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ELLIE POWERS: Thanks for the intro, [? Purnima. ?]
So I'm Ellie Powers.
I lead product management for apps on Google Play.
And I'm really excited to talk to you
about how to be more successful.
Ever since I joined Google, this has been a topic
that I'm hugely passionate about-- helping developers
grow new and exciting businesses.
So why are we really here?
What is it that we're trying to do?
Many of us have an idea or a business
that we're trying to get out into the world
and that we're trying to make more successful.
And these days, the best way to reach people globally
is through building apps, especially apps on Google Play.
And Michael just talked about how big that opportunity is.
It's really huge.
And so I want to talk with you about how
to make those dreams into a reality
of successful businesses, great user experiences, and a way
to truly reach people and help them make their lives more
successful as well.
So one of the themes that Michael touched on
was how your success depends a lot
on the quality of your application.
A great app has to be functional.
It has to provide value to a user's life.
It has to solve a real problem they have, make their day
a little bit more fun, or things like that.
But on top of that, the app itself has to be excellent.
And we find that users have very high expectations
for apps on Play.
So today what we're going to do is walk through the entire app
development life cycle and talk about how
you can bring quality and success
at every step of the way.
So first we're going to start by talking about design.
And what we've seen from users on Google Play
is that they have very, very high expectations for how apps
are going to look and behave on their devices.
And we hear back from developers that the time
they spend on optimizing design pays off many, many times over.
And now with material design, we're
seeing that Google is really becoming a leader
in thinking about how to create great,
delightful, and engaging experiences
across multiple types of devices.
So let's get started by digging deeper into material design.
So what is it, anyway?
It certainly looks cool, but there's
something much deeper to it.
It's really about defining the characteristics of how
a UI should feel, move, and adapt to a user.
We provide design patterns for how to implement this.
And we try to make this easier by baking in best practices
for building great touch UIs.
Another theme you'll see coming up a lot is how to use motion.
But not just for fun-- although for that--
but also to provide comprehension,
and really going a step beyond more static web
pages into something where a user can interact
and understand more deeply.
One of the last things you'll notice
is that we can use beautiful aesthetics to not only delight
users, but to also help designs adapt across screens.
So if you're interested about this,
I definitely recommend that you go
to developer.android.com/design.
And there's a bunch of materials there, and soon
to be more and more coming, about how
you can start applying this thinking,
and some technical concepts to your apps.
So before we dig into the details of material design,
let's talk a little bit about what the benefits are.
So first of all, material design is
great for expressing your brand.
Material design emphasizes a great use of color
and provides UI patterns that are sufficiently flexible so
that you can build experiences that
feel authentic to your users and the design
that you might have already across your web, print,
or other products.
Next, material design is really an opportunity to delight.
It provides great consistency with the Android experience
so that when a user is using their device
and using your app as part of it, it really seems to fit in.
And it also provides a very strong
cross-platform experience so that as a user experiences
your device on an Android tablet, their phone, a website,
it's really a great experience.
And they don't feel like they're starting over again every time.
And there's a real opportunity for developers here
who want to be early adopters.
We're offering a new collection called the Beautiful Design
Collection, and if you're able to start investing early
in material design, there's a great opportunity here
to get noticed and be seen as a leader.
And eventually, material design will become a requirement
to get featured on Google Play.
OK, so we're going to take a look
at one app that's using material design.
We're going to walk through every step of what
they've done.
All right, so you can see the old app versus the new app
here.
And we're going to walk through how
they made each of the changes.
All right, so here's the old app.
They switched the buddy icons to the nice circular version.
They added key lines here.
Lots of white space-- it feels a lot more nicely laid-out.
A bright prop of color at the top
makes it look really beautiful and brings out the new Compose
button.
You can see a big difference here.
And then this new design will scale easily
to the tablet layout.
OK, let's take a look at a second example.
So one of the tenets of material design is to focus on content.
So here you can see the use of album and artist imagery.
It's a much more visual, graphic, compelling version
than the smaller image on the left, which
was the previous design.
We're also making a much bolder use of color.
You can see here the bright yellow
that comes from the album art is drawing your eye.
And we're using a delightful use of motion
here, not only to make it feel more fun and interactive,
but also to explain-- as you kind of dive into one album
or pull back out of it-- how that one album relates
to the rest of the items in your collection.
