Android Developer Story: Jelly Button Games grows globally through data driven development

Posted by Leticia Lago, Google Play team

For Jelly Button Games, understanding users is the key to creating and maintaining a successful game, particularly when growth relies on moving into overseas markets. The team makes extensive use of Google Analytics and Google BigQuery to analyze more than 3 billion events each month. By using this data, Jelly Button can pinpoint exactly where, when, and why people play their highly-rated game, Pirate Kings. Feeding this information back into development has driven active daily users up 1500 percent in just five months.

We caught up with Mor Shani, Moti Novo, and Ron Rejwan — some of the co-founders — in Tel Aviv, Israel, to discover how they created an international hit and keep it growing.

Learn about Google Analytics and taking your game to an international audience:

• Analyze — discover the power of data from the Google Play Developer Console and Google Analytics.


• Query — find out how Google BigQuery can help you extract the essential information you need from millions or billions of data points.


• Localize — guide the localization of your app with best practices and tools.

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We'll see you at GDC 2015!

Posted by Greg Hartrell, Senior Product Manager of Google Play Games

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is less than one week away in San Francisco. This year we will host our annual Developer Day at West Hall and be on the Expo floor in booth #502. We’re excited to give you a glimpse into how we are helping mobile game developers build successful businesses and improve user experiences.

Our Developer Day will take place in Room 2006 of the West Hall of Moscone Center on Monday, March 2. We're keeping the content action-oriented with a few presentations and lightning talks, followed by a full afternoon of hands on hacking with Google engineers. Here’s a look at the schedule:

Opening Keynote || 10AM: We’ll kick off the day by sharing to make your games more successful with Google. You’ll hear about new platforms, new tools to make development easier, and ways to measure your mobile games and monetize them.

Running A Successful Games Business with Google || 10:30AM: Next we’ll hear from Bob Meese, the Global Head of Games Business Development from Google Play, who’ll offer some key pointers on how to make sure you're best taking advantage of unique tools on Google Play to grow your business effectively.

Lightning Talks || 11:15AM: Ready to absorb all the opportunities Google has to offer your game business? These quick, 5-minute talks will cover everything from FlatBuffers to Google Cast to data interpolation. To keep us on track, a gong may be involved.

Code Labs || 1:30PM: After lunch, we’ll turn the room into a classroom setting where you can participate in a number of self-guided code labs focused on leveraging Analytics, Google Play game services, Firebase and VR with Cardboard. These Code Labs are completely self-paced and will be available throughout the afternoon. If you want admission to the code labs earlier, sign up for Priority Access here!

Also, be sure to check out the Google booth on the Expo floor to get hands on experiences with Project Tango, Niantic Labs and Cardboard starting on Wednesday, March 4. Our teams from AdMob, AdWords, Analytics, Cloud Platform and Firebase will also be available to answer any of your product questions.

For more information on our presence at GDC, including a full list of our talks and speaker details, please visit g.co/dev/gdc2015. Please note that these events are part of the official Game Developer's Conference, so you will need a pass to attend. If you can't attend GDC in person, you can still check out our morning talks on our livestream at g.co/dev/gdc-livestream.

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How Google Analytics helps you make better decisions for your apps

Posted by Russell Ketchum, Lead Product Manager, Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

Knowing how your customers use your app is the foundation to keeping them happy and engaged. It’s important to track downloads and user ratings, but the key to building a successful business is using data to dive deeper into understanding the full acquisition funnel and what makes users stick around.

Google Analytics is the easiest way to understand more about what your users are doing inside your app on Google Play, while also simultaneously tracking your users across the web and other mobile platforms. To show how Google Analytics can help, we've created a new "Analyze" section on the Android Developers website for you to check out. We provide guidance on how to design a measurement plan and implement effective in-app analytics – and take advantage of features only available between Google Play and Google Analytics.

The Google Play Referral Flow in Analytics

Google Analytics for mobile apps provides a comprehensive view into your app’s full user lifecycle, including user acquisition, composition, in app behavior, and key conversions. Our Analytics Academy course on mobile app analytics is also a great resource to learn the fundamentals.

Eltsoft LLC, a foreign language learning and education app developer for Android, recognized early on how impactful Google Analytics would have on the company's ability to quickly improve on its apps and meet user needs.

