How I Increased App Revenue by 600% With One Update

Source: Giphy

A few weeks ago, we released our second update to our app, Oasis Content Blocker: Earn Rewards, Block Ads. We wrote a Medium article about the update, receiving over 2,500 views to date.

With our third update for Oasis Content Blocker, we increased our revenue by 600%. One app update can drastically improve your app livelihood.

This graph indicates our user engagement. We released our latest app update early March; hence, the spike in user engagement.

With this past update, we mapped out our user acquisition strategy to optimize our app. We were able to construct sound improvements to provide an ultimate user experience.

Ask yourself these questions in every step of the user acquisition process.

User discovers app via AppStore or external sources.

1 — Why would users download your app? What intentions do they have?

With many options in the AppStore, why would your customers choose your app? You need a competitive advantage. With Oasis, we thought of ways that this app could stand out.

Content blockers are a huge part of iOS 9; they allow for faster browsing speeds, lower data utilization, and more privacy. Users want all this, so they download content blockers.

With much thought, we implemented a feature where users are incentivized for performing certain actions such as blocking ads. In life, whenever we do something, we like to be rewarded in some way, so why not incorporate the concept of rewards into Oasis.

Simply put, Oasis Content Blocker users could redeem rewards and earn points. These points could be redeemed for gift cards from various retailers.

That’s our competitive advantage. What’s yours?

2 — Where do your installs come from?

Your installs can tell you about your audience. Our second update received over 5,000 downloads in less than a week.

• A referral system triggered a Petri dish effect. Our referral system worked in that we rewarded extra points to those who invited others via their invitation code. Both the referred user and the user referring received points redeemable for gift cards. It was a win-win situation for our users.
• We received a boost from third-party blogs who featured us.

Lesson Learned

Extrinsic motivation is the driving force behind our downloads. Oasis motivates users to social share to earn points redeemable towards gift cards. To further motivate these users, incorporating more ways to earn points should keep the users more content.

User downloads app. He keeps the app.

3 — What works? Why do users decide to stay?

We learned two lessons in that:

• Users are actually redeeming rewards and earning points.
• Users also believe in our mission as noted with the high number of views of our last Medium article.

User downloads the app. He deletes the app.

4 — What are the pain points? What causes user churn and how can you reduce that?

• Users were confused with the process of redeeming rewards. We did not provide any training documentation on redeeming. Once the user signs up, the user would have to wait for a push notification before he can receive an reward. Users become confused because they expect immediate rewards and we did not provide that option.
• We presented rewards via push notifications. With this, we forgot to include the use case of turning off push notifications. When the user disables the push notification, he will never get a reward.
• Users who did opt to receive push notifications complained that receiving multiple push notifications daily is worse than seeing ads. At this point, most users left negative reviews or uninstalled the app.

Lessons Learned

• User experience expands more than the actual user interface. It should incorporate the usability and understandability of the app.

5 — What improvements should you make?

We’ve taken these learned lessons and crafted new solutions in our latest update.

• Instead of depending on notifications to deliver the rewards, we have created a new method that delivers 3 to 5 rewards per day automatically with or without notifications.
• The notification would only serve as a reminder when users turn on the notifications. In addition, we will allow users to stack up rewards if they haven’t redeemed them.
• To increase our sign-up conversion rate, we added a Facebook Login button.
• We also added the red iOS notification badges to inform users of the unredeemed rewards.
• We added a General Reward Preference, so users with no preferences can receive rewards from all categories.
• We incorporated 3D Touch into the Oasis app for iPhone 6S and 6S Plus users. Users can now access the rewards section of the app quickly.

Our Success

We achieved some small time success with developing and creating apps users want.

Namely, we released our fourth update of Oblique: Productive Strategies and it racked in over 195 reviews with a near 5 stars rating. We reached the Top 5 Productivity Charts in the UK AppStore, the Top 20 Productivity Charts in the China AppStore, and the Top 50 Productivity Charts in the US AppStore.

Our other successful app, Rap Hip-Hop Black Cards, has over 95 reviews with a near 5 star rating and was featured over 300 times in the iTunes AppStore. It also reached the Top 50 Music (Games) in the US AppStore and the Top 100 Card (Games) in the US AppStore.

How did we do this?

It’s simple. Maximize your app updates. Your app may not necessarily engage users the first time around, but surely after learning from previous mistakes, you can improve the second time or even third time.

Thanks for reading! If you like this post, please click ❤ to recommend to others.

Check out Oasis in the AppStore!

Next on the Reading List: You’re Doing It Wrong: Digital Advertising

You’re Doing It Wrong: Digital Advertising_Ever since the release of content blockers in iOS 9 for Safari, publishers had to rethink their strategy in monetizing…_medium.com