How to Boost Your App Conversion Rate with A/B Testing
As app makers, we all want to dramatically boost the conversion rate from app stores and increase the number of app installs. If chosen well, your app store page elements will help you get more traffic to your app store page and will ultimately result in more installs. Usually, an average app conversion rate is 26% and if yours is lower than this, then you might want to start working on improving it. A/B testing is something that can come to your rescue.
First off, let’s understand what it is. A/B testing is the process of comparing two options as a way to determine which one is preferred by your app users. This type of testing can be used to compare pretty much anything. However, in the app marketing and product world, A/B testing is used to compare one aspect of the app to another one. Sometimes, people refer to it as bucket testing or split testing.
How to get started with A/B testing?
First of all, you need to have a hypothesis or theory. For example, you might want to find out which text draws more users. It could be “sign up” or “register.” So, you now have two options to compare. This means you can set up a test.
Your next step is to collect traffic for both options and to compare the results. Your users don’t need to be aware of the testing. Once you analyze the results and you have the winner, you can move on to other elements of your app. By improving the app elements one by one, you will eventually achieve higher conversion rates. Simple!
Vital app store page elements
The app store page is the place where your hard work should start. Because this is where your conversion marathon begins. The main elements you should put a focus on are the following:
- Title
- Icon
- Video
- Description
- Screenshots
- Rating and reviews
Let’s start with the title. Keep in mind though that title optimization alone won’t bring you a lot of change to the conversion rate. But the key is to add keywords to your title to optimize it for search rankings. Make sure you do not work too hard on this. The title could include only one of the keywords you are targeting. Keyword stuffing is not a good idea.
Next comes the icon. The icon is the first thing people see when browsing the app store. So, this is more of a design issue. You need to make the icon stand out among your competitors’ icons. It should be trendy, catchy, and it should also convey the meaning of your app. So when A/B testing your app icon, make sure you play with colors, shades, characters etc.
Video is the next in the line. Videos can either make or break the experience. So, you should not only try A/B testing two different videos but also experimenting with the no-video look.
Description is another key element on your app page. Most of the time, people only see the first 167 characters of the description. This means that your first few lines should be super-catchy! A few things you could A/B test include the call-to-action, feature descriptions, the length of the description and localizations.
Screenshots take a lot of app page space. So, they need to be very interesting. It’s usually recommended to avoid putting the screenshot of the app’s first screen. You could experiment with color schemes for the screenshots or create a pattern for them. They could be telling a story or something. Also, since you can add brief descriptions to the screenshots, you can A/B test that, too.
Rating and reviews are a real thing when it comes to deciding whether to download an app or not. However, you have little to no chances to A/B test this. You can at least try to A/B test your answers to the bad reviews. For example, if someone is not very satisfied with the app, you might want to calm them down with your answer and to offer a good solution for their problem. Try experimenting with your answer text. A/B test the answers so that you can improve them through time.
Final word
A/B testing makes room for experimentation. So, feel free to try things out, unleash your inner creativity and let the artist in you speak up. Even if you are a technical guy (lol).
Interesting? Leave us a comment below. We are getting excited about every comment you make!
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Originally published at blog.inapptics.com on February 2, 2018.
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