Google published on the Webmaster Central blog a case study of how Google+ used App Interstitials to promote users to download the Google+ app. In short, Google decided to drop the App Interstitial because it didn't lead to any significant improvement in app downloads but did lead to a much higher web page abandoned rate.
What is an App Interstitials? It is when you go to a piece of content someone links to and instead of seeing the content, you see a promotion to download the app to see the content. Here is a picture:
Google said this resulted in:
- 9% of the visits to our interstitial page resulted in the ‘Get App’ button being pressed. (Note that some percentage of these users already have the app installed or may never follow through with the app store download.)
- 69% of the visits abandoned our page. These users neither went to the app store nor continued to our mobile website.
After they dropped it, Google shared other stats:
- 1-day active users on our mobile website increased by 17%.
- G+ iOS native app installs were mostly unaffected (-2%). (We’re not reporting install numbers from Android devices since most come with Google+ installed.)
I hate landing on App Interstitials pages, hate it.
But clearly Google is making yet another statement here. This is not yet baked into the Google Mobile Friendly algorithm - not yet at least. But google has said time and time again that it most likely will.
Here is just one more case.
So if you use this method, you may want to rethink it.
Forum discussion at Google+.
