If you’re designing a mobile page and you have an app for the site, the temptation to throw that detail into the reader’s face is rather compelling. The app is better and the readers will appreciate it, right?
Tablet picture from Shutterstock
Google researched the issue, looking at both the conversion rate for sites that used an interstitial page for mobile clients, as well as the rates at which conversion interstitials led to readers completely abandoning a page.
The good news is that 9 per cent of the surveyed users did follow through to an app install page from an interstitial link page, which in the context of online ads is a pretty decent click rate, although there’s no indication that the users who clicked through either didn’t already have the app or bothered to install it.
The bad news, however, is that 69 per cent of readers simply abandoned the page at the interstitial level, which means that the content behind it never got any kind of chance to shine.
It may be nice to have a great mobile app experience for your customers, but do you really want to burn nearly three quarters of your audience letting them know about it?
Google+: A case study on App Download Interstitials [Google]
Comments
5 responses to “Interstitial App Install Pesters Don’t Work”
The worst offender: Bleacher Report.
Thechive I recon is the worst.
If a mobile site decides to throw up anything else other than what I expected, I’m not even going to give the site the time of day.
Why on earth would I want to download apps for every single site I go on when it’s all there in the browser without having to keep switching between apps? It only gets worse when they decide to put ads in the app which are heaps more intrusive and annoying than any ad the website displays.
I just stop browsing sites that do this. I have enough damned apps, I don’t need them for websites. Unless your app is offering something unique or powerful, I’m not interested.
Yeah, the idea that one website is important enough to justify having an entire app for it is one of those completely tone-deaf, self-absorbed things that some corporations do.
Yeah. I get it. What you’re selling is your entire world. As a consumer? It’s less than five minutes of my day. I have nowhere near the same investment or interest.
It’s like when game publishers always tried to default install games to a publisher folder, as if they honestly believed that was some useful categorizing method for me. “I’m just going to go load up my favourite Ubisoft game!”
Bullshit.
Title/franchise first. Developer second. Publisher last – if at all. THAT’S the order of relevance and awareness. Sorting things by a category I actively don’t give a shit about? Utterly pointless and an aggravating indicator of where their priorities lie.