How is Blue Label Labs different from its competitors?

First, we live and breathe cutting-edge/bleeding-edge technology, so your app will similarly be cutting-edge/bleeding edge with a long “shelf-life”. Second, with a perfect mix of local, domestic and international talent you are guaranteed to get the optimal mix of a high-quality product and a fair price. Third, you will be assigned a dedicated Program Manager (PM) after we’ve established a contract who will be your single point-person for all of your needs and questions. This PM will stay with you for the duration of your relationship with Blue Label Labs and is your conduit to all of the resources we have to offer, thus streamlining your communication and preventing you from having to repeat your message to multiple resources or play air traffic control. Our PMs are the best in the business and we’d be happy to introduce you to a projected PM (and project team) once we’ve got an estimate on the table to discuss. Fourth, the size of Blue Label Labs team (now 64 people strong) means you don’t have to worry about the “single point of failure” issue that exists at smaller shops of just one or two developers, nor the burden paying for the high overhead cost associated with larger shops. Fifth, we have a stronger focus on design than most other shops. We split our design team into two specific functions—Product/User Experience and User Interface. It’s a rare unicorn designer that is good at both thinking through flow and product decisions, as well as branding, colors, logos and overall User Interface. To that end, each project team has both a UX Designer and UI Designer staffed to ensure top notch design. Sixth, with over 7 years of operation and over 250 apps completed, we have both the experience and extensive re-usable code base to ensure your app is built as efficiently and as inexpensively as possible. Seventh, our QA and Testing methodology is rigorous and as important to us as the actual development—meaning your app will be as bug free as is possible. We have a dedicated QA Engineer staffed on every project. This engineer is not the original author of the code ensuring the highest quality results from the QA process. Please see the below sections for more details.

How does Blue Label Labs work with clients?

Blue Label Labs Labs begins most projects with a Discovery, Planning & Design Phase (Phase One). First, we determine the proper technologies and development schedule. Second, the Design teams inherit the User Stories that were drafted during the sales process. User Stories are simple one-liners that outline the activities your users will need to be able to accomplish within the app. These User Stories then get grouped together into meaningful features and feature sets. The Design teams work with the client to finalize the User Stories. Third, our design team sets out creating greyscale wireframes to illustrate how a user will move through the app (i.e., the user experience, UX). Fourth, we transition to full color illustrations/designs that have the final look and feel of the app (i.e., the user interface, UI). Fifth, the app designs are then uploaded into a prototyping platform called Invision that allows our team to create tappable and swipeable “hotspots” so that you can show the app on your phone or via a mocked-up phone in a web browser. At the same time, we draft a Functional Specification document that details the technical hows and whys of the project for the development team. Once that work is complete, we them move on to the Development Phase (Phase Two). The Agile development/engineering team works hand-in-hand with the Program Manager and follows the wireframes and the Functional Specifications to build the app. Our first development goal is the First Deliverable milestone—we call this D1; this is a highly functional build of the app that contains a subset of features agreed upon by Blue Label Labs and the client. We then begin an iterative process of finalizing the remaining features. At the same time, a QA Team builds a full test plan for the app. The QA Team continually performs functional and regression testing on the app, reporting issues to the Project Manager. Learn more about our process here.

How long does it take to complete the average app?

Typically, for our average 4 to 5-month project, the Phase One: Discovery & Planning and Design lasts for approximately 4 to 6 weeks, with Phase Two: Development and Testing Phase occupying the remaining 3 to 4 months. At the end of the Phase Two, the final app is prepared for Deployment. Deployment involves moving any web services and server side components to a production environment and submitting the app to the relevant app store(s).

How much does the average app cost?