Next let's take a look at the Play Store.
So we can see here that the Play Store is also
starting to adopt material design principles.
And one detail I did want to mention
is material design isn't just for L.
It also works for pre-L devices, too,
so you can provide a consistent experience for all
of your users.
Here the Play Store is using a bold graphic
across the top of the page.
Many of you who've already gone to the Developer Console
to update your store listing have made sure
that you're using that bold feature graphic.
It does a great job of expressing the brand
and feeling of the application.
We've also cleaned up the layout a bunch
and added a nice white background
with lots of white space so it doesn't feel as cluttered.
And then in the center, we have a bunch
of bold, brightly-colored, geometric icons
that draw the eye as well.
So now we're going to talk about four different concepts
within material design so that you
can start thinking about how to apply them to your apps.
So we're going to talk about tangible services,
meaningful and delightful motion,
bold and beautiful aesthetics, and adaptive design.
And remember, these can be done in L, of course,
as we all know, but also on pre-L devices.
There are some new capabilities that
are coming up in L that make motion
a lot easier to implement.
OK, so tangible surfaces-- the idea here
is to use different surfaces and shadows
and think about how your app, if it were a physical object,
would actually look and behave.
And the way that something looks in material design
should make it easier for the user
to be able to figure out how the user should interact with it
and how it will respond to them.
Now, these uses of different surfaces
can be very valuable to separate the content-- which,
again, in material design we want
to take the focus-- from the navigation, which
should be present but not dominating.
We want to focus the user's attention
on the most important parts of the screen.
And the white framing that we use so commonly
in the material design layouts makes it easier
to allow the content to shine, and also
just make the page look a lot neater.
OK, the second concept in material design
here is the bold and beautiful aesthetic.
So again, content is at the center.
And we love content that is bold, graphic,
and feels very intentionally placed on the page.
A lot of material design examples you'll see as well
will have one primary color, and then also an accent color.
And we can see the content providing color,
like the pink heart in this album art here, too.
The use of typography is particularly
important in material design.
You can use the fonts that match best with your brand
and give the right feeling.
And you want to think about how the fonts fit together
as well with the iconography.
We like geometric icons in material design.
Now, one of my favorite things about material design
is this concept of meaningful and delightful motion.
Everyone wants technology to be fun.
We all have our favorite experiences
from when we picked up a new gadget,
and it just did something that was fun,
delighted us, and made us laugh.
On the Developer Console, when you upload new things,
you get a little robot icon that starts moving,
and we've gotten a lot of good feedback about that.
But motion can be so much more meaningful than that.
When people start using interfaces,
we want to make it really clear about how
one part of the interface relates to the next.
And that's what material design can do with motion.
So when the material design interface
responds to the user's touch with motion,
it gives that cue and that response.
And it draws the eye naturally, because we
know that motion is really great for drawing the user's focus.
But you don't want to go overboard with motion.
The user's action should be the thing
that initiates the motion.
And also, the motion should be fast and precise
so that they don't distract from the interface.
OK, so if we look at the material design principles,
there's one part I think that sums it
up pretty well about what we're trying
to do with adaptive design.
So the idea here is that a single underlying design system
should organize interactions and space.
And every device should reflect a different view
of the same underlying system.
So the idea here is that, for example, as you can see here,
this is about user's calendar.
And so there's a singular source of calendar data
from a technical perspective.
But also, visually, the idea is that there's
sort of a system of rules for how you display that calendar
information.
And when you look at each device and what should be surface
there, you should think about what information and what
presentation is most relevant and specific to that device.
And then you can use material design visual elements
to create continuity.
And the margins and the key lines
may change a bit from device to device,
but it should feel consistent and predictable.
So that way, if the user starts using your app
on a new device-- maybe they get an Android Wear watch--
they already pretty much have a good sense of how it should
behave and what it's able to do for them,
although the watch will certainly
show a different view of information
than maybe their laptop computer, their phone,
or their tablet might have.
OK, so that's material design.
Now let's go on and talk about how
this applies to certain types of devices
and what other design concerns you should think about when
you're trying to build high-quality apps
across devices.
So last year, we started a program
called Design for Tablets.
And now we're seeing that the vast majority of our top apps
already meet all these Design for Tablets criteria.
And this is fantastic, because Android tablets
are selling so well.
