One point that people without app experience probably aren't considering - on iOS, having a large number of downloads (particularly in the first week after launch) can really boost your keyword rankings and ASO. Without this boost, climbing up the keyword rankings can be extremely difficult.

Apple's pre-order feature does precisely what I'd expect - automatically downloading the app when it's available, which helps jumpstart the flywheel explained above.

I would have expected Google's pre-registration feature to work similarly. Thanks to OP for spending the $$ to find out this isn't the case!

haha it's been my pleasure being a guinea pig. Just wish I could of learned the same lesson for $5k instead of $20k.

One question I had when reading: Had you opted in to all of the appropriate settings so that your personal device should have automatically installed?

I have no way of being 100% certain, however I followed the best practises: - Being on a new version of Android - Having an up to date version of Google Play store app - Being on wifi - Having lots of battery and also plugging my phone in to power

Thanks for sharing your experience. I would have thought they would auto-install the app for users that pre-registered, as Apple does. Seems kind of pointless that they don't do this!

Hope it's helpful for some fellow developers when considering how to promote their app launch :-)

I think it really depends on the product. Some do really well with long onboarding sequences (or pricing pages), some do worse. Our next test is trying to merge the two - have a timeline trial at the top of the page, with more information (if the user wants it) below. We'll see.

Cheers. I'll post the results of our follow-up test and see if we can keep the trial start benefits while bringing retention back up to where it was.