You’ve perhaps seen apps and games change icons for specific seasons and occasions. Cute, yes? Absolutely. Catchy? Certainly.

Do these really help or impact business or metrics? This episode explains how these icon swaps are impactful.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW: 

We will talk about the non-obvious benefits of icon changes. You perhaps seen apps and games change icons for specific seasons and occasions and an app icon with a Santa hat. Yes, an app icon with pumpkins or spiders. Of course. Are these cute? Sure! Are these catchy? Certainly! Do these really impact business? Do they really move your metrics? I wasn’t sure. You know, and I thought probably not until I actually looked at the metrics and the only reason I noticed this was because for one of the games that I was working on we tracked reactivations in our internal database. In other words, one of the key metrics we would track was the number of users who had lapsed or the number of users who had not been active in the app for over 60 days but had returned to the app in the last 7 days.

And then I looked at this data and made a correlation with when we change icons. I noticed that every time we will make an icon change without changing anything in our product or CRM strategy. We would immediately see a very dramatic increase in our reactivations. Of course, surprised me at the time but once I stop to think about it this started to make sense when a user sees a completely different icon on the home screen. They’re going to wonder if there’s something new or interesting in the app and they’re immediately prompted to open the app to check it out. Even if they haven’t seen the app for a long time. 

Of course, this doesn’t just have to be a seasonal icon. This could certainly reflect new content in the app, new content at a certain level or a new character being introduced in the app, you know, there are very many possibilities, but I think it’s helpful to know and realize that an icon swap is not just cute but can also drive significant reactivations. 

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

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Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!