If we were in full-swing on a new project, a client can estimate a cost of between $10,000 and $30,000 per two-week sprint ($20,000 to $60,000 per month) for the effort—typically billed bi-weekly. If Blue Label Labs is handling everything from Discovery, Planning & Design through to Deployment in an app store, total app costs average about $120,000 for one “platform”–iOS, Android, Web, etc. That said, it very much depends on the complexity of the design and development required for each individual app, we’ve completed full apps at costs of between $50,000 (a bare-bones, simple MVP/prototype) and $2,000,000 (a full featured, enterprise apps). We provide free, no commitment estimates to clients. After the app is submitted to an app store(s) or pushed live on the web, the Blue Label Labs team monitors the app store and customer reviews and deals with any issues, questions, delays or approvals that arise. We have a great track record with app submissions and make sure that the app submitted is highly likely to be approved without issue. Post approval, a maintenance agreement can be put into place to cover and small issues, minor app edits (e.g., color, image or text changes) and any bugs that might linger. At the end of the project, we will transfer all source code and project files to you and you will remain the sole owner of all IP in the app. After that time, we provide our services at an hourly rate of $120/hour for ad-hoc updates or at an hourly rate of $100/hour for a mutually agreed upon set number of hours in a 6-month retainer. The monthly maintenance cost for the average app is $2,000/month: in other words, a retainer of 20 hours per month at $100 per hour equals $2,000/month and guarantees expedited service vs. ad-hoc requests.

What is the difference between a Native App, a Hybrid App and an HTML5 App?

Native App: A Native App is an app written for a specific platform like iOS or Android—in other words, the app is written in the coding language used for development on that specific platform (Objective-C or Swift for iOS and Java for Android). When you build a Native App, you get access to all the hardware features exposed by the native code APIs and SDKs. For example, Apple iOS Push Notifications are one example of a feature that cannot be supported by an HTML5 App. The graphics and user interface of a Native App are far superior to any Hybrid or HTML5 app. You would choose this option, if you want to use the user interface components from Apple’s proprietary user interface libraries (i.e., the usability is better); you want full device hardware access—cameras, microphone, and geo-location; you want peak performance with no lag; you want users to be able to access the app off-line (i.e., without Internet access); you want access to push notifications and in-app purchase; and you want your app to de discoverable in the app store. On the downside, your code is less portable across operating systems and it is often the most expensive development option. It is our recommendation that if you plan to start a true, revenue generating, app-based business, this is the only viable option. Hybrid App: A Hybrid App is a form of web app that is deployed to a native platform like an iPhone or Android phone inside a native shell. This shell is usually little more than a web browser view (to display the HTML5 content) and some other hooks to allow your web app to potentially access some more hardware features that are not available inside a typical mobile web browser—e.g., push notification and in-app purchases. It improves code portability because if you want to port your app to another platform, you only need a native shell on that other platform to run it, the HTML5 content of the app is directly portable. These shells can be hand written, but can also be generated automatically by tools in the marketplace like React Native, PhoneGap, Cordova or Xamarin. These tools allow a developer to push the app out to multiple platforms (e.g., iOS, Android, Windows Mobile) quickly by generating the shell and packages required to do so automatically. This sounds powerful, and it is, but clearly creators of these third-party platforms have a lot of configurations and hardware to support, and thus, the solutions do not always work the same across all devices, and in practice, testing and hacking of special cases will be required by the developer to get proper functionality. You would choose this option if you want a balance between cost and usability; you want access to some (but not all) of the phone’s native APIs/SDKs and hardware; you want to be able to quickly deploy across multiple device types; and you’re not worried about high-end graphics. On the downside, because these third-party hybrid platforms (e.g., React Native, PhoneGap and Xamarin) need to support so many device types there are always implementation and usability issues to workout. In addition, you will only have access to the features of a new operating system 6+ months AFTER it is released by Apple, Google or Microsoft. In this way, your app will never be able to cutting-edge technology. While we are fully capable of building Hybrid Apps, it is our recommendation that this option is only viable for simple, lo-fi apps that are heavy on text and images, but don’t need much in the way of functionality or user interface. An HTML5 Web App: An HTML5 app is essentially a website with JavaScript code written to allow the app to perform dynamically, as opposed to a static website that you need to refresh to see the changes. It works interactively to make it feel like an app, but it is actually running in a web browser. It is essentially a website, which will support multiple viewports or screen sizes so that it works well on mobile. Because it is running in a browser, it is confined to what is possible within a mobile web browser. You would choose this option if you want to support multiple platforms with the same app/codebase; you want to deploy it on the web; you want the widest possible support across multiple device operating systems and manufacturers; and you want to be able to update your source files on your server and have them immediately deployed to all devices (i.e., removing the need for the app approval process). On the downside, your app is not discoverable in the app stores; it will never look and feel like a true mobile app; and you will have limited access to some of the software and hardware functionality of the phone (e.g., push notifications and cameras). It is our recommendation, that this option is only viable for view-only content where users are not expected to interact in any meaningful way.

