iOS 15 New Features Are Available, How It Affect Mobile App Growth?

The long-awaited iOS 15 features, custom product pages, and product page optimization are finally officially launched. We will discuss the new features of this iOS 15 iteration and what this update means for mobile growth practitioners. How to face the new features as app users, developers, advertisers or marketers? Our ASO experts will provide you with some useful information from these 4 perspectives: paid user acquisition, ASO, creativity and analysis.

What new features of the iOS 15 update need to be paid attention to?

In this update, Apple has released two long-awaited features for global app store optimization (ASO), user acquisition (UA), and mobile marketing experts.

• App Store's new custom product page (CPP) function
• Product page optimization (PPO) function (same as an upgrade of the native a/b test).

Note: If you do not see the CPP and PPO functions in the App Store Connect console, it may be you did not opt-in when you started the in-app event. If you go to this App Store Connect submission link and click "Continue" at the bottom to opt-in (account holder permissions are required), you will be able to access these features.

For the official details of the custom product page, you can view: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/custom-product-pages/.

You can view the official details about product page optimization: https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/.

The most important things that happen in your app store optimization (ASO) and mobile marketing works, as well as how to optimize your app page and designs, for detailed strategies, you can check our related articles: How to Utilize In-App Events to Increase Your Mobile App Visibility and Engagement?

Official details about custom product page (CPP) updates

In the much-anticipated announcement, there are several new details that reveal the importance of custom product pages for every ASOer and UA team worldwide.



You can create up to 35 CPPs for each app on the App Store.

As mentioned earlier, you can create up to 35 custom product pages for each real-time application.


You can customize your custom product page screenshots, promotional text and app previews for the localization of any page.

For each CPP, you can customize any localization ideas you have. This means that users who browse your custom product page (when they click on their unique URL or view an ad presented by Storekit on an ad) will view a variant of the custom product page you created and experience personalized information.


After creating a CPP, you can use its unique URL

You will receive a unique URL that you can use wherever the link is used to drive traffic to your landing page. This could be email marketing, cross-promotion, your mobile website, and paid UA campaigns with configurable URL targets.

 

Ad Networks will support custom product pages through the ads presented by the Store-kit. This announcement means that you can use custom product pages in each ad by specifying a unique CPP identifier in the campaign settings.



In early 2022, Apple Search Ads will support custom product pages, so you can use them to create tailored ad variants to display the most relevant information and ideas for different audiences.



Customize product page measurements with new data in App Store Connect

Data related to the performance of custom product pages will surface through App Store Connect, such as product page views, first downloads, re-downloads, retention, and average programs per paid user. This is critical to understanding the conversion rate of each product page and the performance of the entire channel you use it, including the value generated by users in that channel in the form of retention and sales.

Official details about the iOS 15 product page optimization  update

1. Similar to custom product pages, Apple provides more colors in product page optimization (PPO) or running native a/b tests on the default App Store page.



Note: PPO only runs on your default product page. If you use custom product pages properly by attracting all paid UA traffic, you will only receive organic traffic. In short, PPO is a method of A/B testing "organic" App Store product pages for organic search and browsing traffic.

2. Product page optimization a/b test will only be displayed to iOS 15 users (or higher)
Only iOS 15 users are "eligible" to view the PPO test. At present, the adoption rate of iOS 15 is about 56%, and I expect it to exceed 70% soon. As the adoption rate continues to increase, there will be more sample traffic available for testing.

3.You can test your screenshots, app preview videos and icons through up to 3 different processing methods (or different product page variations)
For PPO a/b testing, you can test your product page screenshots, application preview videos and icons. For icons though, you’ll have to submit a new app version with the icons you want to test in the binary of the app, as Apple will ensure that a user who downloaded your app through a variation with a certain icon will also see that icon on their homepage.

If you apply the most popular creative information to all 100% of users, and the winner icon is different from the icon in your control variant, you’ll have to include that new icon in the next app version submission. 

Note: If you configure mobile marketing and UA so that all paid UA traffic reaches the custom product page, then the traffic eligible for the test will be solely organic search and browse traffic. 

4.You can take the localizations to be included in the test
For each test, you can configure the localization to be included in the test audience. This means that if you select all localizations for your treatment (default), then users will see the localized version in their language.



If you exclude a localization from the test, users in that localization will only see your original product page and will not be included in the test.

5. You can estimate the duration of your test, and if feasible, you will have at least 90% confidence in the results
There is a very useful feature that allows you to estimate the duration of the test. It allows you to choose the desired improvements to CVR, and therefore see the number of impressions required to reach at least 90% confidence, and whether you have enough traffic. Regardless of whether the confidence level is reached, the test will automatically close after 90 days.

