How We Doubled Our Android Install Rate in One Hour
On Friday September 21st the Google Play editorial team selected Dwellable as one of their favorite apps. Needless to say, we were thrilled. Nathan devoted months of careful effort to bring the world's best vacation rental search to Android. It was nice to get recognized for our hard work. Download the Dwellable app at Google Play.
We crossed our fingers and watched the installs pour in. The numbers were amazing! People really seemed to like the app.
A few days later I was idly chatting with a friend at WhitePages. Their Current Caller ID app was also getting featured. We compared numbers and it abruptly became clear that our install numbers could be better. A lot better.
I only had a few minutes, but I quickly made a simple change which instantly DOUBLED our install rate. Obligatory chart of installs:
Can you tell?
So, what was the change?
My Design Skills Are Terrible
We don't have a designer here at Dwellable. Our friend Jenny Lam helped us out with an amazing logo, but almost everything else is thrown together by me or Nathan. We're really terrible at it. With great effort I can laboriously use Pixelmator and Inkscape to produce mediocre artwork.
When it became clear that Google wanted to feature the Dwellable app, I put together this promotional image to appear on Google Play:
Original promo artwork. So orange.
It's certainly very orange, isn't it? On the bright side, it nicely shows off our branding and our tentative tagline. Do you like those drop shadows? Thanks Inkscape!
The Change
When I found out that one of the other featured apps was crushing us, I started fuming. True, they have a more established brand and their app is perfect for Android. It's a great app. But still.
Perhaps our promo artwork was the problem? I reasoned that like any other ad, bad promo artwork would lead to low conversion. I only had an hour before my next meeting, so I quickly created new promo artwork using a beautiful photo of Alii O Kailua. It was a pretty easy. The drool-worthy photo, our brand with drop shadow, and a subtle gradient to bring out the text.
New promo artwork. Drool.
That's better, don't you think?
Task - improve our terrible promo artwork
Time spent - <1 hour
Shocking outcome - doubled install rate