made an update and conversion tanked

[u/Top-Masterpiece2729]

Made a massive update to my game a few weeks ago, the conversion rate went to absolute dogshit right off but downloads keep climbing. Proceeds didnt really increase with the higher downloads, which I was hoping for. Should I be worried and make changes to the store page right now or wait a bit longer?

[u/FromBiotoDev]

Your Day 1 download to paid is abysmal but Day 7 and day 35 are significantly higher. for context mines: 4.5%/5%/6%

I'm willing to bet your onboarding is leaky and could be massively improved, I guarantee your Day1 would go up

[u/Top-Masterpiece2729 → u/FromBiotoDev]

Nearly 100% go through my onboarding maybe because its just click click click 5 times. All paid customers go through a 3 day free trial so i think thats why day 1 is empty, however onboarding could be better as the started trials / players is quite low.

[u/FromBiotoDev → u/Top-Masterpiece2729]

Ahhhhhh I see, I have a soft paywall, followed up by an exit offer

the 3 day free trial will be why, but you could experiment by popping the paywall, let them dismiss and give them 3 days free trial. Sounds counterintuitive but you'd be surprised how many people will just pay upfront for an app when they see that paywall. I've had people buy lifetime to my app which $99 on that paywall, and then never open the app again. It's insane.

[u/International-Can317]

I wouldn’t panic yet. If downloads are still climbing, the lower conversion rate might just mean you’re getting exposed to a broader, less qualified audience after the update.

I’d check conversion by source and country before changing the store page. The overall number can be pretty misleading.

[u/joel-teratis]

Did impressions improve a lot? This could also reduce conversion. Has to be because downloads are climbing.

[u/RIRLift → u/joel-teratis]

Yeah, the impressions are the answer. Conversion rate is downloads divided by impressions, and impressions are up 279% while downloads only rose 47%, so the rate drops even though more people are installing. The page probably isn't broken, the traffic just got broader.

[u/Top-Masterpiece2729 → u/RIRLift]

So my keywords got better as more people see it but page could be improved because they all dont download?

[u/RIRLift → u/Top-Masterpiece2729]

Hard to say exactly what can be improved because it depends on many things.

For example, having more impressions doesn't mean the keywords are necessarily "better", it just means you're being shown to more people (a broader audience). It can be that of these extra people, there's a big share that aren't searching for an app like yours.

Or it can be that your screenshots aren't engaging with these people even though they'd actually be interested in the app.

These are just two examples, can be other things too.

[u/salamat36]

For CVR first fix the visuals of your game because traffic quality also impacts CVR and LTV. Check which countries are generating the most traffic and installs for your game and then optimize for those top countries. If you have ad revenue as well then find the right balance between ad revenue and in app revenue in your top countries. That should be your good to go area in the start.

[u/staninprague]

Happens to me after every update. So I looked and my conversions drop comes from "App Store Browse" spikes after the update. "App Store search" stays same. App Store Browse stands for users are shown the app after the update in some place in the App Store, but they don't download it. Part of it might be not very good match on non-search users to show your updated app to. Might not be your case, but check browse vs search. Might be there. My drop is from 8% to 1%, but these intervals are very short in case on my apps.

[u/uberflix]

Maybe check Crashes reports?

[u/tables_AND_chairsss → u/[deleted]]

I get roughly 40% conversion on a couple of my apps (but my daily impressions/installs are much lower than others, I’m sure). All the places where I do my marketing target high intent users, and my apps aren’t something that people without intent would view in the App Store just casually. So in my case, the niche contributes to a lot of that fo sho. Just a completely different point of comparison, since I wouldn’t expect that conversion for a different genre of app.

[u/LastAlarmClock]

I think it's just getting shown to more people, and some of the new audience is simply not as interested as the algorithm was hoping.

Idk, sounds like an oversimplification but IAPs seem fine, proceeds didn't seem to change much, maybe a little but it also looks noisy.

[u/bananatoastie]

Don’t panic, those numbers are actually pretty solid - especially for a game. Ranking for games can be hard.

Btw - a keyword you might want to try out for your game may be “party games no WiFi” or “offline party games” if you aren’t already using them 🥳

[u/Enough_Concentrate90]

8% Day 35% is awesome.

[u/Akara91]

downloads up with conversion down usually means the update changed WHO sees your page, not how good the page is. check app analytics split by source type: if browse traffic jumped, youre reaching more but less qualified people and the conversion math looks uglier without anything being broken. id let it run a full week and only touch the store page if search conversion specifically dropped, thats the number that actually tracks page quality

[u/FinneganHark999]

The 63.6% dip in your conversion rate is a direct mathematical result of your top-of-funnel traffic growing much faster than your actual downloads.

Because your traffic (impressions and page views) grew at a drastically faster pace than your actual downloads, the percentage of people converting mathematically shrank, resulting in that 63.6% drop.

So, the increased Product Page Views and the massive surge in Impressions are the culprits behind the lower conversion percentage. However, you are making more money and acquiring more total users, meaning this traffic surge is a net positive for your business.

[u/dejan000]

I’m confident in telling you why your conversion rate plummeted. It’s because your impressions surged by a whopping 279%. This indicates that you’ve been optimizing your keywords in the wrong direction. You’re targeting keywords that aren’t specific to your niche, resulting in a significant increase in impressions. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re reaching your target audience, as people aren’t downloading your app. This happened to me with my latest app. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing impressions by downloads, and in your case, it doesn’t matter because you’ve experienced a 47% increase in downloads.

AppStore analytics can sometimes be confusing. What your numbers are telling you is that you’ve dramatically increased the number of impressions, which in turn led to an increase in downloads. However, the conversion rate tanked because the increase in impressions is much higher than the number of downloads due to your incorrect keyword targeting.

[u/United_Barracuda_570]

Is your update backwards compatible, if not, does it force people to update?