Enhance your acquisition strategy with App Store Connect Analytics

Hello, my name is Nick and I'm excited to help you understand how you can accelerate your acquisition efforts with analytics in App Store Connect. I'll start with an overview of the data and tools available to you in App Store Connect. Then I'll share key metrics that are important to monitor and understand. I'll then talk about how different acquisition sources can give you clues on what's driving performance, and I'll explain how to use peer group benchmarks to put your performance into context. Finally, I'll talk about how you can take action on the data and insights and analytics, and share ways to help you improve your results using tools in App Store Connect.

Let's get started.

The App Store is a safe and trusted place for people around the world to discover your app, reaching customers in 175 storefronts on more than 2.5 billion devices and in 50 languages.

And this gives you a huge opportunity to attract new customers, engage your current customers, and encourage monetization within your app.

To help you measure how well your app is doing, App Store Connect includes three different tools: analytics, sales and trends, and payments, and financial reports.

Today, I'll focus on analytics and show you how you can use data to improve your user acquisition strategy.

Analytics provides you with insightful data about your downloads, redownloads, product page performance, and more. And you can use this data alongside App Store features including product page optimization and custom product pages to help you improve your app's performance and reach your business goals.

Analytics also provides you with helpful data while respecting user privacy. Data is aggregated across a minimum number of users in order to provide you with insights about your performance in a privacy friendly way.

To help you learn about how to use analytics, let's start by walking you through the key metrics related to user acquisition.

The Analytics Home page is organized based on the customer journey, with acquisition metrics at the top and sales metrics appearing below.

Let's start by talking about first time downloads and redownloads. On the App Store, first time downloads represent the number of times people tap the Get or Buy button the first time they download your app. And redownloads are the number of times people redownload the app after deleting it by tapping the cloud icon. Please know that if a customer's settings are set to automatically download apps across their devices, these auto downloads are not counted and the Redownloads number in analytics only includes Redownloads initiated on the App Store. Next, let's talk about impressions and product page views.

An impression represents any time someone sees your app icon on the App Store. In the App Store, this includes when they see your app icon on your product page, on the Today, Games or Apps tabs, or in search results. And in the games app, this includes when they see your app icon on the game page, on the home, Friends and Library tab, or in search results.

A product page view represents the number of times someone views your product page. And keep in mind that because your product page also includes your app icon, any product page views are also counted as impressions.

In analytics, you can see how many impressions you've received each day and view that data over time to see how you're performing.

To see your product page views, instead, you can open the metrics dropdown and select that metric.

Analytics also has two variations of the impressions and product page views, metrics, unique impressions, and unique product page views.

For example, let's say someone sees your app in the search results and then they tap into your product page.

That would be two impressions because your icon was viewed twice, one product page view and just one unique impression. Because both impressions were made by the same customer that day.

Next, let's talk about conversion rate. Conversion rate is defined as the percentage of people who downloaded your app after seeing it on the App Store. And this is calculated by dividing your total downloads by your unique impressions. And you can view your data over time to see how it's changing. And since conversion rate is one of the key metrics that you can improve with App Store Connect tools, I'll cover strategies for doing that in a later section.

Finally, we have the updates metric, which represents the total number of times your app has been updated to its latest version.

To recap, you can monitor these six metrics to better understand how effective your user acquisition efforts are.

Next, let's dig a little deeper to understand where your customers are coming from.

Analytics enables you to learn about how people discover your app, including insights by territory, source type, and page type. Let's first look at how you can use territory information to understand what parts of the world your customers are coming from. From the overview page, you can click on First Time Downloads and see a more detailed view, select territory in this dropdown to see first time downloads by territory.

To view a different metric by territory, you can just open the metrics dropdown and select that metric. Let's pick conversion rate, here, You can identify territories where you might be able to improve your conversion efficiency.

For example, if you go down to the bottom of this list, you can see how Forest Explorer has a low conversion rate in Argentina, South Africa, and Vietnam. And to address this, we might review our product page to make sure it's properly localized for these territories so people can read about the app in their preferred language.

