How to Get Featured on Google Play and Adapt ASO to Different Countries
the Full HP studio tells their story
Full HP Ltd is an international mobile game development company with 40+ employees and offices in Rostov-on-Don and Cyprus. Their portfolio includes 8 games, among them Mad GunZ (a Google Play Editors’ choice) and Blocky Cars (a Catappult Editors’ choice). Mad GunZ has over 12 million downloads on all platforms, and Blocky Cars has over 32 million.
The company is actively involved in the life of the IT community and is a sponsor of the Sunflower game devs festival.
The Full HP Ltd team translates texts for Blocky Cars and Mad GunZ using Nitro professional online translation service, and agreed to share some of their lifehacks with us:
- how to maximize ASO optimization results
- how to get on the home page of Google Play
- the benefits of releasing a game on alternative platforms — and much more!
Mad GunZ and Blocky Cars are accessible in 12 languages. Tell us about your approach to the localization process.
Our process is as follows: players from Russia are the first to gain early access to the game. After the game has passed certain tests, we expand early access to MULTI-5 countries (English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian) and begin localizing the pages into these languages. For a while the screenshots and page descriptions are displayed in English for all countries.
As soon as the game is released globally, we immediately add the standard languages in which all our games are released: besides the MULTI-5, these are Portuguese, Arabic, and Asian languages (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai).
Gradually, all the game pages in the stores are localized into new languages, since this lets us reach the most users. It is easiest for us to translate these texts using Nitro, since the translations are frequently ready within a few hours.
While the translation is being readied we analyze keywords and select the most relevant keywords for the game, making sure that these words can be organically inserted into the text.
And where do you localize the game itself?
Previously we worked with a translation agency, but due to the time-consuming paperwork involved (an invoice had to be submitted and payment made via bank transfer before the translation work began) the process was quite lengthy. Plus, several terms in the game require explanation — in Mad Gunz, for example, the weapons have highly specialized names, and we needed to explain to the translators exactly what was meant.
For that reason we switched to Nitro completely. Our games don’t have all that much text, so Nitro suits us both for translating store pages and for localizing the game itself.
The texts are mostly brief: the games are for children, after all, and we don’t want to weigh them down with a lot of text. The largest text in the game is the user agreement. When we were featured on Google in Korea we had to translate the user agreement into Korean. The text was long and of a legal nature, and we translated it through the managers at Alconost. We were quite happy with the result; the text was translated quickly and with no issues.
One lifehack we use is this: standard phrases such as “play” and “menu” are used from one game to the next, so we save them in a translation memory. That way, instead of translating them over again each time, we simply use the existing translations.
New texts appear when game designers introduce new content into the game. For example, ten new phrases are created that have to be translated for the next release. We send them off to Nitro and add our comments for the translator. As a rule, no issues arise, but if the translator isn’t clear on something we explain via a manager.
You mentioned keyword analysis. Tell us how you work with ASO.
We are constantly rewriting ASO for specific countries if we find it necessary. For example, here is a screenshot with data for Turkey.
When it was taken the page had not been localized into Turkish: the screenshots, the description, and everything else was in English. It shows the conversion rate for the page prior to localization of the app page. Only a small number of users were reaching us — 15.8% out of 22,000 users who visited our page on the Play Market.
As a rule, after page localization conversion of the total number of users who visit the page rises by 3–5%. We translated part of the description and all of the screenshots into Turkish. The phrases on the screenshots are short, and users are drawn primarily to the image. Only a few actually read the description.
And here is what conversion looked like 2–3 weeks after localizing the store page: we saw growth of 18% (100% = 3,614, comprising 15.8% of those who installed the game prior to localization. Growth is calculated based on this number, since the number of visitors to the page also increased). We determined that localized screenshots work, but we need to select the best keywords for Turkey.
The same is true of Vietnam: the conversion coefficient was 18.3%, and it rose to 19.5% in the course of a few weeks. ASO takes a long time to pick up speed. To see how conversion will increase you have to observe and constantly work on keywords and screenshots, and then you’ll start seeing results in 2–3 months.
When conducting app store optimization and after regular A/B testing we determined that page conversion for our games in countries such as India, Vietnam, and Malaysia is 5% higher when the text and screenshots are localized.
Can you show us how the conversion rate had changed several months later?
No, because page localization was not the only factor there. In July we were featured, so our numbers rose sharply due to the featuring and the viewers it drew. Mad GunZ was one of Google’s top picks for three weeks on the home page. Far more users visited the page than usual, and so the conversion rate differs significantly from the usual numbers. We can only show a brief period, but page localization has quite clearly produced growth. The same is true in any country.
In Germany the effects of page translation were quite noticeable. Our conversion there was actually in the negative (a percentage of less than 50 shows that we are not gaining users).
When we translated the page into German and selected German keywords instead of English, not only did conversion increase (by 25%), but also the number of visitors to the page.
