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Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Updated Udacity Android course prepares students for the Associate Android Developer Certification


Posted by Jocelyn Becker, Senior Program Manager, Android Training



As one of our most popular Udacity courses, the href="http://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud851">Developing Android Apps
course was recently updated to ensure developers have the resources to build
high quality apps. This course, which has already helped more than half a
million developers learn to build Android apps, has been through the car wash
and come out sparkling clean and updated.



Google and Udacity have worked together to update the course to include the very
latest changes in Android and Android Studio, including how to use the new
Constraint Layout editor, and how to use Firebase Job Dispatcher. Learn best
practices for building Android apps using Android 7.0 (Nougat) while keeping
your apps backwards compatible in older versions, learning at your own pace in
your own time.



You sent us feedback that some of the lessons were a little difficult to get
through, so we've restructured the lessons and added smaller apps for you to
build as you progress through the course. So not only will you build the
Sunshine weather app as a complete, integrated application that spans the entire
course, but you'll also create an app in each lesson to help you learn
individual concepts.



Build a To Do app and add new tasks as you learn how to build a ContentProvider.





This course brings back Android experts Dan Galpin and Reto Meier from Google, and Lyla Fujiwara from Udacity, and introduces new faces from Google and Udacity.



Start learning now at href="https://www.udacity.com/course/ud851">https://www.udacity.com/course/ud851.



Combined package for Developing Android Apps course and Associate
Android Developer Certification



This updated course teaches the skills that are tested by the Associate Android
Developer certification exam. Udacity is offering a package that combines the
updated Developing Android Apps course with a voucher for the Associate Android
Developer certification exam. If you pass this exam, you will earn the Associate
Android Developer Certification and show that you are competent and skilled in
tasks that an entry-level Android developer typically performs. Enroll in
Udacity's href="https://www.udacity.com/course/associate-android-developer-fast-track--nd818">Fast
Track to get prepared and take the Associate Android developer exam at: href="https://www.udacity.com/course/associate-android-developer-fast-track--nd818">https://www.udacity.com/course/nd818.


Learn tips from Memrise to increase in-app conversions with pricing experiments


Posted by Tamzin Taylor, Partner Development Manager at Google
Play, & Kristina Narusk, Head of Production at Memrise



Getting people to install your app is one thing, getting them to sign up to your
paid offering is quite another. It's important to understand the complete
journey your users take from installing your app to paying for something. Once
you do, you can experiment on the flow to try and increase conversions. Memrise
has found great success in experimenting on their language learning app to
increase the number of paying users.



Four experiments Memrise use to improve conversions



href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.memrise.android.memrisecompanion">Memrise
makes languages fun with a number of different learning modes you can play to
help increase your vocabulary in a chosen language. You can download the app for
free and play some of the modes or take advantage of their premium subscription
offering called 'Memrise Pro' which offers new game modes and additional
features like offline learning. Memrise recently ran a number of conversion
experiments with the main objective of increasing the Average Revenue Per Daily
Active User (ARPDAU). These experiments tested multiple user experience and
pricing experiment scenarios.



1. A/B test how messaging different user benefits can impact
conversion



What they did: Memrise wanted to know what motivation and call
to action would convert the most users to buy a Pro subscription from a locked
game mode in the app. To do this, they ran an A/B test with two similar designs,
featuring different reasons for the user to upgrade, and compared the results to
their original upgrade messaging.













Screen Shot 2016-10-11 at 15.26.00.png


Screen Shot 2016-10-11 at 15.25.34.png


Test A: Focus on ‘difficult’ words with an orange background.


Test B: Focus on ‘favorite’ words with a pink background.






Results: Test A performed the best. Conversion to Pro in Test A
was 28% higher than in Test B. Pro mode usage was subsequently 9.7% higher in
Test A compared to Test B too.



Next steps: After seeing how test A won the experiment, Memrise
applied this creative across the board. Subscribers driven by that particular
mode increased as a percentage of all subscriptions in the app by 16%. Memrise
plans to run additional A/B tests at others points of conversion in the app to
see if they can increase the results even further. They'll also try different
text for the call to actions.



2. Test whether adapting to local price points results in sustainable
uplift



In 2015, Google Play launched new minimum local price levels in countries around
the world. To take advantage of the new price points, Memrise tested lowering
localised prices in certain markets to better match purchasing power. Prices
were an average of 6 times lower during this experiment.




