Apple’s Custom Product Pages were launched a year ago, and they might just be the best Apple sales tool that you’ve yet to take advantage of. Put simply, they allow you to tailor the product page to different audiences. Not infinitely – you can only have 35 live at any one time – and not automatically, as they take a bit of work to set up and strategy to be effective.
But put the work in and they might just be 2023’s biggest app marketing success.
What are Custom Product Pages?
Custom Product Pages (CPPs) allow you to create different App Store product pages (similar to landing pages on web) on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 or later, giving you the flexibility to position your app in different ways in line with your paid campaigns. You can do that through changing the screenshots, promotional text and app previews for each Custom Product Page. In Apple’s example below, you can see that they target different audiences by changing what activity is shown in the app screenshots.
You can then share these Custom Product Pages, because they’re each given a unique URL. This isn’t exclusive to Apple Search Ads campaigns, you can also use Custom Product Pages for Facebook campaigns and TikTok campaigns (and more!).
How can Custom Product Pages support your ASO strategy?
As we’ve previously discussed, Apple rewards developers that utilise new Apple features, by displaying them more prominently in the App Store. So embrace the CPP and you’ll increase your chances of being featured by the editorial staff.
But besides this, the main reason to use CPPs is because they work, bringing down that all-important Cost Per Install (CPI) and increasing your ROAS.
Not only are CPPs valuable in their own right, increasing the number of installs, but also they have further value to your marketing efforts as a whole.
For instance, in Apple’s Mountain Climber app example, if the Bike Trails page significantly outperforms the others, it would be worth using this knowledge to inform your CRM strategy, for example, testing Bike Trail-related push and in-app messaging, or wider marketing activities such as sponsoring a bike event. You can even use it to inform your product roadmap, perhaps going as far as to create a brand-new bike-specific app.
Pro tip: When you set up CPPs, you need to track CPI as your key success metric, not conversion rate (CVR). That’s because your CVR can often drop during these campaigns. Why? Because your impressions will likely increase, due to the additional exposure Apple gives you for utilising CPPs. Let’s use a simple example to illustrate.
So, while getting 10 installs from 100 impressions is clearly better than 5 installs from 20 impressions, the CVR rate for 100 impressions is 10%, vs a 25% CVR from 20 impressions. That’s why it’s the money you spend per each of those installs that really matters.
How do you set up Custom Product Pages to lower your CPI?
It’s clear that the potential of CPP is huge, but how can you go about lowering your CPI?
#1 Do your research
Collaborate cross-company to brainstorm everything that can be tested using CPPs. Look at the features of your app (French, Spanish, Dutch language courses), the differing audiences of your app (those learning for business vs travelling purposes), the different creative approaches to how you market your app (aspirational holiday photography vs in-app UX illustrating ease of use), etc.
Next, look at how campaigns have performed in the past, to see if there are any indications as to where you might see success with CPPs. If particular keywords have performed better, can you build CPPs around those, or are there general trends that are worth noting?
#2 Produce your creative assets for Custom Product Pages
When creating a custom product page in App Store Connect, you can choose to start with a copy of your default product page or a completely blank page. From there, you can then customise screenshots, promotional text, and app previews for any of your page’s localisations. Finally, use the App Store Connect API to automate metadata upload and submission.
Our tips for producing best-performing assets:
- Make sure there’s thematic consistency between your ad (whether that’s an Apple Search Ad, Facebook ad, or something else) and your CPP so that users can be confident they’ve come to the right place. That includes consistent branding and creative, such as using the same style of illustrations throughout.
- You can have up to 35 CPPs running at any one time, so it’s a good opportunity to be bold in your experimentation. We’re not saying rewrite your entire product page in Korean if there’s no indication you have a Korean-speaking audience, but if you’ve noticed some interesting micro-trends in your reporting, now is the time to delve deeper into those.
- 35 separate product pages is a lot, so to reduce the workload for your team, be aware that the majority of people only see the first two screenshots. Change these first two to four on each page, rather than dedicating resources to entirely new screengrab sequences for 35 different pages.
- Unless you’re a new business with no benchmarks and no knowledge as to what works and what doesn’t, think about spending between 10-15% of your UA budget on CPPs. It’s a supplementary activity that should sit alongside your always-on user acquisition campaigns.
#3 Create your acquisition campaigns
Once Apple has approved your pages, go to the Console to find the unique url in Console, with a new product page ID parameter to your default product page URL. You can set up Apple Search Ads using these urls, or use an advertising network to feature your Custom Product Pages in StoreKit-rendered ads by specifying a unique CPP identifier in the campaign setup.
These unique urls can be used anywhere – you could literally create a product page for your mum and then send her the link to convince her to download your app!
But their true power comes from being able to target keywords. There’s the obvious ones, such as displaying the Spanish language feature when someone searches for “Spanish language app”. But there’s also the less obvious ones, like using your competitor keywords to direct users to a page showing specifically how your app differs from the others.
#4 Measure and evaluate your campaign performance
When you’ve gathered enough data to reach statistical significance, you’ll be able to use the insights gained with confidence. Compare your CPP results with your baseline i.e. your standard product page (and as mentioned above, pay attention to the CPI over your CVR).
Ideally, you’ll see an increase in impressions and installs, even if your conversion rate is down. If that is the case, continue running this CPP. If there’s a CPP that isn’t performing, consider whether it needs tweaking e.g. the messaging isn’t clear, or getting rid of it all together e.g. people simply aren’t searching for a Klingon language learning app.
Share your learnings across teams, using the information you’ve gleaned to inform other areas of the business, both in marketing and beyond.
Conclusion
You might think the success of your CPPs depends on how much budget you can dedicate to it, how well your creative team can execute or even whether the App Store editorial staff picks up on your efforts.
In contrast, it’s a lot more basic than that: it depends on the collaboration between your User Acquisition (UA) and App Store Optimisation (ASO) team. It’s the ASO team that has the insights on compelling conversion factors and search term intent, while it’s the UA team that has the expertise on audiences, targeting, creative and how to run the campaigns themselves. It’s a fact so important that many app marketing agencies will only run these types of campaigns when both ASO and UA services are contracted since success using one but not the other is limited.
Overall, CPPs deliver on Apple’s mission to create a more customised experience for each user. With the potential to not just convert more users, but to gain valuable user insight that can be rolled out across the business, they’re a must-have for any app marketer.
