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How would you redesign the Apple App Store?

While the question sounds like it’s purely focused on design, it was asked in a technical product manager interview with the intent of improving the product – so it might be design, but might also be treated as the general “how would you improve…”.
  • Related to Product Improvement
  • For Internal Tools PM
  Apple
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Answers (2)

Clarifying questions – Is there a specific problem that I should try to solve or provide a generic improvement strategy based on known issues/customer feedback?

Am I solving for the mobile platform or the desktop version.

Are we trying to improve the feature for customers or for content providers who upload new applications?

Is the redesign on a global scale or targeting a specific market?

 

Assumption: There are few enhancements that I will provide based on known issues/ customer feedback. And I will solve for the App Store in general, agnostic of the platform. Moreover, my target audience will be for customers using the store on a global level.

 

Description: Apple App Store is a one-stop shop to download any macOS compatible application on any apple product. It contains an array of software/applications catering to different types of users – from gamers to developers to photographers. The applications are categorised based on the user groups. Since it’s an open marketplace of applications for the MacOS, users who develop these applications can upload on the App Store.

 

Problems that users face:

 

  1. Currently the apps on the store are very haphazardly placed, there is no way to easily filter and find the right application that you might need.
  2. The discover and the’Today’ feature are not very smart, in the sense they don’t show personalised applications that I might like. They just show what is popular among majority people even though applications used by me are not related to that.
  3. The subscriptions to applications with free trials do not have a way of notifying when the trial period is nearing an end. Due to this I get charged for applications that I may have downloaded for a trial but might not use anymore.

 

Solutions

 

Problem Solution Ease of implementation Impact to users Priority
1 Provide users with the option to filter based on different criteria such as ratings, categories, developer, etc Easy High Impact P0
2 Make the recommendations more personalised by matching to which applications customers download Easy High Impact P0
2 Match recommendations according to application usage on the phone. Try matching recommendations to type of data users search online, or their profession, etc. Medium to High Medium Impact P1
2 Show applications that are newly launched, and which a particular customer may use, through notifications. Medium to High High Impact P0
3 Build a robust notification that informs users about when their trial period is ending and also just before deducting the amount from their cards. This will definitely improve user experience. Medium to High High Impact P2

 

 

I will start with all the ones marked P0 as they will definitely have a significant impact on users and improve the experience of the store. Also these would be quick wins and according to me these are must-haves are the rest are nice-to-have features.

 

Summary:

To summarise, my aim here is to improvise the Apple App Store based on current user experience. I will begin with understanding the user pain points with the existing product before going for any improvements. Also, this will be based on the clarified scope. Once the user pain points are understood, it helps to brain-storm solutions and I will build an MVP with the features that have a high impact on users and that are also easy to implement based on the technology already in place.

1. Clarify: what are we re-designing for? Revenue? Engagement?

A: Revenue

Ok, so we want to drive revenue and I’m assuming we want to make sure we don’t ruin the UX, causing users to churn.

I’m assuming the main revenue sources of the App Store are:

  • Search ads – money from developers who promote their apps
  • App / in-app purchases and app subscriptions
  • $100 annual developer subscription for app devs
  • Indirect revenue: App Store is part of the larger ecosystem, hence its success is tied to more purchases of phones, macs, etc.

2. Goal: to increase revenue produced by the app store, with minimal to no impact on retention. Therefore, we’ll need to define our “North star” success metric to be Average Revenue Per Active App Store User – to normalize for external factors that might influence the number of active users overall. Let’s also define a few guardrail metrics:

  •  App Store MAU – we want to make sure retention is not impacted
  •  Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) overall for an Apple user – not just active App Store users – this will ensure we’re not cannibalizing revenue from other places.

 

3. Journey: let’s briefly review the user journey:

  • app developer subscribes to the annual dev subscription – that generates revenue from devs
  • dev submits a paid app to the store, pays $X/day for installs or impressions (not sure if it’s pre-paid, or per install)
  • user searches for an app, clicks on the ad at the top of search results. That generates revenue from devs (same as above)
  • User installs the app, and either pays for it, or makes an in-app purchase, or subscribes. Generates revenue from users.
  • At some point, user stops using the app and hence stops making in-app purchases or unsubscribes.

4. Usually at this point we’d discuss user segments, but I’d like to focus on the specific revenue-generating use-cases and see which can be re-designed to bring in more revenue.

The cases are, as we discussed before:

  1. annual dev subscription
  2. App/in-app purchases
  3. Search ads

I’d like to focus on search ads, since the dev subscription is already pretty high, app/in-app purchases already takes a controversially high share of 30%, but for search ads there’s a potential to make it generate more revenue without necessarily increasing prices.

 

5. Solutions:

  1. Increase # of placements in the app store.
    1. Currently, it’s only the 1st result on top when you search. How about sprinkling in more – let’s say at 5th placement and on 15th placement. There might be a limited demand.
    2. If demand is a problem – why limit to only app ads, especially in the subsequent placements in search results? Many times people want to solve a problem. An app is just one way to do it. E.g. I might want to invest in stocks. One way is to show me a stocks-trading app. Another way is to show an ad for a service that would take me to a URL of a stocks-trading company (that might not have an app in the store).
    3. Why limit to just the search tab – how about promoting in Games, Apps, Arcade and Today?
  2. Increase CPM per ad campaign: allow Video ads with double the price.
  3. Sorting the non-sponsored apps: for otherwise equal apps (reviews, relevancy, etc) – prioritize the one that has more monetization potential – but depending on user’s purchase history.
  4. Apps monthly subscription service, like Netflix for apps – say $14.99/mo for access to all the aps that opted-in to this service
  5. In-app ads (why iAd was pulled out in the first place?)

6. Prioritization:

Solution Cost Benefit
1.1 Additional placements in Search results Low dev effort, low risk, easy to experiment. The only blocker might be lack of demand. Low cost overall. High: Almost seamless to the end user, but can boost revenue by tens of %.
1.2 Non-app ads Should be low, just re-use the same framework for ads in News/Stocks – to show similar ads in search results. Making it as relevant might be additional work (keyword matching). However, might ruin the user flow: the user is expecting to only see apps. So medium. High: additional revenue not necessarily from app devs
1.3 Ads in other tabs A bit more complicated, since it needs to play well with the rest of the criteria for surfaced content, which is prioritized with a big focus on relevancy. Random ads would degrade the UX. Overall medium High
2. Video ads Would require supporting or developing a video ad player in the ad placements and some experimentation to make sure users don’t hate it. Low Medium, as it’s only an incremental increase in revenue over display banners.
3. Sorting to prio more expensive apps Doesn’t sound very ethical, not recommended. Might actually hurt the UX and cause churn.
4. Monthly subscription Need a lot of analysis to understand whether this model would actually bring more revenue. Also need a lot of work to get as many quality devs to opt-in. The risk is that the first to opt-in would be low-quality apps that are not downloaded otherwise. High Medium. A certain share of users would opt-in, but again need to protect against cannibalization
5. In-app ads Should not be a high effort to re-use the same ad framework from News/Stocks, inside an app, as part of the iOS SDK. There’re probably risks that led to iAd closure. Medium. High

 

7. Based on this analysis, I’d recommend to go with an MVP phase of just 1.1 (increasing the number of ads/search results list), combining it with 2 (video ads) but limited to search results.

As next phase, I’d venture into exploring additional placements in other tabs like For you, Arcade, etc. and then 1.2 (non-app ads) in all categories.