You can view territory performance in analytics for over 100 metrics, which lets you get a full understanding of how people around the world are discovering and engaging with your app.

Next, let's talk about source type.

You can view source data in analytics to get more detail about how people discovered your app. And the four most common ways are through App Store, browse App Store search app and web refer.

App Store browse refers to when someone finds your app when browsing on the App Store on the Today Apps and Games tabs. For example, if your app got featured on the today tab or appears in the top charts on the apps tab, you'd likely see a lot of people coming from browse.

Search refers to when someone finds and downloads your app after performing a search on the App Store.

App refer is counted when someone discovers your app inside another app on the App Store, for example, through an in-app advertisement. And lastly, a web refer occurs when people tap on a link on a website and Safari and then download your app, such as through a web advertisement. Keep in mind that if your app is discovered through a browser other than Safari, it will show up as an app refer for that browser rather than a web refer.

And just like with territories, you can evaluate different metrics by source type. You can then look at how each source type is performing over time for different metrics, and use this information to refine and customize your user acquisition strategy to fit your app's specific needs.

Next, let's talk about page type.

Page type refers to the kinds of pages from which your customers view and download your app, and the three most common page types are the product page on the App Store, the store sheet, which looks similar to your product page but exists outside the App Store and pops up from the bottom of the screen from an external source, and the sheet is also known as SRC store product view controller.

And lastly, no page. When you see no page in the dashboard, it means someone downloaded your app directly from the today, games or Apps tabs or from the search tab without tapping into your product page.

By combining page type with source type, you can get valuable insights about how people discover and download your app.

To dig into this, you can go to the metrics page, look at your conversion rate, and select Page Type from the dimension dropdown.

This view lets you see what your conversion rate is across these different page types. For this app, you can see that the product page is converting people the best. And you can filter this data to get even more information. For example, you could filter it by app refer, to see which type of page best converts people who are coming from a different app.

And the reason why this is important is because when you're running an ad campaign, you and your ad networks have a choice about whether you send potential customers to your App Store product page or to your store sheet using SK Store product View controller. And that choice might meaningfully impact your conversion. So feel free to look at this data and decide which method is the best for your app.

You can also look at page type data filtered by App Store search. And this lets you see what your conversion rate is for people who downloaded your app directly from the search tab, compared to people who viewed your product page and then downloaded your app. In this case, people are more likely to convert after they viewed your product page. By monitoring this data, you can see how effective you are at converting people from search and whether any changes you make lead to improvements in performance.

Overall, viewing your data by page type can be a valuable way to get more clarity on App Store conversion and help you measure your acquisition efforts more effectively.

Now that we understand how to analyze acquisition metrics and sources, let's take a look at peer group benchmarks.

Peer group benchmarks help you put your app's performance into context by comparing your data to that of similar apps on the App Store.

To help you get an accurate comparison, Apple places your app in a peer group based on your App Store business model like free, freemium, or paid, and your App Store category. You can also compare your app to a peer group with similar App Store download volume to help you get an even more specific comparison.

Let's look at how the Forest Explorer app compares to other travel apps with the same business model and similar levels of download volume. To access your benchmark results, you can click on benchmarks in the menu on the left. From this page, you can see how the app is performing compared to its peers.

You can see information about your peer group at the top, including which category and business model the app is being compared to. You can also view how your app's performance compares to its peer group across eight performance metrics. Conversion rate, proceeds per paying user, crash rate, several retention metrics and two payer metrics, D 35 proceeds per download, and D 35 download to paid conversion.

Within each metric, you can see detail about the group's 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile values, as well as how the app compares to each percentile.

A percentile represents what percentage of apps in the peer group are performing below a certain level. For example, 25% of apps in this peer group have a conversion rate below 1.19%. 50% of apps in this peer group have a conversion rate below 2.91%, and 75% of apps have a conversion rate below 6.78%. We can see that this app's conversion rate is between the 50th and 75th percentiles, which means that it's performing better than 50% of similar apps, but not as well as some of the most successful apps in its peer group. Let's dive a little deeper into conversion rate by clicking on View Trends. The trends page lets you see how the app is performing against its peer group over time. For this app, you can see on the graph that the app is performing right around the 75th percentile. And despite a dip in performance in January, conversion rate has recovered and is moving in the right direction.

