Google Play Top Apps – Lessons Not Learned
My Apps This isn't meant to market my apps. The apps are nothing amazing, just content packed into hybrid apps for convenience of people in my country. You see we pay US$1/200MB.
The first is just a Highway Code app, earned a spot at 5K downloads. The download rate was 120/day, with a rating of 4.8 and a volume of 20 reviews. The second made Top Apps at 800 downloads, with a daily rate of 30. The rating was also 4.8 at a volume of only 8. There are apps in my country with over 50K downloads, take note of that.
My big secret Nothing. No marketing strategy, no paid installs. I published my apps to GPS and the rest just happened. This does call out paid installs companies and their strategies. The exceptional thing I'd say I did was name my apps something people would search for. I used Google's keywords tool for that.
My probably wrong conclusions Number of total downloads is out. Some apps have over 50K downloads in Zimbabwe. There are enough of them to fill up the entire row on the front page.
The growth rate I'd say counts, that of the app measured against others. The last 30 days compared to this month have a growth rate of 80% : compared to that of other apps, if higher helps.
Next would be rating. The volume of reviews doesn't count. Only the rating. My apps, next to WhatsApp or Linkedin, have the higher rating.
The retention rate is a maybe : how long a user keeps your app installed. ~50% of downloaders keep my app. Here I don't have other figures to compare with hence my maybe. I'm certain banking and mobile money apps have higher retention rates.
Number of backlinks to GPS listing of your app? I have about 20. Those are only on Facebook, I'd post and get a few shares. So no, I didn't pollute the web with backlinks.
Save your money. Paid install services aren't worth it.