

How We Doubled Our Android Install Rate in One Hour - gurgeous
http://www.dwellable.com/blog/How-We-Doubled-Our-Android-Install-Rate-in-One-Hour

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martian
It helps that the design of the new Dwellable is _very_ similar to the popular
magazine Dwell. I wonder how much of the gain is due to brand recognition of a
different brand?

\- Similar san-serif lowercase font

\- Large-format images of modern homes

\- Almost-identical name :-)

Of course, you should always be A/B testing, and congrats on the conversion
increase.

[edit: formatting]

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ajross
If one data point matters: I occasionally rent vacation homes and am probably
in the target demographic for that app. But I've frankly never heard of
"Dwell" and certainly wouldn't recognize their brand artwork.

This is an app targetted at essentially the whole of the US upper middle
class; is copying a niche magazine really going to matter much?

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cpeterso
> _This is an app targetted at essentially the whole of the US upper middle
> class;_

That is pretty much _Dwell_ 's market demographic, too.

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ajross
Sure, but that's not the same thing as saying everyone in the demographic has
seen it. Wikipedia has an old number giving their circulation at 260k. That's
just noise. There's no benefit gained by copying their artwork, so I think
positing that as the reason for the effect just has to be wrong.

Now, this would change if this was an app for a small niche market and the
magazine targetted the same people. Then the target users would likely have
seen it and there would be benefit. But not here.

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limejuice
I'm not sure if it is the artwork or the message. The previous promo art had
tagline "Vacation rentals and reviews" which targets a specific audience,
while second artwork just says "Dwellable" which is more mysterious and so you
might have more people download it to check it out. Maybe it helps to have a
broader message to get more people to try it, but expect to have a higher % of
those curious windoshoppers try it and then shelve it/uninstall it.

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dmethvin
That's the way it seems to me as well. With the second one that has no tag
line I'd think that Dwellable might be a competitor for Trulia, Zillow, or
Redfin.

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programminggeek
Note that the most important factor here is that they already were being
featured on the front page. Making awesome promo art is a good idea, but if
they weren't featured on the front page, this promo image wouldn't make a
whole lot of difference.

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danshapiro
I disagree: it seems clear that the CTR on the new design was 2x the old. Now,
granted that 2x of a featured spot is a much bigger absolute number than 2x of
typical placement. But 2x is 2x. This is a great reminder of the impact of
design for anyone trying to optimize their app store presence (large or
small).

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Bakkot
I'm not sure, honestly: I imagine the differential of a new design varies
depending on how users come across it. If when not being featured Dwellable
mostly gets new installs from word-of-mouth, say, I bet that the new design
doesn't have as much impact. (I'm sure it would still be a big difference, but
maybe on the order of 1.5x instead of 2x, say.)

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graue
This just shows how pictures communicate more efficiently than text. On a busy
screen filled with apps, the words "Vacation reviews, photos and more" don't
get read, they just get tuned out. But a picture of a beautiful vacation home
grabs the eye. There's almost an automatic "I want that" response.

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diego
Without telling us the install rate, "doubled" is just lying with statistics.
Did you go from 10 to 20 daily or from 10k to 20k? Play says that you have
10k+ installs total (not a lot), so it looks more like the former.

If your initial number is really low, minimal work can double it. If you are
doing well, the same work may give you a small percentage improvement, or even
nothing. It's called "law of diminishing returns."

What I learn from this post: you had lots of low-hanging fruit, and probably
still do.

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shazow
Really simple and effective example, thank you for sharing!

I wonder how much of it has to do with the objective "quality" of the design
versus the effect on the audience's psychology of connecting "real life"
(vacation rentals) to an app that lives in your phone.

I'd love to see further experimentation with:

1\. Lower quality "real life" asset designs.

2\. Higher quality abstract designs.

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gurgeous
I'm sure that's a huge part of it. Aspirational vs. functional. Since the app
was designed to be in large part aspirational, the new artwork actually
matches our intent better than the orange monstrosity.

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31reasons
I don't think I learned anything from the blog post. It was already being
featured by Google. May be this is just an ad.

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gurgeous
Inept designer here. Happy to chat.

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badusername
Way to advertise yourself :)

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gurgeous
I'm an engineer/entrepreneur type guy. Everything else is just by accident.