You can customize which peer group you compare your app to by clicking the dropdowns. For example, you can select peer groups with different levels of download volumes and see which download volume group your app belongs to. As a best practice, consider selecting a more specific download volume grouping if it's available to you, but please know that it may not be available in all cases in order to maintain privacy.

If your app belongs to both a primary and secondary App Store category, you can also compare its performance to either category or against apps from all categories combined.

You can use the compare two dropdown to change which percentile you compare your app against, and you can also adjust the date range to view data for longer or shorter periods of time.

Consider exploring all the different options to determine which comparison might make the most sense for your app.

Lastly, let's see how you can take action on the data and insights we've learned about so far to help improve your performance.

The App Store offers many tools to help you improve. And today I'll focus on product page optimization, custom product pages and in-app events. Let's start with product page optimization.

With product page optimization, you can test up to three alternative product pages against your original product page to see which one performs best. And you can run tests on your app icons, screenshots, product page headers, and preview videos.

Test setup is done in App Store Connect, and once your product page optimization test begins, you can view your results by going into the acquisition tab in analytics and selecting your individual test.

On this page, you can then view details about how each treatment is performing compared to your original product page.

At the start of your test, you'll see indicators that let you know that the test is collecting data, and once enough data has been collected, the indicators will let you know which treatments are performing better or worse than the original product page.

You can scroll down the page to get even more detail about each treatment's performance, including the number of impressions, conversion rate, percentage improvement, and level of confidence in the results. And I recommend waiting until you see at least 90% confidence in the table before making any decisions about the test or applying any changes. So you can be sure that the changes you see are real instead of due to just random chance.

Next, let's talk about custom product pages. Custom product pages let you create additional versions of your App Store product page and share them with relevant audiences using a unique URL. And these customized experiences can help you increase your conversion rate when compared to using the same product page for everyone. Since custom product pages enable people to see Pages more relevant to their interests, you can also assign keywords to your custom product page to make your app more discoverable in App Store search. When people search for the assigned keyword, your custom product page will appear in search results rather than your default product page, and you can configure these keywords in App Store Connect.

On average, developers see a 2.5 percentage point increase when referring people to a custom product page, highlighting just how effective they can be to view your custom product page performance, click on the acquisition tab and select the custom product page that you want to analyze. You can view a variety of metrics for each custom product page, including product page views, total downloads, and conversion rate. You can also scroll down to view additional metrics, including average retention and sessions to help you understand customer engagement.

For even deeper insights, you can go to the metrics tab and view the performance of all of your product pages together in a single view.

You can choose different metrics and see how each page is performing, so you can find out which pages are working the best. And you can also add additional filters like region or source type to drill down into the results.

Lastly, let's talk about in-app events. Using in-app events is a great way to help drive more acquisition and engagement with your app. You can use in-app events on the App Store to promote experiences happening within your app or game, such as a game competition or a new movie premiere. And this can draw existing customers back into your app at a later time.

Once you run your first in-app event, you'll start seeing event metrics including event impressions, app opens, reminders, and event page views, and you'll also see an in-app events section appear on the left under acquisition. By clicking on one of these events, you'll see key metrics about the event, including impressions, downloads, notification taps, and app opens, which will allow you to get a better understanding of what types of actions people take when they engage with your event.

You can click on these metrics, for example, event impressions, which will bring you to the metrics tab and allow you to view even more data about your event performance.

When analyzing your in-app events, make sure to look at the In-App Events section of the metrics dropdown so you can take advantage of all of the available data for this feature.

To recap, analytics provides you with exclusive and insightful data about key metrics like downloads and redownloads about the territories, sources, and page types your customers came from, and about the performance of App Store features like product page optimization, custom product pages, and in-app events. And all of these metrics and features are designed to help you make the most out of your opportunity on the App Store. If you want to learn even more information on use cases, definitions, and additional features, please visit the Analytics Help Guide on the Apple Developer website.

Thank you so much for watching and I can't wait to see what you'll build.