And we want to make sure that every user has
a great experience with every app
that they use on their tablet.
So the idea of a tablet is really interesting.
And many developers, when tablets first came out,
thought it was just a small phone.
But it's so much more than that.
When you have a tablet, you don't just have more space,
but you have people using your app in different ways.
So a common thing that we'll hear from developers
is that people will use their phone for kind of-- they
called it snacking, frequently going and getting
a little bit of information, doing one, small, short task.
But with the tablet, it's not like a snack.
It's more like a meal.
People will sit down with their tablet and interact
much more deeply.
So in addition to thinking about what type of visual layout
you want to have-- and you can use Fragments to build
flexible UIs that adapt very easily across different device
sizes-- you also want to think about what functionality you
should offer for the best experience.
So then, when you think that you've designed a great tablet
app, you want to make sure that you upload it to the Google
Play Developer Console, and that you
check the Design for Tablets checklist
to make sure it's met all the criteria.
And the reason why this is important
is that if you want your app to be fully visible and incredibly
prominent on Google Play, it needs
to make sure that it meets all these criteria.
If you're browsing apps on your tablet
and you go to the top charts, the ones
that you'll see by default are the ones
that meet the Design for Tablets criteria.
And so you want to make sure that your app is
going to be visible there.
So if you check the checklist, you'll know what to do.
Another great thing to do is you want to explain to the user
exactly how the app will work on their device.
And a picture is worth a thousand words,
so that's why we give you the opportunity
to upload seven-inch and 10-inch tablet
screenshots in the Developer Console.
So that way, when someone browses your app
in Google Play on a tablet, they'll
see the screenshots that really represent how your app is going
to look on their device, and any tablet specifically [INAUDIBLE]
and features that you have.
So if you want to then start thinking
about how to go above and beyond the basic criteria,
I definitely recommend that you go to developer.android.com
and check out our tablet quality checklist for some more
explanations about how to have a truly great Android
app on tablets.
OK, so next we're going to talk more about Android Wear.
So if you're not sure how to get started,
the most important thing to think about first
is there's actually three possible ways
that your app can adapt to Android Wear.
First of all, step one, there's the no work option.
Notifications will just show up automatically.
Step two, you can spend a bit more work
to enhance these notifications.
Or step three, you have the option
of building a much more complex application.
We're going to walk through all three of these.
So first, the most basic thing to know
is if your app creates notifications,
they'll automatically just start showing up
by default on someone's Android Wear device.
You'll probably want to check it out just
to be sure that you're happy with the experience.
But this shouldn't imply any extra work for you
as long as you're using standard notifications.
So second is the idea of enhancing these notifications.
And this is a really great option to consider.
Because usually it'll take maybe 10 lines of code or so.
But then you can make an experience
that gives really big benefits.
So there's a couple of cool things you can do here.
By default, if you have a messaging app,
those notifications with new messages
will show up on the Wear device.
But it's really easy to add a voice reply
so that the user can respond directly from the Wear device
without having to unlock their phone
and take it out of their pocket.
There are also other ways to format
the enhanced notifications, like pages and stacking,
that might be worth looking into depending on what type of app
you have.
So for those of you who are really looking to be innovators
and to push into new areas, I want
to give you a couple tips for building a full Wear app.
So on the left, we have kind of the default software
development schedule that most of us
think that we're going to have.
So for example, we think we'll spend a little bit of time
on design, we'll build the thing,
and then we'll spend a little bit of time debugging it.
But what usually ends up happening
is we need more design time than we thought,
and the debugging process isn't so speedy.
Now, specifically for Android Wear applications,
the recommendation that we're seeing
based on some of our earliest access partners
is you're going to probably think about 25%
of your time for UX iteration.
And so why is that?
The old rules don't apply in Android Wear.
A lot of us have experience building web pages,
probably apps for the phone, maybe
apps for the tablet as well.
But Android Wear is totally new, and a different interaction
modality may be necessary.
So if you put in the time, and you spend time iterating,
it can be really fun to explore.
And you can end up with something that's amazing.
And if someone is carrying your app around on their wrist 24/7,
that's a really unique opportunity.
And I think it warrants the investment.
OK, now we're going to talk more about Android TV
and how to build great apps.
So the types of apps that we see as being
most promising in the living room are games and media apps.
And the way to think about the TV is this, right?
