Phalene Gowling, Product Manager at Google Play, shares new pricing strategy optimization tools and a new price experiment feature via the Google Play Console.
At Google’s recent I/O, a session called “Boost your revenue with Play Commerce” highlighted the latest monetization tools that have been integrated into Google Play. Correctly pricing in-app products or content is vital to driving better user lifetime value, reaching new buyers, improving conversion, and encouraging repeat orders. To help with this, Google introduces price experiments for in-app products in Play Console, allowing developers/sellers to test price points at scale and optimize for local purchasing power with confidence. Price experiments will launch in the coming weeks.
- A/B test to find optimal local pricing that is sensitive to the buyers’ purchasing power in various markets. Adjusting your price to suit local markets is an industry-wide practice among developers, so at launch, you will be able to manage and test your global prices within Play Console. The optimal price helps to reach both new and existing buyers who may have previously been priced out of monetized experiences in apps and games. Additionally, it can increase repeat purchases by buyers of their favorite products.
- Experiment with statistical confidence: price experiments enables you to track how close you are to statistical significance with confidence interval tracking, or for a quick summary, you can view the top of the analysis when enough data has been collected in the experiment to determine a statistically significant result. You can also track key monetization metrics such as revenue uplift, revenue derived from new installers, buyer ratio, orders, and average revenue per paying user, which gives you a more detailed understanding of how buyers behave differently for each experiment arm per market. This can also inspire further refinements towards a robust global monetization strategy.
- Improve return on investment in user acquisition. By having a localized price and a better understanding of buyer behavior in each market, sellers/developers can optimize their user acquisition strategy by knowing how buyers will respond to market-specific products or content. It could also inform which products they choose to feature on Google Play.
Illustrative example only. A/B test price points with ease in Play Console
How to Set up Price Experiments?
The price experiments can be easily set up on Google Play Console under the Monetize > Products > Price experiments section. By providing information about the in-app products, markets, and price points to test, the experiment can be refined further using the audience, sensitivity, and confidence level parameters. Once the experiment reaches statistical significance, the winning price can be automatically utilized as the new default price point for products and markets. If necessary, an experiment can be stopped at any point before data collection is sufficient enough. Full control over what and how to test is provided to developers/sellers, without the need for coding changes or external tools.
Sellers/developers can prepare for price experiments by strategizing what type of experiment to run first. Game developers can explore strategic guidance for country-specific conversion opportunities. Preparing for price experiments rolling out in the coming weeks can be facilitated through the Google Play Academy’s course on running effective pricing experiments for in-app products.