Analytics has really helped us to track the effectiveness of the changes to our app. I would say six months ago, that our success was a mystery. The data said we were doing well, but the whys were not clear. Therefore, we couldn’t replicate or push forward. But today, we understand what’s happening and can project our future success. We have not only the data, but can control certain variables allowing us to understand that data. - Jason Byrne, Eltsoft LLC

Here are some powerful tips to make the most of Google Analytics:

1. Understand the full acquisition funnel

Uniquely integrated with the Google Play Developer Console, Google Analytics gives you a comprehensive view of the Google Play Referral Flow. By linking Analytics to the Developer Console, you can track useful data on how users move through the acquisition flow from your marketing efforts to the Google Play store listing to the action of launching the app. If you find that a significant number of users browse your app in Google Play, but don’t install it, for example, you can then focus your efforts on improving your store listing.

2. Unlock powerful insights on in-app purchases

Monitoring in-app purchases in the Google Play Developer Console will show you the total revenue your app is generating, but it does not give you the full picture about your paying users. By instrumenting your app with the Google Analytics ecommerce tracking, you’ll get a fuller understanding of what paying users do inside your app. For example, you can find out which acquisition channels deliver users who stay engaged and go on to become the highest value users.

3. Identify roadblocks and common paths with the Behavior Flow

Understanding how users move through your app is best done with in-app analytics. With Google Analytics, you can easily spot if a significant percentage of users leave your app during a specific section. For example, if you see significant drop off on a certain level of your game, you may want to make that level easier, so that more users complete the level and progress through the game. Similarly, if you find users who complete a tutorial stay engaged with your app, you might put the tutorial front and center for first-time users.

4. Segment your audience to find valuable insights

Aggregated data can help you answer questions about overall trends in your app. If you want to unlock deeper insights about what drives your users’ behavior, you can slice and dice your data using segmentation, such as demographics, behavior, or install date. If something changes in one of your key metrics, segmentation can help you get to the root of the issue -- for example, was a recent app update unpopular with users from one geographic area, or were users with a certain device or carrier affected by a bug?

5. Use custom data to measure what matters for your business

Simply activating the Google Analytics library gives you many out-of-the-box metrics without additional work, such as daily and monthly active users, session duration, breakdowns by country, and many more variables. However, it’s likely that your app has many user actions or data types that are unique to it, which are critical to building an engaged user base. Google Analytics provides events, custom dimensions, and custom metrics so you can craft a measurement strategy that fits your app and business.

6. No more one-size-fits-all ad strategy

If you’re a developer using AdMob to monetize your app, you can now see all of your Analytics data in the AdMob dashboard. Running a successful app business is all about reaching the right user with the right ad or product at the right time. If you create specific user segments in Google Analytics, you can target each segment with different ad products. For example, try targeting past purchasers with in-app purchase ads, while monetizing users who don’t purchase through targeted advertising.

By measuring your app performance on a granular level, you will be able to make better decisions for your business. Successful developers build their measurement plan at the same time as building their app in order to set goals and track progress against key success metrics, but it’s never too late to start.

Choose the implementation that works best for your app to get started with Google Analytics today and find out more about what you can do in the new “Analyze” section of developers.android.com.

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Google Play Services 6.1

Google Play services 6.1 is now rolled out to devices worldwide, bringing you the newest features from Google to help you optimize your apps. You can get started developing today by downloading the Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager.

Google Play services 6.1 adds Enhanced Ecommerce analytics support from Google Tag Manager and offers new improvements to the Google Drive Android API. With the latest release, we’re also including a refresh of the Google Fit developer preview, so that you can test your fitness apps on any Android device.

Analytics

Launched in Google Play services 5.0, Enhanced Ecommerce is an analytics extension designed to provide richer insights into pre-purchase shopping behavior and into product performance. It’s a great way to gain visibility into the full customer journey, helping you understand how different user acquisition campaigns are performing at a granular level. By including support for Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Tag Manager with the latest release of Google Play services, we are supercharging your ability to regularly update and manage tags on mobile apps more easily, so that you can consistently measure product impressions, shopping funnel events, and more.