Has Blue Label Labs ever transitioned an app the firm has built to a client’s internal development team? What is the typical process and how long does it usually take? Is there a fee for this?

Quite often Blue Label Labs transitions an app to a client’s in-house development team. As part of our regular transition for any client, we transfer all functional specs, wireframes, UI design resources, screen flow maps, passwords/certificates/credentials and source code to the client. We also have extensive experience working in tandem with a client’s existing engineering team. For example, Blue Label Labs will build the front-end experience of an app on top of a client’s existing backend web service and databases. These transitions are the quickest, averaging only a few days, since the Blue Label Labs team and the client team have already been working hand-in-hand for months. If we are handing over a complete project with no prior engagement with the client’s development team, then the transition can take a little longer depending on the support needed. This can range from a few days to a couple weeks. The transition is typically free of charge unless engineering resources are needed to facilitate the transition or the Program Manager is required to spend more than a week on the transition and training. We’ve even helped companies to interview potential new technical team members—e.g., developers and CTOs.

How does Blue Label Labs provide training to a client’s development team so that they could make app enhancements and how much would that training cost?

Along with all the project documentation and support outlined in the answer to the question above, we are happy to provide hands-on training to in-house developers/team members as part of the transition. There is typically no extra charge for this if only a few hours are required. If ongoing training is necessary, for example an in-house developer is not familiar with app development and requires a crash course, then we can offer our services at our hourly rate of $120/hour for training. We’ve even aided our partners in their hiring of their own technical/development team if/when the time is right.

How many designers and developers does Blue Label Labs have on staff? How many work on each client project? Where is the team located? Can the client talk directly to whomever will work on the app?

The Blue Label Labs team is comprised of 64 individuals across its UX Design/Product, UI Design, Development, Program Management, Quality Assurance, Sales, Marketing and Leadership teams. We have 6 Designers, 10 Program Managers, 35 Developers, 3 App Marketers—the remainder of the team is comprised of the Sales, Marketing, Operations & Leadership Teams. Depending on the size of the project, a team of at least 7 Blue Label Labs staffers will work on your project: 1 Program Manager, 1 UX Designer, 1 UI Designer, 1 Technical Architect, 1 Front-End Developer, 1 Back-End Developer, and 1 Quality Assurance Engineer—in addition to the technical and strategic oversight provided by Blue Label Labs leadership. The majority of our Design and Program Manager teams is based in New York City, Seattle and San Francisco areas. The Developers and Quality Assurance Testers are also based in the aforementioned cities, in addition to India-based team members. The Development, Design and QA Teams are managed directly by the Program Manager. The Program Manager is your primary point of contact and the liaison across all other Blue Label Labs team members associated with your project. That said, clients are welcome to speak directly with any individual team member as is needed.

Are projects priced based on “time-and-material” (i.e., hourly) estimate or a “fixed-price” quote?

Projects are priced on a “time-and-material” basis. With 7 years and 250+ apps of experience to our credit, we are able to produce very accurate estimates. We do our best to stay within budget or provide you ample warning if we think we may exceed our initial estimate so we can coordinate how to move forward together with you. Prior client references can vouch for the accuracy of our estimates and can be provided to you upon request.

