A leading online marketplace operating in 45 countries, OLX has found success encouraging mobile web visitors to convert into app users in a contextual, personalized fashion. OLX implemented Branch’s Journeys web-to-app smart banners to target individual mobile web users with contextualized offers to install the app. Using Journeys’ A/B testing, segmentation, and customization capabilities, OLX drove over 75,000 app installs in the first two months, with a 10x higher conversion rate than installs from their DSP.
Mobile Success with OLX
OLX is an online marketplace operating in 45 countries, and is the largest online classified ads company in Pakistan, Brazil, India, Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and Ukraine. OLX is an abbreviation for “the online exchange,” and, true to its name, the platform has enabled the exchange of goods by connecting buyers and sellers of electronics, furniture, cars, bikes, household goods, and more for over a decade.
As a marketplace, OLX’s value depends on maintaining healthy levels of both supply and demand. While many sellers start their experiences with OLX on the web, the mobile app is by far the most convenient and best-performing platform, because mobile devices allow sellers to easily photograph and post items for sale with just a few taps. OLX considers a conversion to be a user who downloads the app and then posts their first item for sale—but the company has learned that web users need to fully understand what the platform can do for them before being prompted to install the OLX mobile app.
To further complicate matters, users acquired through paid install campaigns have converted poorly—for OLX, growth means educating prospective users about the benefits of the platform and the app without relying on paid campaigns. This finding prompted a search for a scalable way to convert low-cost mobile web traffic into high-intent app users by driving visitors from the web into the app at just the right point in the education process.
The Solution: Bridging the Mobile Web and App
OLX implemented Branch’s Journeys web-to-app solution to target each mobile web user with a contextualized offer to install the mobile app. OLX also gained the ability to add customized messages and relevant incentives to smart banner assets. Furthermore, OLX leveraged Journeys’ A/B testing ability to efficiently and accurately optimize web-to-app banner performance before and after the item-posting process.
Overall, OLX has leveraged a whole range of Journeys’ web-to-app capabilities to exceed acquisition goals:
- A/B testing: Ultimately, by running as many as a dozen variations of banners simultaneously to test the effectiveness of certain colors, calls to action, and placements, OLX optimized effective messaging and creative.
- Audience segmentation: OLX has been able to target web visitors by the actions they have taken (or are about to take) on web, allowing them to contextualize and personalize the incentive for downloading the mobile app.
- Intuitive banner editing: Using Branch’s WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) Journeys editor, OLX is able to customize the look and feel of each banner easily without developer involvement.
Results
By experimenting with smaller, more subtle banners for less-engaged users, and larger, more aggressive banners for highly-engaged users, OLX optimized their install performance, with some banners achieving over 8% view-to-click performance, while minimizing the interruptions for non-targeted mobile web visitors.
OLX Online Marketing Specialist Ricardo Avelino writes, “Branch’s Journeys solution exceeded our KPI expectations, and allowed us to convert casual web users into high-value mobile app users with almost zero technical effort on our side. The web-based Journeys creation tool was very easy to use, and allowed us to test out many different creative ideas and see immediate results. Whenever we had questions, we received immediate attention from our account manager, and they provided a lot of valuable best practices along the way to help us optimize our results.”
Using Branch’s Journeys, OLX drove more than 75,000 high-quality app installs during the first two months. Most importantly, these installs converted at a rate 10x higher than installs coming from their DSP. OLX is excited to keep optimizing the web-to-app experience with Journeys, and to keep exceeding goals along the way.
Curious how you can do the same? Schedule a time to chat with a Branch mobile expert and optimize your mobile strategy today.