Drive

To make it easier to use Drive, we added enhancements to the Google Drive Android API. With the new Completion Events feature, you can see when actions are committed to the server and improve the response time to conflicts. Material design elements have been incorporated into the File Picker UI, along with the addition of Recent and Starred views. A new setParents() method enables you to organize files and folders, while the previous Contents class has been replaced with a simpler DriveContents class.

Learn more about how to use these new features in this DevBytes video.

Google Fit

Initially introduced in August, the Google Fit Developer Preview has been refreshed to enable you to test your new fitness apps on any Android device. We expect to make additional changes to the APIs, so please check back with us on new developments.

Get Started

To get started developing, download the latest Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager. For details on the new APIs, take a look at the New Features documentation. For setup information, see Set Up Google Play Services SDK.

To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Services section on the Android Developers site.

We hope you enjoy this release of Google Play services!

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Google Play services 4.3

Google Play services 4.3 has now been rolled out to the world, and it contains a number of features you can use to improve your apps. Specifically, this version adds some new members to the Google Play services family: Google Analytics API, Tag Manager, and the Address API. We’ve also made some great enhancements to the existing APIs; everything to make sure you stay on top of the app game out there.



Here are the highlights of the 4.3 release.

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

The Analytics API and Google Tag Manager has existed for Android for some time as standalone technologies, but with this release we are incorporating them as first class citizens in Google Play services. Those of you that are used to the API will find it very similar to previous versions, and if you have not used it before we strongly encourage you to take a look at it.

Google Analytics allows you to get detailed statistics on how you app is being used by your users, for example what functionality of your app is being used the most, or which activity triggers users to convert from an advertised version of an app to paid one. Google Tag Manager lets you change characteristics of your app on-the-fly, for example colors, without having to push an update from Google Play.

Google Play Games services Update

The furious speed of innovation in Android mobile gaming has not slowed down and neither have we when it comes to packing the Google Play Game services API with features.

With this release, we are introducing game gifts, which allows players to send virtual in-game requests to anyone in their Google+ circles or through player search. Using this feature, the player can send a 'wish' request to ask another player for an in-game item or benefit, or a 'gift' request to grant an item or benefit to another player.

This is a great way for a game to be more engaging by increasing cross player collaboration and social connections. We are therefore glad to add this functionality as an inherent part of the Games API, it is an much-wanted extension to the multi-player functionality included a couple of releases ago. For more information, see: Unlocking the power of Google for your games.

Drive API

The Google Drive for Android API was just recently added as a member of the Google Play services API family. This release adds a number of important features:

• Pinning - You can now pin files that should be kept up to date locally, ensuring that it is available when the user is offline. This is great for users that need to use your app with limited or no connectivity
  
  


• App Folders - An app often needs to create files which are not visible to the user, for example to store temporary files in a photo editor. This can now be done using App Folders, a feature is analogous to Application Data Folders in the Google Drive API
  
  


• Change Notifications - You can now register a callback to receive notifications when a file or folder is changed. This mean you no longer need to query Drive continuously to check if the data has changed, just put a change notification on it
  
  

In addition to the above, we've also added the ability to access a number of new metadata fields.

Address API

This release will also includes a new Address API, which allows developers to request access to addresses for example to fill out a delivery address form. The kicker is the convenience for the user; a user interface component is presented where they select the desired address, and bang, the entire form is filled out. Developers have been relying on Location data which works very well, but this API shall cater for cases where the Location data is either not accurate or the user actually wants to use a different address than their current physical location. This should sound great to anyone who has done any online shopping during the last decade or so.



That’s it for this time. Now go to work and incorporate these new features to make your apps even better!

And stay tuned for future updates.



For the release video, please see:

DevBytes: Google Play Services 4.3



For details on the APIs, please see:

Google Analytics

Google Tag Manager

Google Play Games services Gifts

Google Drive Android API - Change Events

Google Drive Android API - Pinning

Google Drive Android API - App Folder

Address API

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Unlocking the Power of Google for Your Games, at GDC

By Greg Hartrell, Google Play Games team

Today, everyone is a gamer — in fact, 3 in every 4 Android users are playing games, allowing developers to reach an unprecedented audience of players in an Android ecosystem that’s activated over one billion devices. This has helped Google Play Games — Google’s cross-platform game service and SDK for Android, iOS and the web (which lets you easily integrate features like achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud save into your games) — grow at tremendous speed. The momentum continues on Google Play, where four times more money was paid out to developers in 2013 than in 2012.