Is Blue Label Labs able to guarantee that our app will be published in an app store?

Unfortunately, no application can be guaranteed for app store approval. However, Blue Label Labs has successfully built and deployed over 250 apps for the Google Play and Apple iTunes stores. We have a solid understanding and insight into what these stores will typically approve or disapprove of. We will warn you well in advance if any particular aspect of you project poses an approval risk. We have had a handful of instances where an app store has rejected an app for publication; not due to technical issues, but due to legal/business/terms of use issues; however, we successfully appealed ALL of these rejections and these very same apps are now in the app store for download today. We led these appeals on behalf of our clients at no extra charge. If your app is rejected due to technical reasons, we will make all necessary corrections needed to get approval at no extra charge. We are happy to connect you with some of our clients who did face some app store pushback to tell you about the rejection and our successful appeal.

What is Blue Label Labs’ policy regarding correcting defects and publishing an update in the app store?

We provide our services at a blended hourly rate of $120/hour for ad-hoc updates or at blended hourly rate of $100/hour at a mutually agreed upon set number of hours over a 6-month retainer. For example, a retainer of 20 hours a month for $2,000/month guarantees expedited service vs. ad-hoc requests. Ad-hoc requests are handled on a first come, first serve basis across all of our clients and development is based on our team’s earliest availability. The monthly retainer of hours functions much like an extension of the warranty period; issues are addressed within 24-48 hours and development will start as soon as the scope of the issue is defined. For those clients wanting a guaranteed 24 to 48-hour turnaround time on maintenance issues, a 6-month retainer is suggested.

What level of Quality Assurance is included and provided by you in your proposal?

A Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer is assigned to every project and builds a custom test plan for every project during the Discovery, Planning & Design Phase. During the Development & Testing Phase the QA Engineer continually tests the app using functional and regression testing. We test on a wide array of physical devices as needed for a given project. If we are building a backend web service and databases as part of the project, we will also have a set of automated unit tests that are run regularly to verify functionality.

What is Blue Label Labs’ quality assurance (QA) and testing methodology?

We believe that Blue Label Labs’ QA and testing methodology is part of our competitive differentiation. The fact that we dedicate resources to solely this function is something that sets us apart from other development shops for whom testing is simply an afterthought. At Blue Label Labs, QA is handled at all levels of development. There are generally 3 layers of QA/testing that happens for every project: 1.) Internal Development Team Testing Each Development Team has an internal QA Tester along with the Developer Lead who perform basic validation on bug fixes prior to builds being released to the broader Project Manager and QA team. Their validation is to ensure that items within JIRA, which we use alongside Trello, to coordinate team efforts and communicate with clients—are properly remedied according to their descriptions prior to “checking-in” or committing code. When items are resolved by the Development Team they are pulled into the “Testing Done by Dev Team” stack of Trello cards and/or within JIRA. When developing new projects, the Blue Label Labs Development Team will also be responsible for creating “unit tests” for our code so that we can quickly run a basic set of verifications. The dev team does the majority of their testing using iOS and Android app simulators. 2.) Dedicated QA Engineer Each project has a dedicated QA Engineer who sits independently from the Development Team who is responsible for: a.) Drafting a milestone based test plan which outlines a list of black box scenarios to verify and the expected results; b.) Performing smoke and full test pass runs against weekly and milestone builds; c.) Verifying and closing bugs that the Development Team has marked as complete; d.) Working with the Development Team to report issues and regressions; and d.) The QA Engineer takes items from the “Testing Done by Dev Team” Trello stack and verifies whether it is actually fixed. If it is, the Trello card is moved to the “Done (Verified)” pile, or sent back to the “Weekly Priorities” or “Product Backlog” stacks, as appropriate. The QA Engineer will generally perform their tests on 2-3 devices, depending on project requirements. 3.) Project Manager (PM) Testing The final QA gate is the PM who is responsible for quality of the entire product. They will also work with the QA Engineer to verify items have been fixed properly in addition to triaging new issues coming in from the client and the QA Engineer. The PM will appropriately schedule issues to be resolved based on their severity and importance. The PM’s testing is done on actual devices.