This is not like putting a gigantic computer
in your living room.
It's not even like putting a gigantic mobile phone or tablet
in your living room.
It's really a different experience.
The user wants to lean back, sit on the sofa,
and be entertained.
So put content at the center.
And secondly, you want to create something that's immersive.
So go ahead and use movement, sound, and visual imagery
to create something that has a truly
cinematic experience if you can.
And, perhaps most importantly, we definitely
recommend that you simplify.
If a person's using a remote control to interact,
and they just want to sit down and put
on their favorite program, you don't
want to send them through menu after menu.
You just want to put the fewest screens and least friction
between the user and the content that they want to engage with.
So we offer you some lean back themes
and other TV-optimized layouts to try
to make building a TV app as easy as possible.
And if you're interested, we actually have a program where
you can go online to developer.android.com/TV
and request an ADT1 developer kit.
This will help you get started and actually test
your TV app on something real.
OK, so we talked about how design
is the great first building block for having
a high-quality and successful app.
So now we're going to talk about how
to take this same idea of quality
and to bring it through next to the development process.
OK, so Michael mentioned earlier the Android L release.
We have material design, the most new APIs of any release,
and a bunch of cool user features like better task
switching, faster app runtimes, and so forth.
I'm really excited about the improved battery life
and also how it's designed to help handle flaky network
connections.
So those of us who tend to get dropped
calls are going to have a better experience.
So I want to walk through just a couple things
that you should think about when you're thinking about how
to have a high-quality, engaging, successful experience
on L. And the first one is notifications.
So immediately what you'll notice about what's different
for notifications in L is the background color.
It used to be black.
Now they have a white color.
And you actually get to change the little blue dot color there
that appears next to each of your notifications.
So if you want to express your brand there and capitalize
on your material design layout, this
is a great place to pick it.
The second thing that you should know about and check
in your app is that we're allowing users
to modify all of their global notification settings
through the Android Settings app.
So just make sure that you add a notifications flag
to the manifest to make sure that your app will appear there
in the settings so that users can go there to adjust
notifications for your app from the central location.
And then finally, one really cool thing that we're doing
is we're starting to show notifications
on the lock screen.
So as we all know, once a user installs your app, that's cool.
But you want to keep them engaged over time.
And the lock screen is a new area
to bring up things that are very critical
and a user needs to notice.
And you also want to be really sensitive here, too.
If a user has, let's say, a messaging app on their phone,
and you receive a new message, and you're
going to show it to them, they may not
want to see the contents of that message on their lock screen,
right?
Someone else might pick up their phone
and go, well, that's very interesting.
So you need to think about what sort of private, public,
and secret views you want to have of different notifications
to make sure that if things are showing up on the lock screen,
it's meeting users' expectations and still being helpful.
OK, so let's talk a little bit more
about how we can take care of the Android One opportunity
and make the most of the opportunity
for emerging markets.
So one of the key things that we hear again and again
about emerging markets is that data plans are expensive,
and only lower-end smartphones may be available.
So these are the devices that you're
going to be dealing with.
And what we find for most developers who
invest in those areas is once they learn
how to build their apps right, they actually
get massive benefits today.
And we forecast only greater and greater growth tomorrow there.
So let's talk about a couple of things
you can do to optimize your app.
So first of all, for the network,
just assume that your user is going to be on 2G only.
And so what does this mean?
Longer latency, slower loading times.
So you'll want to make sure that you don't just
try to load the data and time out after 10 seconds.
You might need to assume that some of those attempts to load
data aren't going to work.
Make sure that the user is messaged
when data is or isn't loading.
And make sure that your application
doesn't have dependencies on having
consistent, continuous network connection.
Second, optimizing for lower memory on lower-end devices
is really important, and again will pay off hugely.
So in Android Studio, we have a new function
called Memory Monitor.
And this can help you understand the memory profile of your app
and identify areas to improve it.
And third, the thing that I can't say enough is just test.
We offer an emulator.
Some people use physical devices as well.
And this allows you to do those memory and network simulations.
So if you have a physical device and you're
trying to test there, try switching off Wi-Fi,
setting your device to use only 2G,
and try to simulate the connections
that your users will see.
And if you think this is really exciting--
because I definitely do-- we have a recent post from Sundar
Pichai on her official Android blog talking about some
of the opportunities here for developers.
