Tag Archives: notifications

The Guardian — Understanding and engaging mobile users

Posted by Leticia Lago, Google Play team

The Guardian is a global news organization with one of the world's largest quality English-speaking news websites, theguardian.com. It has more than 100 million monthly unique browsers and app users, two thirds of which come from outside the UK. With a longstanding reputation for agenda-setting journalism, the publication is most recently renowned for its Pulitzer Prize and Emmy-winning coverage of the disclosures made by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian’s early adoption of a digital-first policy and continued digital innovation means it has also become a respected name among developers and tech audiences. In the last year, it has launched a redesigned app and new website and been among a handful of publishers to develop its own Glassware.

The Guardian app is taking advantage of unique Google Play and Android features to drive user engagement. Their mobile app readers are now 10 to 20 times more engaged than their average web users. Improving engagement has also helped them lift the rating for their app from 4.0 to 4.4 on Google Play.

Anthony Sullivan, Director of Product, and Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, share some best practices for increasing app engagement in this video.

To learn more, be sure to check out these resources to better engage your users:

  • Convert installs to active users [video] — hear from Matteo Vallone, Partner Development Manager for Google Play, about the best practices for engaging and retaining users through intents, identity, context, and rich notifications as well as delivering a cross-platform user experience.
  • Adding Wearable Features to Notifications [tutorial] — learn how to add notifications to Android Wear devices, including how to make use of the Wear notification features: voice commands, stacks, and pages.
  • Beta testing [help] — discover how to make use of the alpha and beta testing features offered by Google Play, and get feedback from real users.
  • Build your community (of testers) [guide] — get advice on how to build communities on G+ or other social networks, then tap into their skills and enthusiasm to help with testing your app.

Trulia sees 30% more engagement using notifications and further innovates with Android Wear

Posted by Laura Della Torre, Google Play team

Trulia’s mission is to make it as easy as possible for home buyers, sellers, owners and renters to navigate the real estate market. Originally a website-based company, Trulia is keenly aware that its users are migrating to mobile. Today, more than 50 percent of Trulia’s business comes from mobile and growth shows no sign of slowing, so they know that’s where they need to innovate.

In the following video, Jonathan McNulty, VP of Consumer Product, and Lauren Hirashima, Mobile Product Manager, at Trulia, talked about how the company successfully leveraged notifications on Android to increase app engagement by 30 percent and has seen 2x the amount of engagement on Android relative to other platforms:

Trulia continues to focus on improving their mobile experience, using Google’s geo-fencing technology to create Nearby Home Alerts, which lets users know when they walk near a new listing. Combined with Android Wear, Trulia now makes it possible for users to see details and photos about a property and call or email the agent, all directly from their watch.

Find out more about using rich notifications on Android and developing for Android Wear. And check out The Secrets to App Success on Google Play (ebook) which contains a chapter dedicated to the best practices and tools you can use to increase user engagement and retention in your app.