Can Blue Label Labs help me with Marketing and PR?

Absolutely. We aim to be your full-service app partner. Our Marketing & PR Offering is designed to help you launch your app and gain marketing exposure. Learn more about our Marketing & PR Offering here.

Android App Development

How to Visualize Your App’s Google Play Store Metrics in Looker Studio

Looker Studio is a powerful reporting tool that you can use to build compelling visualizations and reports using a myriad of out of the box connectors, but has a rather poor integration story with Google Play Store metrics. What this means is that for Android app developers who want to build a slick Looker Studio report about their app’s meteoric growth and revenue numbers, they are pretty much out of luck when it comes to using Looker Studio.

For example, if you want to report on any metrics such as number of installs, daily revenue and active subscribers within Looker Studio, there is no easy way to do this out of the box. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can use a little bit of code to extract data from Google Play and publish it so that it can be consumed by Looker Studio.

TLDR

At a high level, the approach to integrating Google Play metrics into Looker Studio involves the following the steps:

Download the daily CSV reports from a Google Cloud Storage bucket that are automatically generated by Google every night.
Extract, transform and upload this data into a Google Sheet.
Leverage the built in Google Sheet connector Looker Studio to import and build reports using this data.

We can automate all 3 of the above steps using a bit of sweat, Python and Dockerization.

You can find a full set of source code and instructions on how to run it on your own local machine as well within a Docker container in this GitHub repo. The rest of the blog post will go into further detail on how this source code works.

What metrics does Google Play Publish?

To say that there is no integration between Google Play and Google Analytics is a bit of a misnomer. You can setup a link between your Google Play account and Google Analytics using the steps provided by Google here. However, Google Play only publishes the following events:

Event	Description
in_app_purchase	Published when someone makes a purchase in your app or starts a subscription (free trial or paid)
app_store_subscription_convert	Published when a free trial subscription converts into a paid subscription.
app_store_subscription_renew	When an existing subscription renews for an additional period.

That’s not a lot of data, certainly not enough to build a comprehensive report on your app’s revenue and subscription performance.

How to Access Google Play’s Daily Report Exports

The heart of the method I am demonstrating involves automating access to a set of daily reports created by Google Play automatically stored on a Google Cloud Storage bucket associated with your Google Play developer account. Within a Google Play developer account, if you go to “Download Reports”, you will see that there are monthly CSV reports that Google Play makes available for Reviews, Statistics and Financials. These reports are monthly break downs, but they are updated automatically overnight by Google. The data contained in these CSVs is not accessible anywhere else in the Google Play Developer API.

Here are the steps to access these reports:

Go to your Google Play Developer account home.
Click on “Download Reports”, click on “Financial” and then you should see a button “Copy Cloud Storage URI”. This will copy to your clipboard a URI that looks like: gs://pubsite_prod_<account id>/earnings/
Use the <account id>above and create the following URL and put this into your browser: https://console.cloud.google.com/storage/browser/pubsite_prod_<account id>
This will open up the Google Cloud Storage bucket viewer and you should see the full path to the financial reports, but then also additional a lot of other reports, many of which aren’t accessible in the Google Play Console UI!

In the Cloud Storage bucket associated with a Google Play account you will find a suite a daily reports automatically exported by Google Play.

Now that we’ve identified the files we will be working with, let’s proceed to proverbial meat and po-ta-toes of this exercise.