And I definitely recommend that you check it out.
OK, so if there are any software developers here,
we hope that you're trying out new Android Studio Beta.
And if you're not, I wanted to highlight
a couple of the key features that we've released recently.
We talked a ton about how one of the big pushes right
now is around supporting for new device types
and what the new opportunities are to be early adopters.
And Android Studio Beta can really help you with that.
They provide a bunch of templates and other support,
so it's not that hard to take an existing phone app
and to figure out how to extend it onto new device types.
It also offers the Memory Monitor
that I mentioned earlier.
And if you're adding Google Play services or other types
of Google services, this is the easiest way
to set up the integration.
So it's no hassle to add Google Analytics, Maps,
or other capabilities.
It also offers a nice, rich layout editor.
So you can set up different themes,
and your app will look much nicer by default.
And it has a lot of quality improvement tools
around usability issues, version compatibility, and stability.
Cool, so definitely recommend you guys try that out too.
I also wanted to mention Google Cloud Platform.
Today, all of our apps are definitely
connected to back-end storage.
And I wanted to tell you about this opportunity here.
So whenever you're launching a new app,
you want to be ready for big growth.
But you probably don't have a huge budget to invest.
So we have this thing that we call the mobile starter kit.
And what it allows you to do is to have
a small financial investment.
But then if your app goes really big,
you'll be able to immediately take
advantage of all of the best of Google's network.
So super-fast for performance, and it also
supports cross-platform mobile apps, as well as the web,
so that you can use this across your entire offering.
And Google Play services launched
two new functionalities earlier in the year.
If you're not using it already, we
want you to know that this is the best
way to integrate any APIs from Google,
whether that's the In-app Billing
API, Google Maps, or more.
And the great thing about it, too,
is that this is something that's kept up-to-date by Google
on the user's device.
So immediately, without having to integrate any new SDK,
the new features are available across all of your users
immediately.
So the two new things that we announced this year
are the activity recognition API can now
recognize running and walking.
So those of you with fitness apps
might be able to make use of that.
And we also announced Cloud Save.
So a key user challenge is to make sure
that when they have data in their app,
they can expect it to be saved and made available across all
of their devices-- their phone, their tablet,
maybe the web, maybe their watch.
And the Cloud Save API makes this
easy with no back-end programming.
It also does a really good job of handling syncs
when a user transitions between offline and online modes.
So if you want to make sure your app works really well,
definitely check that out.
OK, so we talked about how to bring quality and success
to the development process.
And now we're going to talk about the final stage--
distribution-- and how you can make sure
that your app has maximum success on Play
at this final step.
So we talked already about beautiful material design
in Play and how we've revamped the storefront.
But rather than focusing on the visual aspects,
now I want to talk about the functionality
that this provides to you as a developer.
So this store listing page on the Play Store
is basically your shop window.
And this is how people evaluate whether or not
they want to install your app.
We've tried to make it optimized so it gives people
a great experience.
And also it gives you the opportunity
to express your brand.
So across the top, you see here there's a big banner graphic.
And it can be really beautiful and express whatever
you want about your app.
If you haven't already, make sure you go to the Developer
Console and provide that image.
We also provide a short summary at the bottom where
you can highlight some of the key things
that your app provides, a summary of it in one
or two sentences.
And then in the middle of the page,
we tell the user about different reasons
to install their app, like the number of ratings that it has,
if it's a high rating, a lot of installs, their friends
have recommended it, perhaps.
And we're also thinking about other ways
that maybe we can allow developers to share more
in the Play Store.
So one of the most important things
we hear developers talk about is app ratings.
And we find in the Play Store that users
use this as a huge tool for evaluating
which app to install.
If I'm picking between two different apps that
do basically the same thing, the one with the better ratings
will obviously get more traffic.
So this is a great tool for making users compare the apps
and pick your app favorably.
So as you see the quality of your app increase,
the ratings should increase as well.
But in addition, there's actions that you
can take as a developer to make sure that your ratings are even
more successful, and to also use this as an opportunity
to reach out to your users.
So you can go into the Developer Console
today and reply to user comments.
So what happens when you reply to one of these comments
is that user receives an email message,
unless they've opted out.
And also, your response is displayed in the Play Store.
And what we found from developers
who have been using this feature for the past couple
years is they get great feedback from users.
