & patient with your communications. Loyal users are extremely valuable, thus the folks at Super Evil Megacorp say that you should act like you have to earn every player.

2. Start small

Build a plan and start today. Launch your social media channels, look into influencers, and create a strategy. Whether it's sharing one piece of fan art a week across your network, or running a closed beta to gather feedback from your most valued users, take action and learn what works best for you and your users.

3. Play match-maker

When finding influencers to support your game, ensure they're a genuine match. Make sure the influencer's audience is a good fit with your game and existing community.

4. Seek feedback

Communities are passionate. Use feedback to understand what kind of game and features your users want. Be flexible and iterative so you can react and evolve your game with the needs and desires of your community. However, don't be afraid to stay true to what you stand for as sometimes you'll need to agree to disagree with some players.

5. Build for the long-term

The lifespan of games is continuing to grow. Plan your business strategy, update cycles and community efforts to roll out over time and expand with your growing experiences and user-base.

Watch more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YT channel to learn tips for success. Also, visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Android Developer Story: LinkedIn uses Android Studio to build a performant app

16 March 2017

Posted by Christopher Katsaros, Developer Marketing, Android

LinkedIn is the world's largest social network for professionals. LinkedIn has 10 apps on Google Play, including the flagship LinkedIn app, which provides all of the same features users find on the web, so users can do things like browse and send messages to their professional network with an improved user experience.

For LinkedIn, and other teams with a large number of developers adding code to a project, making sure that everyone pays attention to areas that affect performance is vital for the quality of their app. That's why the the LinkedIn mobile team uses Android Studio to build high quality Android apps.

Watch Pradeepta Dash, Engineering Manager for Infrastructure at LinkedIn, as well as Drew Hannay, Tech Lead for the Android Infrastructure team, talk about how Android Studio helps everyone on their team stay focused on these topics while getting new engineers quickly up and running:

The top Android developers use Android Studio to build powerful, successful apps for Google Play; you can learn more about the official IDE for Android app development, and get started for yourself.

Get more tips and watch more success stories in the Playbook for Developers app.

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Discover and celebrate the best local games at Indonesia Games Contest

24 January 2017

Posted by David Yin, Business Development Manager, Indonesia, Google Play.

It is a great time to be a mobile game developer on Android with the opportunity reaching more than a billion global users on Google Play. At the same time, developers in fast growing mobile markets like Indonesia have an additional opportunity in the form of a huge local audience that is hungry for local content. We have already seen thousands of Indonesian developers launch high quality, locally relevant games for this new audience, such as "Tahu Bulat" & "Tebak Gambar".

In our continuous quest to discover, nurture growth, and showcase the best games from Indonesia, we are really happy to announce Indonesia Games Contest. This contest celebrates the passion and great potential of local game developers, and provides an opportunity to raise awareness of your game with global and local industry experts, together with gamers, from across Indonesia. It's also a chance to showcase your creativity and win cool prizes.

Entering the contest

If you are eligible, submit your game by 19 March 2017.
Entries will be reviewed by Google Play team and industry experts, and up to 15 finalists will be announced in early April 2017.
The finalists will get to showcase their games at the final event in Jakarta on 26 April 2017.
Winner and runners up will be announced at final event.

To get started

Terima Kasih!

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Android Developer Story: Wallapop improves user conversions with store listing experiments on Google Play

19 January 2017

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing, Google Play

Wallapop is a mobile app developer based in Barcelona, Spain. The app provides a platform to users for selling and buying things to others nearby in a virtual flea market by using geolocalization. Wallapop now has over 70% of their user base on Android.

Watch Agus Gomez, Co-Founder & CEO, and Marta Gui, Growth Hacking Manager, explain how using store listing experiments has increased their conversion rate by 17%, and has allowed them to optimize organic installs.

Learn more about store listing experiments. Get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Tips from developers Peak and Soundcloud on how to grow your startup on Google Play

19 January 2017

Posted by Francesca Di Felice, Developer Marketing at Google Play

At Playtime 2016, Google Play's series of developer events, we met with top app and game developers from around the world to share learnings on how to build successful businesses on Google Play. Several startups, including game developer Peaklabs and audio platform SoundCloud, presented on stage their own best practices for growth, which you might find helpful.

Testing for growth, by Peak

Hear from Kevin Shanahan, Product Manager from Peak, a brain training app, on how to grow sustainably.

Test lots of ideas: You can't be sure of what will work and what won't, so you need to test lots of ideas. Peak ran four different tests to try to increase conversions to Pro (their subscriber offering):

Made the ability to replay games a Pro feature
Reduced price of Pro by 25% in top 2 markets
Bundled add-on modules from partners into Pro
Showed a preview of Pro-only content

One of these tests resulted in a 50% increase in conversions.

Get the basics right: Start with a great product and have a data-informed culture. Don't only test app features, experimenting your store listing using store listing experiments is also important.
Build a robust A/B testing process: Having a well-defined A/B testing process and a system for tracking your experiments is key to testing quickly and effectively.

Improving user retention, by SoundCloud

Andy Carvell, former Product Manager at SoundCloud, an online audio distribution platform that enables its users to upload, record, promote, and share their originally-created sounds, explains how they focus on retention to improve growth.

Design your retention strategy: Apps with poor retention grow slowly. To increase your retention you should:
- Convert new users to repeat visitors by providing a strong onboarding experience for new users and taking a high-touch approach during the first days and weeks.
- Increase visit frequency within this group by providing frequent, timely, and relevant messaging about content or activity on the platform.
- Target returning users who were not seen over the last period, who are 'at risk of churn' users, by giving them reasons to come back for another session before losing them.
- Re-activate lapsed (long-term churned) users with campaigns to remind them about your app and offer an incentive to return.

Build 'growth machines': Create repeatable processes that testing has proven to positively impact retention, retaining users, and preventing churn.

Use activity notifications in a personalised and effective way: At SoundCloud there are plenty of things that happen when users are not in the app that might be relevant to them, for example new content releases or social interactions. They tested 5 new notification types, always keeping a control group to better keep track of the impact, and managed to increase retention in a 5%. Watch the video above for more of Andy's tips on making better use of notifications.

Other speakers, such as Silicon Valley VC Greylock, have also shared their tips for startup growth. Watch more sessions from this year's Playtime events to learn best practices from other apps and game partners, and the Google Play team. Get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up to date with news and tips to help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Nexon increases day 60 retention and monetization with pre-registration rewards

Gesture Navigation: A Backstory

#IMakeApps - Celebrating app makers worldwide

Android Developer Story: Big Fish Games uses open beta testing to de-risk their game launch

Android Developer Story: Zalando increases installs and revenue by focusing on app quality

Playdemic drives user engagement and revenue with live game operations on Google Play

App onboarding for kids: how Budge Studios creates a more engaging experience for families

Android Developer Story: Robinhood uses Android Studio to quickly build and test new features

5 tips for indie game success, from indie game developers

5 tips for building communities on mobile

Android Developer Story: LinkedIn uses Android Studio to build a performant app

Discover and celebrate the best local games at Indonesia Games Contest

Android Developer Story: Wallapop improves user conversions with store listing experiments on Google Play

Tips from developers Peak and Soundcloud on how to grow your startup on Google Play

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