Should you add an app video on the #PlayStore as a developer, a Twitter thread 🧵
Based on my XP testing for Lyft here’s what I discovered w/o being able to A/B test removing one
My latest video from the banner pushing screenshots off-screen to the right
My hypothesis is that bc the banner is horizontal and not vertical like on iOS, it actually pushes off 2 many important screenshots, esp if ppl never side-scroll, lowering ASO install %age
As testing is not available 4 this — I decided 2 look @ whats happening in Top Charts
What I discovered is as follows: 1. Only 152 of 655 #TopFree apps are using videos on 2/22/22
2. Google Meta Microsoft Design @Apple dont use videos in almost any of their Android apps! Which suggests their ASO teams have figured out a way 2 measure neg. impact 3. +Many top apps!
Top apps opting out of vids:
Lyft Uber DoorDash Instacart Grubhub Tech Coinbase @Gemini Block @snap @PayPal SoundCloud Spotify @reddit eBay TechBlog Pinterest Engineering OfferUp @mercari @craigslist AirbnbEng Yelp Adobe Creative Cloud Starbucks Coffee Tinder Nextdoor @brave Robinhood Dropbox @steam @amazon
A good use for videos seems 2 be demonstrating something optical which cant be easily conveyed in a screenshot 🎆
A great example of this is #LEDkeyboard You can see how the LED keyboard effect ripples across the keyboard and it effectively convinces you 2 download the app
Mobile games are another good app category where its very important to showcase gameplay
Biggest takeaway is that most of Google‘s Android Developers teams seem 2 know that adding videos lowers downloads 😂
This combined w most of @YouTube apps not using #YouTube at this time 2 promote #YouTube downloads convinces me they know something internally as well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My pro recommendation is to take down your #Android video at this time 😕
Unless you have a special app video-demo need it takes up too much #realestate And unless you have a team of ASO specialists it’s too hard to MacGyver a way to understand if it’s helping or hurting you
Google Android Developers should do the following:
1. Update #PlayStore vids 2 vertical format
2. Add ability 2 run #Experiments removing vids to properly understand impact
3. Make vids auto-play w/o deep linking into @YouTube bc no one clicks thru according 2 data
Hope this helps? 🤔