A user didn't expect to receive a response.
But they're delighted when a developer says, hey,
thanks for reporting that issue.
We're going to fix it in the next version.
And sometimes developers even find
that users say, wow, you're right.
You did actually fix my bug.
Or you explained to me how that feature in your app works.
And so they'll actually go back and sometimes
end up improving their review and improving their opinion
over time.
So now we're going to talk about why we launched beta testing
and staged rollouts.
So developers would often tell us
that when you make your debut on the Play Store,
it's critical to make sure that it's working great on day one.
Otherwise, users will leave bad reviews,
and it's hard to recover from that.
So we wanted to make sure that you can integrate quality user
feedback from the beginning, so that when you make your debut,
it's not the first time anyone's tried your app.
But rather, your app has been well tested throughout time.
So we want you to first launch strong, and then
be able to keep your momentum going.
We've been overwhelmed by the response to beta testing
and staged rollout over the past year and a half.
We've had now over 80,000 apps using these features,
getting an average rating of 4.2 stars.
And we've also seen that over 1/3 of our top apps
are using beta testing today.
And many of them are using staged rollouts, too.
So we're recommending beta testing
and staged rollouts as a best practice for all developers.
So let's go through each of these concepts
and how you can apply them.
So the purpose of beta testing is
to be able to release your app just
to a small, select group of power users who you choose.
So what this means is you can control the access,
and you can also keep it private so
that your super-stealth app doesn't end up in the press
before you expect it.
And users who want to participate in beta tests
need to opt in.
And they're also blocked from leaving reviews
so that you don't end up leaking any new features
or end up with low reviews as a result of buggy beta software.
We also now give you statistics so you can easily
compare how your new beta and alpha versions
are doing against your production versions.
And so that way you can make sure
that things are trending up and to the right over time.
We found best practice was from developers
to solicit as much user feedback as possible.
Sometimes they do this within the app.
Sometimes the users use a Google group or Google+ community
to get this feedback.
But either way, we found that developers
who are most open and responsive to this feedback
end up with the best results.
And some developers have also told us
that they use this as an early preview
to get metrics about how their users might perform in the app
and production.
Although you have to keep in mind
that a group of power users may or may not
represent your full user base.
So after you've done an alpha test, a beta test,
and you're feeling confident, you're
able to release your app to production.
And when you push new versions of your app to production,
you're able to control the rollout
to just a percentage of users.
And these users are randomly selected, including
both new users and existing users who
might receive the staged rollout version.
And staged rollouts are visible publicly,
and users can also leave reviews.
The purpose of a staged rollout is that you should already
be pretty confident in what you're pushing,
but it just gives you that extra level of safety
where if something unexpected happens-- like maybe a bug that
didn't show up in earlier testing-- then
it doesn't impact all the users.
And it ends up having a positive impact on reviews.
Because you can catch this before it hits everybody.
OK, so as developers, we don't have a lot of time.
And something that I hear frequently time and time
again is, well, what should I focus on?
There's like 100 things I can do.
They all might improve my app, but I'm not really sure.
We also want to go from offering a bunch of data
to developers to offering clear, highly-tailored insights,
things that were going to help your app.
So the idea behind optimization tips and alerts
is to do exactly this.
We offer a wide variety of optimization tips and alerts.
So they cover everything from how
to design your app for tablets, when and how to localize
your app, and to make sure you're upgrading to the latest
version of APIs, like the In-app Billing API.
We also got some good feedback from developers earlier
when we started offering alerts for when something goes wrong.
So for example, maybe you pushed out a new version of your app.
But actually, the reviews are a lot worse than the old version.
So we'll let you know.
And developers told us, well, that's really helpful.
But couldn't you just get that information to me
as soon as possible?
And so that's why this year we made it
so that you can now sign up to receive these alerts via email
so that you find out right away and can fix the problem
before more users have a bad experience.
So once you understand kind of how your app is generally
doing, you want to start looking inside your app
and see what users are doing inside.
And so Google Analytics is a really easy way to do this.
And it also allows you to compare behavior and see
how users move between the web and also different mobile apps,
even on cross-platforms outside of Android.
So Google Analytics is actually available through Google Play
Services.
So this has a few benefits.
First of all, you don't have to add another SDK to your APK
and bloat its size.
You only have to add a few lines of code.
And it also comes for free if you're already
using AdMob in your app.