Localizing the page, and especially the screenshots, is important. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on translating the description, it’s worth at least translating the screenshots and a couple of phrases from the description into the users’ native language. That alone is a huge improvement.
You say you sometimes review and alter keywords. How often is this required?
ASO most often has to be rewritten in Japan and Korea, because the audience there is very specific and requires a particular approach.
We check our AOS regularly, going through every page. But there are countries where this is unnecessary, such as the USA. We track conversion to make sure it remains at the proper level, but we may conduct A/B testing of new words, icons, or screenshots.
It is interesting to note that if ASO is working beautifully in the States, and we take these same words and use them in England, Canada, or Australia, the ASO does not work at all. The same is true of Brazil vs. Portugal, and of the Spanish-speaking countries: what works in Spain may not work in Mexico, Argentina, etc.
We frequently conduct A/B testing with Google, which helps considerably to understand the direction we need to take in our description, which icon has drawn the most users to our page, etc.
We use a marketing tool that allows us to see how our game rates for a given keyword query. Using it we can also check our game’s chances of appearing based on the desired keyword.
Let’s talk about profitability. Your games are translated into 12 languages. Was it worth it? Wouldn’t the 5 most popular European languages have been enough?
We have many paying users from the countries for which we’ve translated the game. I can cite our localization into Portuguese: the language is not one of the MULTI-5, but players from Brazil are some of the best-paying in our games.
When we released Mad GunZ on an alternative platform, Catappult, at the time of release the game had only been localized into English.
We were featured (the largest jump on the screenshot), after which our numbers dropped back. Since most of the players are from Brazil, it was decided to localize the game and the app page into Portuguese. After that the numbers started to climb again.
Here are our five most profitable countries:
Have you had to adapt the games themselves or your advertising campaigns to users in Asian countries? What preferential particularities have you noticed among them?
Naturally, Asian players have completely different preferences. When translating into these languages we use different texts than those for users from Europe. For Asia we have to adapt not only the text, but also the visuals: icons, screenshots, videos… For example, in screenshots for Asia the colors must be very vivid, and the text must be placed differently than in European and American versions of the game.
We have tried increasing the intensity and contrast; once we even made an anime-style skin for one the characters. In the end we expended considerable effort, but the result was not as impressive as we had hoped.
We tried replacing standard horizontal screenshots with vertical ones — we had heard that they were better for page conversion in Korea. Vivid colors on vertical screenshots went over well, but the downside was that the game itself was horizontal.
Asia has a very picky audience. Recently we conducted an advertising campaign on iOS for a number of countries, including Japan, and conversion for Japan was the worst of all.
Adaptation is not employed in the game itself, except for a few impermissible elements for Chinese child target audiences. In Mad GunZ we had one particular case: at first launch there is a tutorial, which for the European audience is conducted by a fairy (a bearded character wearing a fairy dress). But in China a man wearing a dress is unacceptable. They see it as unnatural. We gave him pants and a shirt, and he took on the appearance of a mid-level Chinese manager. With Japan and Korea we had no such issues. Mad GunZ is also present in Iran, and for them we also ditched the dress-wearing man-fairy.
As far as ASO, we try to use Asian trends in the description. For example, we noticed that for our target audience in Asia the most popular search term for games was “robots.” In Blocky Cars we had just introduced robots in the update, so for the European game description we stressed that the game included cars, while in Asian countries we emphasized that the game had robots.
You were featured for three weeks. Was this in the stores for every country? Or how does that work?
It was the Editors’ Choice for the Battle Royale category, which particularly included Mad GunZ. Blocky Cars and Mad GunZ were featured worldwide at almost the same time, but in different categories. Mad GunZ was there for three weeks, and Blocky Cars for one week.
What determines whether you’re there for three weeks or one? How can you stay there for longer?
It all depends on how often the category changes. Battle Royale was one of the summer categories. The editors selected several categories, such as “Best Arcades,” “Battle Royale,” etc. The games selected for each category were posted on the home page. These categories change every three weeks.
In the category where Blocky Cars was, the games change every week. That category is called “New and Updated Games.”
What advice would you give to those who would also like to be featured? What helps accomplish that?
Mad GunZ simply caught someone’s eye. We try to maintain a certain level of profitability, with minimal bugs (crashes, etc., which prevent the user from enjoying the game), and to produce quality content, and all this led to Mad GunZ being selected.
As for Blocky Cars, here we reached out to the experts: we submitted a request stating that we had a quality game and that we wanted to attract more users by being featured. The requirements were the same: a specific profitability level and minimal bugs. Then Google sent their own requirements, and our technical experts adjusted the game slightly to comply with them.
We also had to add gameplay screenshots with no captions or processing — scenes of how the game actually looked. If a company wants Google to notice them, they should absolutely add at least one or two clean, non-Photoshopped screenshots.
Our thanks to the Full HP Ltd team for sharing their fascinating experience!
