Make the most of custom product pages

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. Today, we'll discuss how you can make the most of custom product pages. We've designed this presentation for people who are familiar with this feature and hoping to enhance their custom product pages on the App Store. If you need a refresher on what this feature is and how to set it up, you can check our Get started with custom product pages video on the Apple Developer website. Now, let's get into today's presentation. I'm Savannah and I'm part of the App Store Business Management team, and I'll be joined by Chris from the Apple Search Ads team.

Today, we'll start with a quick summary of what custom product pages are. Then, we'll share some success stories featuring developers who have effectively used this feature. Then, Chris will share how custom product pages can be used with Apple Search Ads along with some developer success stories. Then, we'll conclude with some general takeaways to keep in mind as you continue to create your custom product pages.

First, let's briefly recap what custom product pages are.

Custom product pages allow you to create additional versions of your App Store product page, each of which highlights a specific feature or content that might appeal to a particular audience. So for an app like Mountain Climber, you could create one page to highlight the live streaming feature for people interested in following their favorite climbers in real time, or another page highlighting the GPS tracking feature to help people find their friends on a hike.

For each custom product page, you can customize your screenshots, app preview videos, and promotional text, and you can create up to 35 different custom product pages in App Store Connect. Just like your default product page, each page is fully localizable.

You can submit custom product pages to App Review independent of an app binary, and they will remain active if you submit a new build.

Lastly, you can direct people to a particular custom product page using its unique URL for the marketing efforts outside of the App Store.

You can use App Analytics in App Store Connect to view the performance and a variety of metrics for each custom product page, including product page views, total downloads and conversion rate, as well as additional metrics like average retention and sessions, to help you understand user engagement after a download.

Under the Acquisition tab in App Store Connect, you can easily view the performance of all your custom product pages at a glance as well as comparing them against the default page.

The key metric here is conversion rate, which is defined as the percentage of unique product page visitors that convert to downloads and re-downloads. It's the main metric to evaluate the performance of your custom product page.

You can also view the same data by product page under the Metrics tab with more flexibility to view the trend over time.

To dive more deeply into the performance of one specific custom product page, you can filter by the page name, for example, the competitive hiking page, and view additional metrics associated with that page.

For example, you can view the total proceeds and paying users from this competitive hiking page and calculate metrics like average proceeds per paying user which can be a key metric to optimize for post-install performance.

Next, let's look at some examples of developers that successfully leveraged this feature in their marketing efforts.

We've seen developers utilize custom product pages in a variety of ways. For today, we'll focus on three use cases: reaching specific audiences, showcasing seasonal updates and events, and highlighting specific content and features. We'll showcase developers' referral success stories for the first two use cases, and Chris from the Apple Search Ads team will go through the last use case in the next section. Starting with reaching specific audiences.

State of Survival is a top strategy game made by FunPlus where players build shelters, upgrade their equipment, and make allies in order to survive the post-zombie apocalypse.

With custom product pages, FunPlus wanted to improve their referral conversion rates and reach more role-playing gamer audience on their marketing channels.

They partnered with IronSource to create audience segments based on IronSource's different source apps focusing on role-playing gamers, and customize all five screenshots tailoring to this audience group.

To evaluate success, they looked at conversion rate and cost per install as key performance indicators.

Let's see what this looks like. On the left, you can see their default product page where they highlight different aspects of the game in their screenshots to appeal to a broader audience.

On the right is their custom page with a new set of screenshots highlighting different characters within the game. When FunPlus included this custom product page in more focused marketing efforts tailored to RPG audiences, they saw a 33% higher conversion rate and a 14% lower cost per install.

So what can we learn from FunPlus? FunPlus segmented players who enjoy RPG games and highlighted these aspects of the game in their screenshots along with their off-store marketing creatives. This has resulted in improved conversion rates and lower cost per install. When you are designing your custom page, think about your different audience groups, and how you can identify these audience segments in your marketing campaigns, and share the specific content throughout their user journey.

Let's take a look at another developer example for seasonal updates and events.

CBS Sports is a free app which gives people front-row access to the latest in sports.

They want to improve their marketing efficiency for their mobile users who are visiting the CBS Sports website during the March Madness basketball tournament. They customized all five screenshots on their custom product page to highlight the tournament, and they measured success by looking at their conversion rates, as well as signups for the tournament year over year. Here's what the seasonal page looks like compared to the default. In their default page, CBS Sports focused on more evergreen features like watching live sports and track the game score. On the right is their seasonal page highlighting March Madness. They customize their screenshots to call out limited-time features like the ability to enter and follow your bracket and play with friends. The imagery in these screenshots also showed the relevant UI within the app. This message helped reinforce the product features specific to that event. As a result, the custom product page saw a 20% uplift in conversion rate as well as a 48% improvement in March Madness tournament signups year over year.

CBS Sports has provided a great example for seasonal content, which was thematically consistent with their overarching brand campaigns. You can consider what seasonal content or limited time features you might highlight for your app and reinforce those for your specific audiences.