And so once you understand what users
are doing inside your app, the next step
is to start running experiments to see
how you can get users to engage more, spend more, and have more
fun.
So Google Tag Manager is an easy way of running experiments.
And it integrates with Google Analytics.
So the idea is that you set up a goal-- maybe the amount
of money that a user spends, or maybe the amount of time
that a user spends in an app, or the number of videos watched.
And then you set up multiple versions of your app.
Maybe one version has a the blue background,
one has a red background.
Or maybe it's more sophisticated than that.
And then you say, optimize these different versions
towards the goal.
So over time, it'll run these different versions,
see what the user behavior is towards the goal,
and automatically move users over to whatever
version ends up winning.
So it's a really easy way to make sure
that you have an optimal experience inside your app.
So another question we get from developers
a lot is, how can I understand the whole conversion funnel?
If I'm running a particular marketing campaign,
how do I understand how many people are looking at my app
in the Play Store, how many people are installing it,
and then how many people are actually running it?
So last year, we announced the Google Play Referral Flow
Report.
This is available in Google Analytics.
And so it helps you do exactly that.
And the purpose here is to be able to understand which
user acquisition channels-- like maybe which
ad campaigns or other things-- are most effective.
Because again, you might have some installs happening,
but you really care about which users go on
to become users of the app.
So we've seen now, as developers are becoming
more sophisticated in how the currency of apps
is really engagement over the long term rather than just
a one-time install, developers are focusing more
on tracking the most meaningful segments of users,
whatever users are most engaged with their business.
So for example, if I had a game, I
would be able to use Google Analytics to track user
segments to maybe say, let me look
at users who came in through a certain campaign.
Maybe they've gotten to level seven in my game,
and they've spent more than $5.
OK, and then one of the things we've seen on businesses
is that more and more developers are
running hugely successful, very profitable businesses on Play.
And we're trying to do everything
that we can to scale their expertise to everybody,
and to make it easier to measure your businesses,
whether you're a small startup or a much larger company
with a dedicated analytics team.
So we offer the Google Play Revenue Report,
which offers not only your total revenue,
but has been recently updated to include
the average revenue per paying user, the number of buyers.
And you can even see easy breakdowns
by different countries.
So you can see how your business is growing
into each of those different markets.
In response to feedback from a bunch of our developers
who had a lot of apps or published their apps
in a lot of countries, we're also
offering the developer publishing API.
So if you're a developer with, let's say,
100 apps, and each of those apps is offered in 50 languages,
and you've uploaded all of the text,
and all of the tablet screenshots,
and all the banners, for all those different languages,
it becomes kind of a multiplicative problem.
And so we thought, we can do better than that.
So we now have an API that you can use to manage your APKs,
the text for your store listing, the graphics
for your store listing.
And you can also manage your in-app product
catalog and alpha and beta tests.
You're able to integrate this with whatever build system
that your company has so that you
can take those assets directly from where they are already
on your servers and in your development process
and push them directly into the Developer Console
and into Google Play without a bunch of copy and paste.
So if you have a really big operation like this,
we definitely recommend that you check this out,
although we definitely want to see you coming back
to the Developer Console to get a lot more of the analytics
and insights and see how your app is doing.
OK, so today, we had an overview of how
we can make our app more successful,
and how to build high quality across all the different stages
of the software development process.
So in the area of design, we looked into material design
and how to adapt to new devices.
We looked then at development.
We talked about how the L release offers
some new, beautiful experiences for users
and what you'll need to do to update your app
to make it ready for L.
There's new tools available at Android Studio
to help you do that.
And also, if you're looking at building a lot of success
in emerging markets, Android One and network and battery
optimizations are a great way to go.
And then finally, we looked at how you can make sure
your app is high quality as you get
started in distribution through beta testing
and staged rollouts.
And then we also looked at how to bring more analytics
and insight into your users through the optimization tips
and Google Analytics integration.
So I hope that this will be a good day for you
as we go on into later sessions to understand more
about business and localization.
And thanks again for being part of Google Play.
When someone gets a new device, yes, they
want to have a device.
But what they really are looking for
is great software, great apps that
really bring the device to life.
So thanks again for building such fantastic, beautiful,
high-quality apps.
And we wish you luck with material design,
and the L, and all the next chapters on Play.
Thanks.