Replicated App Store Page

What is a Replicated App Store Page

A replicated app store page is a tool that third-party A/B testing platforms like Storemaven use to replicate an App Store or Google Play environment in order to understand on-page behavior and run A/B tests. By creating a mobile web landing page that looks and feels like the real page in the App Store or Google Play, it’s possible to send test traffic there from paid traffic sources. By simulating the real store experience, marketers can gain invaluable findings from user behavior.

For the user, they will not know they’ve been directed to a replicated store page, hence they’ll behave in line with how they would have behaved if they reached the actual app store page. For the app developer / marketer to test, they will send half the test traffic to one landing page and half to the other page to measure the performance of both. Any user that decides to proceed to install the app will be directed to the real App Store or Google Play store page.

Why a Replicated App Store Page is Important

As a replica page is a web page, the behavior on the page can be fully controlled and tracked for analysis. Apple doesn’t provide or allow any functionality for A/B testing natively on the store so creating a replica app store page is the only way to collect important data on user engagement. And Google Play Experiments is the platform that developers can use to analyze Android apps but it doesn’t provide any on-page behavior analytics (such as video watch rates, screenshot gallery rates). So in order to run any tests on why creative assets or marketing messages perform better than others for install rates, to observe engagement behavior and collect data on which videos were watched, which screenshots were scrolled through, etc, a replica page must be created. It’s crucial that the replica page is made to very high accuracy as if it were the real thing so that users behave as they normally would when they’re in the real store. 

Replicated App Store Page and ASO

ASO teams need to be familiar with this methodology if they’re to conduct testing as if in the App Store and Google Play Store. For anyone in the ASO field that isn’t experimenting with any or all changeable elements on the page, they are limiting their opportunities for growth. A replicated app store page is the perfect playground for marketers to avoid guessing what might work with the audience. Third-party companies that implement this methodology like Storemaven can help an app or game gain ground in the competitive mobile app market. 

It’s imperative for teams to understand what improvements need to be made in product pages and why, on an ongoing basis. Only by seeing how users engage with the assets and messages that are presented to them on the replicated page, can ASO pull levers to improve conversion rates (CVR).