Prerequisites

A Google Play Developer account that you have permissions to invite users into and access to the financial reports of.
You will need to setup a Google Cloud Project and enable the Google Sheets API within it.
Within the Google Cloud Project, create a new service account. Setup a key for this service account and download the service account JSON file. Name this file ‘google-credentials.json’ and place it into the folder location you will map to the Docker container we setup in the next section. Take note of the email identifier created for the service account as you will need it in the following steps, it will look something like: <service accountname>@<google cloud project name>.iam.gserviceaccount.com
In your Google Play Developer account, under Users and Permissions, click on “Invite User”. Enter the email address for the service account in the previous step and give it “Administrator” level access.
- NOTE: It takes about 24 hours for the service account to gain access to the Cloud Storage buckets with the Google Play data exports in them. If you try to run the code below without waiting this period it will fail with a 403 error. This is a weird Google quirk that there is no way to get around.
Create a new Google Sheet, this is where the Install metrics will be published to. Setup a new worksheet within it, call it “Installs”. Take note of the Google Sheet ID in the URL as you will need that..
Add the email address of the service account you setup previously as an Editor to the Google Sheet from the previous step.

Walkthrough: Publishing Google Play Install Metrics to Looker Studio via a Google Sheet

Let’s walk through how you can automate the download of the install metrics for an app on Google Play to Looker Studio by automating the download of these nightly reports. In the Google Cloud Storage bucket, if you expand the installs folder, you will a set of CSV files for every different app identifier in your account, grouped by the month and year. For our example, we are interested in the CSV file with the name installs_<app identifier>_YYYYmm-country.csv. This file is updated every night and has daily metrics for a variety of install related metrics grouped by country.

A look inside the installs CSV that Google Play publishes.

Create a Python Script to Download and Publish Google Play Install Data to a Google Sheet

In this step, we are going to create a very simple Python script, that will use the Google cloud service account file you created and downloaded as part of the prerequisites to download the latest version of the above CSV file, calculate a total number of installs globally and then publish that into a Google Sheet. You can find all of the source code below and detailed instructions to run them in this GitHub repo.

The following is what the download_install.py file within the repo looks like:

from google.cloud import storage
from google.oauth2 import service_account
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
import os
import datetime
import pandas as pd
import gspread

#This snippet is intended to run in a Docker container and assumes the following data paths are mapped
#local folders that contain the relevant information.
credentials_path = "/app/data/google-credentials.json"
download_folder = "/app/data/installs/"


credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(credentials_path)

start_date = datetime.datetime.strptime(os.getenv('START_DATE'), '%Y-%m-%d')
start_date_time = datetime.datetime.now()
print(f"\INSTALLS UPDATE: Start of execution at  {start_date_time}")

spreadsheet_id = os.getenv('SPREADSHEET_ID')
worksheet_id = os.getenv('INSTALLS_WORKSHEET_NAME')
package_name = os.getenv('PRODUCT_ID')
# Initialize a client
client = storage.Client(credentials=credentials)
bucket_name = os.getenv('PLAY_STORE_BUCKET_NAME')

def download_blob(bucket_name, source_blob_name, destination_file_name):
    """Downloads a blob from the bucket."""
    # Get the bucket object
    bucket = client.bucket(bucket_name)

    # Get the blob object
    blob = bucket.blob(source_blob_name)

    # Download the blob to a local file
    blob.download_to_filename(destination_file_name)

    print(f"Downloaded storage object {source_blob_name} from bucket {bucket_name} to local file {destination_file_name}.")

#Create a string that is a date in the format of YYYYMM based on today's date
today = datetime.datetime.today()
today = today.strftime('%Y%m')

#Get the days before today to update install data for
days_before_today = int(os.getenv('DAYS_TO_FETCH_INSTALLS_FOR'))
earliest_date_to_fetch = datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=days_before_today)
#set to midnight of that date
earliest_date_to_fetch = earliest_date_to_fetch.replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0)

#Now lets get the installs for the current month
filename = f'installs_{package_name}_{today}_overview.csv'
destination_filename = f'{download_folder}{filename}'
download_blob(bucket_name, f'stats/installs/{filename}', destination_filename)

#Now we need to convert this csv to a pandas dataframe
df = pd.read_csv(destination_filename, encoding='utf-16')

