Product Page Optimization (PPO): How to A/B Test Your App Store Page

Quick answer: Product Page Optimization (PPO) is Apple's built-in A/B testing in App Store Connect. You test up to three treatments of your app icon, screenshots and app previews against your original product page, choose what share of visitors sees them, and run for up to 90 days. Results show conversion rate, improvement and confidence, and Apple recommends waiting for at least 90% confidence before applying a winner.

PPO shows randomly selected App Store visitors an alternate version of your default product page and measures which version gets more downloads. Each person keeps seeing the same version for the whole test.

Apple's own traffic example: if you allocate 40% of traffic and create two treatments, each treatment gets 20% and your original keeps 60%.

Treatments aren't limited to your product page. Apple notes that alternate screenshots, previews or icons may also appear in search results and on the Today, Games and Apps tabs, which is good news: you're testing what people really see when they decide.

1. Write one hypothesis. For example: "A first screenshot that leads with the outcome will convert better than one that leads with the feature."
2. Design the treatment assets. Prepare screenshots for every device size and localization included in the test. If you're testing an icon, add the alternate icon to your app binary and ship that version first.
3. Create the test in App Store Connect. Open your app, go to Product Page Optimization, name the test, and choose the number of treatments, the traffic proportion and the localizations.
4. Check the duration estimate. Optionally pick a target improvement; App Store Connect uses your impression and download data to estimate how long the test needs to reach at least 90% confidence. If it's longer than 90 days, Apple suggests fewer treatments or more traffic.
5. Upload the assets for each treatment and submit them for review. Tests without alternate icons can be reviewed independently of a new app version.
6. Start the test once approved. From here, it can't be edited.
7. Monitor results in App Analytics and wait for a clear verdict before acting.

Good PPO tests change something big enough to matter. Here are ideas, each tied to what it teaches you:

Video deserves a special note. On its PPO page, Apple describes a developer whose treatment with an app preview video as the first asset converted worse than the original. Video isn't automatically better, which is exactly why it's worth testing.

For more creative ideas, see our App Store screenshot best practices and app icon design tips.

Run time depends on your traffic, the number of treatments, the share of traffic you allocate, how many localizations are included and how big the real difference is. Apps with modest traffic should test fewer treatments with bigger differences.

For each treatment, App Analytics shows impressions, conversion rate, percent improvement and confidence compared with the baseline, which is your original page by default. You can switch the baseline to compare treatments with each other.

Practical habits:

• Run in full weeks. Weekday and weekend visitors can behave differently.
• Avoid big outside events. A feature, a sale or a large ad push changes who visits during the test.
• Apply deliberately. Applying a treatment while the test runs ends it. If the winner uses an alternate icon, include that icon in your next app version.

To understand the metric being compared, read our guide to App Store conversion rate.

• Testing tiny tweaks with little traffic. A slightly different shade of blue may never reach a confident result.
• Changing everything at once. A treatment with a new icon, new screenshots and a new order can win, but you won't know why. Mix bold tests with focused ones.
• Stopping on day two. Early results swing; wait for the confidence status.
• Forgetting the icon binary step. Alternate icons must ship in your published app before the test.
• Skipping localizations without a plan. Visitors in localizations outside the test see the original, so include the markets that matter.
• Not following through. After applying a winner, update related custom product pages and marketing assets so everything stays consistent.

Use PPO to find a stronger default, and custom product pages to tailor pages to specific audiences. On Android, the equivalent is covered in our guide to Google Play store listing experiments. For the full strategy, see the App Store Optimization guide.