Results: After 30 days, Memrise saw the following changes in
conversions to paid users:




















🇹🇷


Turkey


180%


🇧🇷


Brazil


182%


🇷🇺


Russia


99%


🇲🇽


Mexico


115%


🇮🇳


India


5.1%


🇮🇩


Indonesia


152%


🇰🇷


South Korea


120%


🇹🇭


Thailand


70%


🇲🇾


Malaysia


27%






Next steps: The change in price affected the subscription
dynamics with more users taking advantage of Memrise's in-app discounted offer
in most countries. The offer was for annual subscribers only and has led to a
positive effect on LTV. One insight from the experiment was that Indian users
prefered to have the option to subscribe in weekly or monthly increments and not
just annually. Memrise is still tracking carefully to see whether the discounted
subscription pricing will lead to an increase in conversions.



3. Test when and how often you offer free trials to see if that affects
conversion rate



Memrise occasionally offers users, who aren't Pro subscribers, a free trial of
one of the Pro game modes while cycling through the various free modes. After
the free trial session, users are presented with an offer to subscribe. Memrise
experimented with the offer's timing making it appear more frequently while
users were cycling through normal free sessions Instead of after every 49th
session, users saw the unlocked mode after every 21st session.













Screenshot_unlocked.png


Screenshot_unclocked_offer.png


An example of a free trial of a Pro mode.


After completing a free trial, users see a discounted subscription offer.






Results: Offering a free trial more frequently paid off. The
conversion rate increased by 50% while all other conversion rates remained the
same.



Next steps: Memrise maintained the more frequent offer cadence
and has seen revenue growth as a result.



4. Test whether seasonal discounts result in more conversions

Memrise launched a 'Back to School' campaign presenting all users with a
discounted annual plan offer for a week in September 2016. The aim was to
convert more users and generate higher value users from annual subscription
plans.




Screen Shot 2016-10-11 at 16.03.14.png




Results: Memrise saw two effects from the seasonal offer. As a
result of only presenting an annual period and removing weekly and monthly, 20%
fewer users per day converted to Pro. However, because more people were taking
an annual subscription than a shorter subscription, the average revenue per day
increased by 32% justifying the change.



Next steps: Memrise plans to test different offers in the
future with a combination of subscription offerings. They'll also focus offers
in countries like Turkey and Mexico, where they saw the biggest increase in
conversions.



Keep experimenting and take advantage of new features to improve the
user experience and increase conversions



At Playtime San Francisco, href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/11/welcome-to-playtime.html">we
announced that introductory pricing for subscriptions would be coming soon
and the feature is now live. By continually testing messaging, pricing, offers,
and free trials or discounted trials, you could increase the conversions in your
app and your ongoing revenue just like Memrise. Learn more about href="https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html?utm_campaign=android_discussion_pricingexperiments_113016&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Google
Play in-app billing subscriptions and href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.secrets">get
the Playbook for Developers app 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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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Keeping it real: Improving reviews and ratings in Google Play


Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager and Buddhika Kottahachchi, Product
Manager



The Play Store contains the largest catalog of apps in the world. As our users
make decisions about the apps they'd like to install, we want to ensure Play
provides a trustworthy experience.



Recently, we href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/10/keeping-the-play-store-trusted-fighting-fraud-and-spam-installs.html">announced
our improvements in fighting fraudulent and spam app installs. In continuing our
efforts to combat spammy behavior, we've also improved the ways we identify and
remove fake reviews and ratings. With this enhanced capability we are now able
to identify and remove more fake reviews and ratings with greater accuracy.



In the vast majority of cases, no action is needed. If you are working with
someone else to promote your app (e.g., third-party marketing agencies), we
advise you to check-in and ensure that their promotion techniques use legitimate
practices, and adhere to the href="https://play.google.com/about/storelisting-promotional/ratings-reviews-installs/">Google
Play Developer Policy. The basic rule of thumb for reviews and ratings is
that they should come from genuine users, and developers should not attempt to
manipulate them in any form (e.g., fake, paid, incentivized).



We will continue making such enhancements to our systems that will further help
protect the integrity of Google Play, our developer community, and ultimately
our end users.