#We then want to take the dataframe and upload it to a google sheet, overwriting any data for the Date that
#already exists in the Google Sheet
#First we need to authenticate to Google Sheets
credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(credentials_path, 
                                                                    scopes=['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets'])
client = gspread.authorize(credentials)


# Open the Google Sheet
spreadsheet = client.open_by_key(spreadsheet_id)

# Get the worksheet
worksheet = spreadsheet.worksheet(worksheet_id)

# Go through each Date in the Pandas dataframe and update the Google Sheet with the data for that date
for index, row in df.iterrows():
    date = row['Date']
    date_obj = datetime.datetime.strptime(date, '%Y-%m-%d')
    date = date_obj.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

    #If date is before the start date, skip
    if date_obj < start_date:
        print (f"Skipping date {date} as it is before the start date {start_date}")
        continue

    #If date is before the earliest date to fetch, skip
    if date_obj < earliest_date_to_fetch:
        print (f"Skipping date {date} as it is before the earliest date to fetch {earliest_date_to_fetch}")
        continue

    cell = worksheet.find(date, in_column=1)
    if cell:
        cell_row = cell.row
        cell_col = cell.col
        #remove the Date column from the row
        row = row.drop('Date')
        worksheet.update(f'A{cell_row}', [[date]+list(row)])
    else:
        #remove the Date column from the row
        row = row.drop('Date')
        worksheet.append_row([date]+list(row))

end_time = datetime.datetime.now()
duration = end_time - start_date_time
print(f"INSTALLS UPDATE: Finished at {end_time} and took {duration} to execute.")

The above code when run will update the Google Sheet that is set with in the SPREADSHEET_ID environment variable with the following data:

Now that our install data is in a Google Sheet, we can then easily setup an integration into Looker Studio in the next step.

Connecting Looker Studio to a Google Sheet

In this step, we will setup the connection between a Looker Studio report and the Google Sheet our Python script is updating.

Assuming you already have an existing report you want to integrate this install data into:

Navigate to Looker Studio and open up your report and go into ‘Edit’ mode.
In the menu, click on ‘Add Data’.
In the following screen, select the “Google Sheets” connector produced by Google.
When you do that and after you grant any appropriate permissions, look for the name of the Google Sheet that the Python script is updating. Within that, select the “Installs” worksheet and click “Add”.

Once you’ve added your data source you are pretty much done. You can now manipulate and visualize the data just like you would data coming from Google Analytics or any other source. For example, if you want to create a line chart that shows the number of installs per day for your app you can do the following:

Click on “Add a chart”, select “Time Series Chart” and place it on your report page.
Configure the chart parameters as such:
- Date Range Dimension: Date
- Dimension: Date
- Metric: Install Events

With the above you should now see a time series graph showing your daily installs for your app:

A Looker Studio chart showing App Installs over time, as published by Google Play!

Expanding on This Solution

In the above example I’ve shown you how to publish install metrics to Looker Studio via Google Sheets. However, this general approach of automating the download and transformation of Google Play maintained data can be expanded upon very easily to enable you to report on a variety of Google Play metrics in Looker Studio, such as:

Daily revenue and earnings from subscriptions and in-purchases.
Daily counts relating to active subscriptions, new subscriptions and cancelled subscriptions.
Subscription churn rates and cancellation reasons.
Crash frequencies.
Store and listing performance (number of visitors, conversion rates, etc.)

All of the code I’ve demonstrated above are apart of a open-source GitHub repository that you can locally on your machine and expand as you see fit.

Bobby Gill

Co-Founder & Chief Architect at BlueLabel | + posts

Bobby Gill is the co-founder and Chief Architect of BlueLabel, an award winning digital product agency headquartered in New York. With over two decades of experience in software development, he is a seasoned full-stack engineer, software architect, and AI practitioner. Bobby currently leads the BlueLabel AI/ML practice, where he is leading a team of engineers operationalizing the transformational capabilities of generative AI within BlueLabel and for a number of enterprise clients.

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