One point that people without app experience probably aren't considering - on iOS, having a large number of downloads (particularly in the first week after launch) can really boost your keyword rankings and ASO. Without this boost, climbing up the keyword rankings can be extremely difficult.
Apple's pre-order feature does precisely what I'd expect - automatically downloading the app when it's available, which helps jumpstart the flywheel explained above.
I would have expected Google's pre-registration feature to work similarly. Thanks to OP for spending the $$ to find out this isn't the case!
Thanks for sharing your experience. I would have thought they would auto-install the app for users that pre-registered, as Apple does. Seems kind of pointless that they don't do this!
I think it really depends on the product. Some do really well with long onboarding sequences (or pricing pages), some do worse. Our next test is trying to merge the two - have a timeline trial at the top of the page, with more information (if the user wants it) below. We'll see.
Apple's pre-order feature does precisely what I'd expect - automatically downloading the app when it's available, which helps jumpstart the flywheel explained above.
I would have expected Google's pre-registration feature to work similarly. Thanks to OP for spending the $$ to find out this isn't the case!