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, we announced a number of new features for Google Play Games and other Google products. As they launch over the coming weeks, these new services and tools will help you unlock the power of Google to take your games to the next level.

Power your game and get discovered

With game gifts, players in your games can send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through multiplayer search.

To help players get the most out of your games, Play Games will be expanding engagement and discovery options.

We'll be introducing game gifts, a new service that lets players send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through player search. The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover your game and keep them playing. And the Google Play Store will also feature 18 new game categories, making it easier for players to find games they'll love.

Tools to take your game to the next level

Further enhancing Google Play Game services, we're expanding multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS.

To further help with cross platform game development, we're updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.

In addition, we're launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.

Ad features to better optimize your business

Of course, once you build a great gaming experience, it's important to get rewarded for your work, which is why we'll also be introducing new features to the AdMob platform. We're making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your app. Turning those insights into effective action is vital, so we're excited by the opportunities that in-app purchase ads will offer — enabling you to target users with specific promotions to buy items in your game. Advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers' success, so we're also bringing you new ways to optimize your ads to earn the most revenue.

Watch the Google Sessions at GDC

Check out the stream from our Google Developer Day sessions at GDC 2014. Learn more about how to reach and engage with hundreds of millions of users on Google Play, build Games that scale in the cloud, grow in-game advertising businesses with AdMob, track revenue with Google Analytics, as well as explore new gaming frontiers, like Glass.

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Improved App Insight by Linking Google Analytics with Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

A key part of growing your app’s installed base is knowing more about your users — how they discover your app, what devices they use, what they do when they use your app, and how often they return to it. Understanding your users is now made easier through a new integration between Google Analytics and the Google Play Developer Console.

Starting today, you can link your Google Analytics account with your Google Play Developer Console to get powerful new insights into your app’s user acquisition and engagement. In Google Analytics, you’ll get a new report highlighting which campaigns are driving the most views, installs, and new users in Google Play. In the Developer Console, you’ll get new app stats that let you easily see your app’s engagement based on Analytics data.

This combined data can help you take your app business to the next level, especially if you’re using multiple campaigns or monetizing through advertisements and in-app products that depend on high engagement. Linking Google Analytics to your Developer Console is straightforward — the sections below explain the new types of data you can get and how to get started.

In Google Analytics, see your app’s Google Play referral flow

Once you’ve linked your Analytics account to your Developer Console, you’ll see a new report in Google Analytics called Google Play Referral Flow. This report details each of your campaigns and the user traffic that they drive. For each campaign, you can see how many users viewed listing page in Google Play and how many went on to install your app and ultimately launch it on their mobile devices.

With this data you can track the effectiveness of a wide range of campaigns — such as blogs, news articles, and ad campaigns — and get insight into which marketing activities are most effective for your business. You can find the Google Play report by going to Google Analytics and clicking on Acquisitions > Google Play > Referral Flow.

In the Developer Console, see engagement data from Google Analytics

If you’re already using Google Analytics, you know how important it is to see how users are interacting with your app. How often do they launch it? How much do they do with it? What are they doing inside the app?

Once you link your Analytics account, you’ll be able to see your app’s engagement data from Google Analytics right in the Statistics page in your Developer Console. You’ll be able to select two new metrics from the drop-down menu at the top of the page:

• Active users: the number of users who have launched your app that day


• New users: the number of users who have launched your app for the first time that day

These engagement metrics are integrated with your other app statistics, so you can analyze them further across other dimensions, such as by country, language, device, Android version, app version, and carrier.

How to get started

To get started, you first need to integrate Google Analytics into your app. If you haven’t done this already, download the Google Analytics SDK for Android and then take a look at the developer documentation to learn how to add Analytics to your app. Once you’ve integrated Analytics into your app, upload the app to the Developer Console.

Next, you’ll need to link your Developer Console to Google Analytics. To do this, go to the Developer Console and select the app. At the bottom of the Statistics page, you’ll see directions about how to complete the linking. The process takes just a few moments.

That’s it! You can now see both the Google Play Referral Flow report in Google Analytics and the new engagement metrics in the Developer Console.

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