At Develop:Brighton 2016, Mathieu Sneep, Team Lead, Mobile Developer Sales EMEA from Google, gave a talk on how to grow your mobile app with Google.

According to Sneep, 60% of mobile apps released are never downloaded, which Google is trying to change.

One solution is the introduction of Google's Firebase, a single SDK that unifies all of Google's tools, and works cross-platform.

Capturing intent

Sneep then moved onto practical tips for app growth starting with "capturing intent", which mostly revolves around "mastering search".

One such way a developer can make use of search is using search ads within Google Play, which are seen by over 1 billion people.

Sneep also suggested that developers should index their app and all its content, which helps boost ranking and enables autocomplete to lead to your app, making it easier for users to search for it.

Icons and ads

He then turned to the actual app page on Google Play, noting that the icon was the most important aspect of the page that drove traffic to the page.

Sneep then moved onto automation, discussing Google's Universal Ad Campaigns, which automatically runs ads across all its platforms in the appropriate format with little input from the developer.