I have an Android app and I'm doing some A/B test experiments to see how the store listing text performs.
In one of my test I changed the logo image. The problem is that I have the same logo image inside my app, as a resource file. It is shown on the splash screen during loading.
Both A and B test are serving the same APK of course so it may be confusing for users on B to see a given logo on the store listing and then a different one on the actual app.
How can I solve this? I suspect the only option available is to remove the logo image from the APK.
This is an interesting problem without a definitely correct answer. There are at least two points of view.
The first point of view says "it doesn't matter". A/B store listing experiments are about seeing which store listing works best to convert a user from "someone who is looking at your listing" to "someone who installs your app". By the time you have got to the splash screen the experiment has done it's job. Yes it is a slightly strange experience for some users, but that's ok. Run the experiment for long enough to get a result about which works best, then change both the store listing and the app to use that icon.
The second point of view says the inconsistency matters. Having an inconsistent icon will make the user confused, lead to higher tech support costs, and more uninstalls. It would be nice to make the icon match, but the trouble is, for any given user you don't know which experiment branch they were in, and Google don't give you any way to find this out. So while it would be nice to have it match you can't. This leaves you with two options:
take the logo out of the splash screen
switch to a third logo on the splash screen that is different to both experiment conditions
Personally I think I take the first point of view. But if you take the second, there are at least two things you can do.
Related
I need to create an instant app and I've seen sometimes a kind of splash screen appears before content is loaded. I have found no documentation related just that seems this screen is called 'Speed bump'. It has the app's logo and name. Is it possible to add extra information like one or two small statements to inform user what's happening? (Eg. Your XXXX is being prepared).
In case is possible, should it be modified by code (which class?) or by the Google console?
A few days ago, I got an alert in my play console that they added more characters to the app title limit. I have an extremely highly rated and high performing multiplayer game that was ranked in the top charts #31 out of many thousands in a very competitive game category and frequently in the trending top charts as well. Within an hour of changing the title, it was completely gone from the top charts and not even ranked at all. All I did was add the word "Multiplayer" to the end of the game title so it changed from "Game Name" to "Game Name Multiplayer". This game gets multiple thousands of organic downloads per day and only 24 hours after this happened there have been 200 downloads and we are in a panic because this obviously killed the monetization dead in it's tracks literally overnight. This top charts multiplayer game is now dead. Can anybody chime in on this and possibly explain why adding the word multiplayer to the game title caused it to not even rank at all and not come back after 2 full days? That seems like an incredibly harsh punishment and is counter productive to the health of the play store. Has anybody else experienced this?
normally changing the app's name or the package name(application id) is never a good practice: it totally changes the ASO(it's the SEO for the apps) so it can(and normally it does) kill your business.
1° I know it's not the case but remember that if you change your package name(also known as applicationId into the manifest.xml) your app no more exists because you changed the name and the URL that linked to your app, so your entire work has gone forever!
2° as I said your old app's name, even if it's really similiar to your actual name, is different somehow, so play store first MUST check your name is not violating google policies(generally 1-2 days to check your new name is OK) and this revision is obviously negative for your ASO; secondly it has to reposition your new name that is like a new instance, not a similiar thing that exploit your old success.
I'm sorry, I have some apps, I understand.. I would try to contact google support:
from the play store homepage click on the question mark above on the right(next to the gear), click it and it will pop up a window on the bottom: inside that little window there is something like "contact us" and you can choose a chat or even a phone number. Maybe they can help you. Sorry if I don't post the number or the email but it changes depending on your country. Let me know if I can help somehow.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT THING:
have you changed the label attribute inside application tag of the manifest?
<application
android:label="#string/app_name" />
According to the Developers Blog from Google, there are things that you can't change:
Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application.
The most obvious and visible of these is the “manifest package name,” the unique name you give to your application in its AndroidManifest.xml.
So, if you change it, it becomes a new app, and doing so it's subject to the same marketing etc. problems and battles that all new apps are.
Sorry to hear that happened to you, but whenever you change the name of an application, you are essentially creating a new object. So let's say your old game A was doing well and you wanted to change the name. Well by doing so, you created new game B, even with the same assets, which is linked differently. From my understanding of the app stores, it checks for this link to verify the app is authentic, and from there will retrieve the information that you push to the app. By changing the name, you have inherently broke the information chain, causing the plummet that you saw with your app.
