Google conference "Conversions 2022": Make your Apps a Winning Surface (Webinar)

Hello, my name is Anna. I am a Mobile UX Consultant at Google, based in Dublin. My team specialises in Mobile UX design, including apps. Today, I want to discuss best practices in app UX that can help you improve conversions.

As Ruben mentioned earlier, apps are a crucial part of the user conversion journey. However, providing users with great experiences has become increasingly challenging due to rising expectations. The app space is highly competitive, with users already having many experiences installed on their phones, as shown in the next slide. You will be competing for user attention, device memory space, instals, and user retention.

It's important to understand that you will not only compete with players within your industry but also with any best experience a user has ever had on their mobile phone. If a user encounters a clear, welcoming experience or a seamless one-click account creation form, they will remember and benchmark every subsequent experience against it. Thus, providing users with excellent app UX is no longer a luxury but a necessity, a new customer expectation.

What are the key things we need to learn here? I'm sharing with you four frameworks from Google that you can use when developing app UX. Some of these are specific to the platform, such as the 25 principles of mobile app design by Jenny Gove. Others, like the framework of being fast, seamless, and personalised, are relevant for both mobile websites and apps. The foundations of user experience design by Google outline good UX practices.

You can find these materials online or in the follow-up materials, but today, I will share key points that can help improve your in-app conversions.

The first point I want to highlight is the importance of the onboarding experience in the app.

Research shows that over half of users complete the registration process on the first day of using an app. This is particularly evident in the finance industry, which has intensive onboarding and registration processes. Users are generally ready to register, so you have just one chance to impress them with a welcoming onboarding experience, possibly asking for account creation and data-sharing permissions.

While extra welcome screens showcasing your app's value proposition might seem beneficial, remember that mobile users have very short attention spans. They already installed your app, so they likely know what it's about. Use welcome screens wisely.

If registration is required to start using the app, manage user expectations by informing them of the process: how many steps there are, how much time it will take, and what information is needed. UX elements like progress bars, master task lists, and friendly copy indicating time and steps required can help. Only ask for crucial information during onboarding. If the information isn’t essential, make the step skippable or remove it entirely.

If registration isn't necessary for users to start using the app, consider skipping the onboarding and registration process altogether.

Here's how to get users to the core value of your app as quickly as possible, offering value before asking them to commit or share information. Progressive onboarding can be an elegant solution, allowing you to showcase your app's functionality and features later, once the user has already started using the app.

For example, pdfFiller, a software-as-a-service company, implemented progressive onboarding to increase customer engagement. This approach improved conversion rates to paid subscriptions by 5% and decreased the number of cancellations.

Next, let's discuss the checkout and payment experiences. According to research, 76% of customers are likely to complete a purchase if a company's mobile website or app makes the process quick and easy. We all know how painful it can be to type on mobile devices, especially when filling out forms and sharing sensitive payment information. Nailing the app UX in these areas can significantly improve conversion rates.

From a UX perspective, here are some key recommendations:

1. Provide Payment Shortcuts: Offer shortcuts to payments at early stages of checkout or even on product detail pages. You can also do this outside the app, as shown in this screenshot, which features a shortcut to top-up with Google Pay in a system push notification.
2. Keep Users Within the App: Ensure users remain within the app while making a purchase. Redirecting them to a web UI can feel foreign and undermine user trust at this crucial moment.
3. Offer Multiple Payment Options: Provide users with multiple payment options and localise the selection based on the user's location.

A relevant case study is from SignNow, which successfully implemented these strategies to improve their user experience and conversion rates. They initially had a payment process within the app that used the web UI. Later, they redesigned the payments flow to be entirely in-app, reducing the process to just a couple of clicks to complete the subscription. This change increased conversions to paid subscriptions fivefold.

The last point I want to highlight today about best practices for app UX that will help with conversions is how to bring users back to the app. Many apps that are installed today are not revisited often and may even be deleted to free up phone space. So, how do we re-engage users in a meaningful way?

First, create a personalised experience for returning users. The concept of a landing page is popular on the web, but in the world of apps, it's still somewhat foreign. It's crucial to bring users back through deep links or other methods to a relevant place inside the app and show them a personalised experience that speaks to them in the moment. This is especially important for returning users because this is when UX matters the most. You remind them that your app is useful and provide them with relevant information.

Another way to engage users meaningfully is by providing a thoughtful push notification strategy. Every push notification must be timely, precise, and relevant to stand out among the variety of notifications users receive from other apps.

To summarise the key points:

1. Use onboarding screens wisely to impress users, as you only have one chance to do that.
2. Provide robust checkout and payment experiences with multiple shortcuts and payment options.
3. Re-engage users and bring them back to the app through meaningful push notifications and personalised returning experiences.

I am also sharing with you the four frameworks mentioned at the beginning and the industry-specific research for different apps. That's it for me today. I will be available for the Q&A in the breakout sessions later. Over to you, Ruben.

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