As part of the big widget comeback, the Google Photos team introduced the new Reminders widget last year, which can be placed on the home screen as a virtual picture frame. The reminders, as well as the widget, are quite popular and now the developers are detailing how they made it a success: through the nasty Android notifications.
As an adaptation of the popular Stories feature, Google Photos introduced Reminders, which aims to remind users of past events from the past few weeks, months, and years. So that they don’t necessarily have to use the app for this, there was also a widget in the modern Material You design. But according to the developers, usage was very low at the beginning, so the whole thing should be given a boost. And this has also been found within Android.
Instead of pointing this out within the app or running an advertising campaign (which would probably be difficult for a product without direct income), the Android notifications were used. In the following days, all users received a push message informing them that there is now a Google Photos widget that can bring memories to the home screen. If a user entered it, they went directly to the widget selection and the virtual picture frame could be placed in the selected form.
The frames should be familiar by now and I think that the users who have tried it once have stuck with it to a large extent. If necessary, you create another home screen to give the memories enough space and to be able to look in very regularly with just one swipe.
The campaign was a huge success
According to the Google Photos team, this campaign was a huge success. They had a conversion rate of 15 percent, which is supposed to be a lot. This means that 15 percent of all users clicked on this notification.
Conversely, they also wiped away and ignored 85 percent. The use of the widget is said to have increased tenfold as a result. A nice success, which doesn’t surprise me personally. Who looks regularly at the widgets on Android, mainly because Google let the topic slide for a good decade. Users just didn’t know.
… but the nasty notifications
The way was certainly the right one, but with the post in the Android Developer Blog, you want to advertise the notifications as a kind of advertising. I think that’s very unfortunate, because in recent years even these notifications have been demonized as advertising and measures have been taken to prevent this. Google Photos (and also Google Maps) aren’t exactly among the apps that rarely use this medium. I’m aware of the difference between Google’s notifications and some apps’ spam, but there’s still a double standard here.
You can find more information about this campaign and what other tests have been carried out on the Android Developers Blog.