It is unfortunate that this occurred, but nevertheless that's how it works, at least from my understanding. Hopefully this was insightful for you, if you had not previously thought about this.
As many other Android developers, I'm not a huge fan of splash screens, but still most customers want them because iPhone has them or some other "great" reason.
In the android guidelines it says:
Naturally, you want everyone to quickly learn the ropes, discover the cool features, and get the most out of your app. So you might be tempted to present a one-time introductory slideshow, video, or splash screen to all new users when they first open the app. Or you might be drawn to the idea of displaying helpful text bubbles or dialogs when users interact with certain features for the first time.
Link here, first paragraph in "Don't show unsolicited help, except in very limited cases"
And now in the material design guidelines they recommend developers to use a "Launch Screen"
Because launching your app while displaying a blank canvas increases its perceived loading time, consider using a placeholder UI or a branded launch screen.
I'm guessing the android website hasn't been updated yet. Anyway, the last version of Hangouts (5.0.104...) has a very nice and quick Launch Screen. Its displayed instantly on my Nexus 5 with Marshmallow. So my question, is there an "official" way of doing this?
I've been searching for examples but can't find anything except for kind of workarounds like this example here which uses what I think is the most common approach with a Splash Screen Activity. This, however, shows a white screen when the app has been destroyed before your actual splash screen is shown.
This second example uses a theme with a window background which is shown instantly but disappears almost equally quick.
So, how does Google make the Launch screen like in Google Hangouts which is shown without delay and without any white screen before?
A colleague from my work have been in a material design training at Google HQ in London and their official way of doing it is using the windowBackground in the theme as you posted on your own question: http://antonioleiva.com/branded-launch-screen/
The idea is that the XML theme gets show very very fast by the framework, and as soon as your actual layout is loaded it will be visible.
The difference between Hangouts or even Google Maps, is that their layout is a very heavy/complex layout and they simply take longer to load than a HelloWorld app.
As your app grows and gets more complex and with more elements being initialized during Application.onCreate or Activity.onCreate, your slash screen will also be visible for longer time.
edit:
I've found a Google+ post from the official "Android Developers" profile and repost from Google engineer Ian Lake saying the same thing:
https://plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/Z1Wwainpjhd
https://plus.google.com/+IanLake/posts/SW7F2CJvAmU
It's because the first solution (http://antonioleiva.com/branded-launch-screen/) is changing the theme in onCreate. But the widgets of your activity are not yet rendered in onCreate. That's why you see the white screen. The second example is a good one. If you need longer time set SPLASH_TIME to longer. Check the line Thread.sleep(SPLASH_TIME) in the doInBackground function. You can wait more.
On Google Analytics for websites there is a dimension "Previous Page Path", that shows the page that the user was before entering on current page.
But I not finding a similar dimension for mobile version.
I want to know the previous screen that the user was before entering the current screen.
I'm not finding it, or does not really exist?
equivalent of previous page path is not available in app analytics because calculating previous page is considerably easier on web with "http referer" in app there is nothing equivalent of that.
I have tried an alternate solution I tried to create a custom dimension called previous screen and tried to populate it with by storing screen names in local storage. But I ran in to trouble with max length of custom dimension which is 150 bytes. Best way to get this is i guess by using Google Big query.
Hope this helps
Regards
Nik
Okay so this question has already been asked here but was not fully answered:
Android app not searchable by Title - only by package name
This guy had the exact same problem as me. My app has been up for about 3 days and I can't see it even if search by the exact name and the developer name too. However, when I don't put a space in the title, it shows up. Now I know that common words in title will result in a less likely chance of app being shown in search results, but the problem is the app doesn't show up AT ALL, even if I scroll all the way down. My problem isn't with where my app is in the list, but that it isn't shown even if I scroll to the bottom of the 250 results. Could my manifest be causing this?
Google Play store doesn't use just the title to arrive at the results. There's an article here that explains somewhat what they use when searching: http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2013/05/17/google-discloses-how-search-for-google-play-works-for-the-first-time-12-percent-of-dau-search-for-apps-daily/.
Unfortunately, if you app uses common words (like meal and timer) and has just been published so there are no reviews and +1's, it's bad news for you - it'll get buried in the results.