Best Practices | Help you easily build excellent Android apps

For the development team, an excellent application experience is essential. In fact, nearly three-quarters of users who gave five-star praise to Android apps on Google Play mentioned their app experience*, as well as app speed, design, and ease of use. At Google, we hope to help all developers create excellent applications, so as to help you do better customer acquisition, retention and profit

*Google Play internal data in 2021.

So, what is a "good application"? This may sound ambitious, but in fact many applications can do this. This stems from the absolute focus on users, and more precisely, it focuses on an intuitive and easy-to-use user experience, allowing users to use the main functions of the application as soon as possible-but this is just the beginning. For a good application, it should be able to run smoothly on any device and provide a consistent experience. The key to creating an excellent application is that all parties involved in the application should pay attention to the experience of the application.

Shared responsibility, or unclear responsibility, is one of the obstacles to the road to excellent applications. Some of the main measures of application quality (for example: crash and load time) are usually regarded as the responsibility of a certain group of the company (for example: engineering team). However, when communicating with first-class teams* how they create outstanding application quality, cross-functional cooperation is obviously a key factor, and the approach is to make engineering, design, product, and business teams work together to move toward a common goal.

*Google Application Quality Research .

So, if you want to build a great app, what are the best practices within the team?

Make application quality the main concern of all departments-not just a problem considered by the engineering team

If I am also in the business team, I can communicate more easily because I can say "Competitor applications are faster than ours. We need to reduce the loading time from 5 seconds to 4 seconds."

——Software engineer for a certain platform application

Excellent applications help improve company performance. The new function is great, but if the new function slows down the application startup time or takes up a lot of device space, the user will eventually reduce the number of times the application is used or even delete the application. Engineers generally establish a company-wide focus on application quality by quantifying the impact of quality issues on performance, as follows:

• Case studies show the impact of response speed, APK size, startup time, and memory usage on business KPIs. You can view relevant case studies through the official understand how developers such as Headspace and Duolingo create excellent applications.
• Referring to benchmark competitor's application, you can view the Google Play Management Center benchmarks and other indicators of similar applications .

around the application function and/or user journey stage

Companies that build teams around the function or user journey stage are more likely to provide a consistent experience for the platforms they cover, launch new applications or new features faster, and provide all customers with a better application experience. These teams are usually cross-functional teams that cover engineering, marketing, user experience, and product departments, and are responsible for the functions of all devices and platforms or the success of the user journey* stage. In addition to ensuring a better experience and functional equivalence, this organizational structure also allows the goals of each functional department to be consistent, eases the situation of each department being independent, and helps the team to focus on achieving specific goals without distraction.

*"User Journey" is the users go through when interacting with your application. Examples of "user journey" include installation, getting started, interaction, and retention.

△ Teams that focus on business goals will pay more attention to users

and your users use the same device

Assuming that most of your users use a specific type of device, and you also use the same mobile phone, tablet or smart watch as your main device, you can get the same experience as the user. Especially the senior leaders of the company, because the decisions they make will affect the daily experience of millions of users. For example, Duolingo has incorporated this approach into the company's DNA. For every Duolingo employee, including the CEO, either use a dedicated device or use an entry-level Android device to reflect the needs of the vast majority of the company's user base.

In the pursuit of quality and excellent applications, a user-centric approach is essential for business development. If you are interested in learning how to build great apps, please refer to our case study with practical tips, and go to the excellent Android application site to sign up for our excellent application summit.

In the follow-up content, we will introduce in depth the two major determinants of achieving a good application experience: the first is application performance and its correlation with user behavior, and the second is to create a seamless user experience across devices. You are welcome to continue to follow the official WeChat public account to get the latest information at any time. You can also subscribe to the Android Developer Newsletter to receive the next issue of notifications and the latest developments and insights from the Android team.

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