6. Custom product pages may appear in featured placements
According to the official announcement, although custom product pages will not appear when users search the App Store, they may appear in the Today, Games, and Apps tabs if the editorial team finds it suitable. I don’t expect this to happen a lot anyway, but take into account it might. 

7.When you apply the treatment as the winner while the test is still running, it will automatically end the test
This action cannot be undone, so be careful when applying treatment as a winner. When your app campaign is processing, only screenshots and preview videos will be implemented. If the winner treatment has an icon, you must include it in the next app version as the default app icon.

8. More color on what the monitoring and results of the tests
A few cool things in the PPO a/b test results screen are: 
You can see the improvement from the baseline CVR for each treatment, and you can choose a different baseline (as one of the treatments) so that you can "mark control". You will see if you managed to build confidence between the two treatments, not just between the treatment and the control.
After collecting enough data, you will start to see more information in processing CVR cards, such as: worst performance, better performance, or the most interesting "may be uncertain" which predicts that a variant is unlikely to produce a CVR change either way by the time the tests will end.

Note: In addition to your app version and default product page metadata, you can now submit multiple entities for review. In-app events, custom product pages, product page optimization processing. While you are waiting for review by these entities, your ability to submit more assets (including your app version) will be suspended until the App Store review team completes the review. So be diligent in your submission plan, especially for time-sensitive entities.

How will the new features of iOS 15 affect your mobile marketing efforts?

• Paid user acquisition
• ASO
• Creative
• Analysis

Mobile marketers have entered a new era - the era of controlling mobile installation channels. Every advertising network and channel, every campaign and advertising creative, every search advertising keyword group, all natural channels. All these channels will now end with the right information, providing the right information for the right audience on your CPP and your organic product page.

iOS 15 and paid user acquisition

With iOS 15, you can now create up to 35 versions of App product pages - this opens up new possibilities for paid users to acquire activities. Using custom pages, you can divide target users into different groups and highlight the most important features of each specific group. This will help increase the effectiveness of paid advertising campaigns, because you can now target audiences with specific intents to the right pages, and you can view important metrics such as impressions, installs, and conversion rates for each product page, which will allows you to adjust message delivery so in order to turn these faucets into installations.

Some user acquisition strategies:

• Set acquisition and relocation
• Use the acquisition activity directly for the simplest/easy to understand function
• Direct redirect marketing activities to the application product page, highlighting the most advanced functions of the application

 
Segment users based on their interests.
Examples of health and fitness apps:

• Application Product Page 1: Highlight the training plan
• Application product page 2: Highlight nutrition plan

 
Highlight seasonal events:
Design a specific App product page to highlight special offers for holiday.

When the existing paid UA channels have performed well and the budget reaches a certain size, these strategies can level up for mobile growth.

iOS 15 and App Store optimization

The new product page optimization feature provides an excellent opportunity to enhance your ASO strategy. Native A/B testing for paid and natural channels has entered the app store.
It’s time to draw your USP and highlight the most important features for your target users on your product page, because you can test up to 3 processing methods (icons, screenshots, and application previews). These tests allow you to adjust your messaging accordingly to convert these clicks into installs.
PPO allows 3 types of visual effects to be used for A/B testing, and you can test for 90 days. By accessing the data in App Store Connect to monitor the performance of these variants, you can better control how to optimize the conversion rate of organic traffic for all applications.
iOS15 will make the app store more competitive, because apps will have more data on how to better market their products. For paid and organic, this is a huge opportunity to put aside the guesswork and adopt these new strategies as soon as possible. Keep in mind that these native tests will only be shown for natural channels (browsing and search) and can run for up to 90 days.

iOS 15 and creativity

The new product page feature of iOS 15 has been awaited for a long time in the mobile industry. The A/B testing function of iOS 15 will make creativity play a more important role. Only visual assets are confirmed to be eligible for A/B testing of product page optimization in the app store - icons, screenshots, app preview videos - which will provide a deeper understanding of the success or failure of app ideas.

iOS 15 and app analysis

The privacy update of iOS 14.5 has had a huge impact on data and analysis. In iOS15, if the endpoint of the advertiser server is specified in the application, the postback copy from SkadNetwork will be sent to the application publisher. Because of this, advertisers can have raw data to cross-reference or verify numbers from media sources and self-attribution networks.
This is not an easy task, because the original data still needs to be enriched with ad network data, but this is a step that allows application developers to save the data from the winning install verification postback for the first time. If implemented, this data can become a true source of understanding of the performance of other integrations with SANs or media sources.
Overall, this is an important step that will continue to share the path of anonymous data with all appropriate participants to reduce inconsistencies between data reports, thereby enhancing advertisers’ decision-making.

Final thoughts

There is no doubt that new iOS features are affecting mobile applications in a major way. There are so many moving parts, so to grasp all the changes, and, perhaps more importantly, to take advantage of opportunities requires a lot of attention and concentration.