Tokopedia reduces app size and improves installs by 15% with Android App Bundles

Tokopedia is a technology company with a leading marketplace in Indonesia, serving over 90 million monthly active users and over 8 million merchants on the platform. Tokopedia's Android app itself is one of the biggest Indonesian e-commerce apps and it’s packed with features. Not only does it offer a seamless mobile shopping experience but it also provides comprehensive seller tools for its merchants.

To increase their install rate, the Tokopedia team wanted to decrease app size without losing any of the app’s functionality. “ Smaller app size allows users to download the app faster, especially if our users do not have a reliable Internet connection, ” said Nathaniel Khuana, Technical Architect at Tokopedia. Additionally, “ Some of our users have limited phone space storage. Small app size will help them save phone space and reduce the uninstall rate. ”

However, the big question is how could they reduce their app size without losing functionality? That’s where the Android App Bundle comes in to help.

With Android App Bundle (AAB), the team knew they could reduce the initial app download size as well as the app installation size, which they hoped would increase their download conversion rate.

“ Switching from APK to the Android App Bundle format was straightforward, ” Nathaniel said. “ We only need to use a command-line from Bundletool to generate AAB. ”

The Tokopedia team knew they could save even more space by modularizing the app and delivering features on-demand using Play Feature Delivery. “ One of the feature modules that we have is seller functionality, ” Nathaniel said. By modularizing, “ users will only download seller features if they registered as a merchant. ” Breaking the app into modules allows users to download only the features they need, saving considerable space on their devices.

Tokopedia’s average download size was reduced by 27%, from 49.9MB to 36MB. From this, users took notice ? right away, the team saw a 15% increase in the install rate.

Inspired by their success, the Tokopedia team implemented a total of ten dynamic feature modules (and counting), bringing its total size further down by about 9MB, the equivalent of 20%.

All app and game developers can use Android App Bundles. As Nathaniel said “it was easy.” The Android App Bundle even saves them time because they only need to upload one AAB file instead of multiple APKs. Get started today!