In the previous two success stories, developers are using external marketing channels to drive people to the custom product page. If you wish to use custom product pages on paid media campaigns, here's the ecosystem flow. You'll have the URL approved in App Store Connect which needs to be shared with your marketing partner of choice.

The marketing partner needs to update the setup in their StoreKit integration so that the source app can properly display the custom product page. If the marketing partner supports the update, customers will see the custom product page as intended. If the marketing partner hasn't supported yet, the customers will fall back to see the default page. Remember that if you engage in any tracking activity with any of your partners, you must use app tracking transparency framework to ask for user permission.

Now that we've discussed how you can use custom product pages to refer people from external sources, let's look at how you can use custom product pages with Apple Search Ads. I'll pass it over to my colleague, Chris, to walk you through the integration and learnings there.

As Savannah mentioned, Apple Search Ads is seamlessly integrated with custom product pages, which means you can use approved custom product page assets to set up search results ad variations or Today tab ad campaigns in Apple Search Ads.

With Today tab campaigns, you can promote your app on the first tab of the App Store and capture people's attention with creative that animates from right to left.

To run ads on the Today tab, you'll need a custom product page with at least four portrait or five landscape images that adhere to our creative guidelines.

The assets from custom product pages you select will be showcased with a darkened and blurred visual effect. That background is automatically generated from your assets. And the high impact design and prominence of this placement make it a great option to reach more users on the App Store and drive awareness and interest in your app.

For your search results campaigns, you can use custom product pages to create ad variations that align with your different keyword ad groups.

This is a great way to showcase app content that connects with what people are searching for.

Let's explore a few examples, starting with Baidu.

As a leading search engine platform in China, Baidu helps people find a wide variety of content, products, and services to manage and enhance their daily lives.

Everybody knows Baidu in China. Or actually, everyone thinks they know Baidu.

But to demonstrate that they are much more than a search engine, Baidu wanted to raise awareness of in-app features other than traditional search. To do this, they used ad variations based on custom product pages to align ad creative with specific keyword themes in their Apple Search Ads campaigns.

For example, photo and image recognition related keywords were aligned with custom ads, showcasing app features like translating words in a photo or identifying objects within a photo.

This helped the Baidu team to fully demonstrate various in-app features with custom creatives, increasing awareness and adoption of their app's many features.

The optimized ad relevancy and user experience enabled by ad variations with custom product pages increased the install rate by 10%.

In a totally different industry, German retailer Otto adopted a similar approach to Baidu.

For an app that features a broad assortment of shopping categories, growing their customer base meant reaching a diverse range of shoppers interested in everything from fashion to furniture.

To better connect with a wide range of potential customers, the Otto team created a new set of custom product pages in App Store Connect adding different app previews, screenshots, and promotional text beyond their default product page.

They created ad variations based on these custom product pages and focused on three key ad groups related to furniture, fashion, and electronics.

These new ad creatives visually highlighted specific app content clearly related to what customers in these three verticals were searching for on the App Store.

For instance, images like a chair or a coffee table were used for the furniture theme.

With these even more relevant ad variations, Otto created a better alignment between what people were searching for on the App Store and what people were seeing in their ads.

The result? An install rate 12% higher than their default ad.

These are just two of many examples of developers who have leveraged custom product pages to showcase their feature or content on the App Store. We have also seen other advertisers leverage custom product pages to create relevant custom tailored ads that capture people's interest during seasonal and promotional periods, promote app content features or in-app events at launch, remind past customers what your app has to offer, or include screenshots and previews that will more likely resonate in a certain country or region.

Thanks, Chris. Now that we've shared some developer success stories from both external referrals and Apple Search Ads, let's discuss some general takeaways to help you make the most of custom product pages.

Before you implement the custom page URL, if you work with a marketing partner, check with them to make sure they support this feature. It's best to test the URL before directing anyone to your page. For best results, make sure to have a large enough audience to reach enough installs and meaningful conversion rates. And lastly, if you like to measure any post-install performance across campaigns, consider creating separate custom product pages for each campaign or channel you plan to use.

Looking at some takeaways around submitting your custom product pages, we recommend being thoughtful on when you plan to submit. As a reminder, custom product pages can be submitted independent of your app release, but be sure to consider any upcoming app releases to avoid coinciding any new submissions with your app release. If you frequently update your app, it may be faster to submit your custom product page along with your app as a single submission to App Review. And lastly, to ensure a smooth submission process, be sure to follow the App Review Guideline Section 2.3 for accurate metadata and avoid including any promotional information in your product page metadata including pricing, offers, or sales.

Now, let's review some creative considerations to help you create great custom product pages.

We've noticed that distinctive visuals that highlight specific features and appeal to specific audiences tend to be more effective. Consider customizing at least the first two screenshots as these are the first few visuals someone sees when browsing your custom product page. From the previous success stories, we've seen that aligning your custom product page assets and your off-store marketing assets to include similar visuals and messaging can lead to an improved conversion rate on the App Store. And as always, be sure to keep their likes, interests, and preferences in mind when designing your custom product page.

For more information, check out the Apple developer website which has helpful information about this feature including the use cases, technical details, and more. Thanks for watching.