WHY ARE THEY ALL YELLING? Let’s figure out why mobile game icons look alarmingly alike
If you were wondering why they’re so similar, we’re ready to share our observations and also tell you what store listing has to do with it.
Store listing, a design of game pages in digital stores, has long been one of the most important marketing tools for game promotion, and stores often provide wide options for customizing a page and tracking its statistics. An app’s icon, screenshots, and words used to describe a game directly affect the size of your audience. Specifically, this is manifested by certain palettes, compositions and phrases working more effectively and showing better conversion results. The difficulty is that there are no apparent reasons for the superiority of one solution over the other. This means that it’s impossible to estimate successful solutions in advance, at least if we rely entirely on theoretical conclusions.
In this case, the “winning formula” is deducted exclusively in practice based on statistics. Simply put, developers conduct tests with different solutions, choose the best one, and implement it. This is exactly how games with yelling characters spread across the stores. There’s no ostensible explanation for why this particular solution is popular, but the creators of games aren’t concerned about it. They just look at the numbers, see that it works, and implement it.
In modern ASO, store listing allows you to experiment with different content, constantly test different solutions, but, most importantly, target them to different audiences.
When we started working intensively with ASO, we discovered that even “yelling icons” aren’t the ultimate solution, and discussions about content can’t happen without input from your target audience.
To explain the beauty of fine-tuning store listing, let us share our data. We at Donut Lab are developing a mobile top-down shooter, Donut Punks. Competition in this field is intense, so we’re ready to use every opportunity to make ourselves known and present our project to the players as effectively as possible.
In search of the best solution for the game icon, we got these numbers. The first line contains our usual icon, so we take its figures as 100%. The other three icons are experimental. First, you can see that contrary to all reason, the picture with a cat’s image worked the worst. This was a discovery for us because it was the cat icon that we counted on the most. After all, kittens are a favorite on the internet. On this account, it was even more surprising to see a failure in numbers here. Secondly, the “yelling” icon, as expected, turned out to be the most effective. Thirdly, the range of figures is extremely modest. Yes, some figures are better, others are worse, but in general, the difference is not so great.
Out of curiosity, we decided to run tests, narrowing down the geography. The figures above show global statistics with average indicators. In order to get more relevant data, at the next stage, we conducted testing with a breakdown into different countries and got a completely different picture. The range of figures turned out to be incredible: The same icon failed in some countries but gained popularity in others. We realized that the obtained data would be very useful in the future.
For example, here’s data on the comprehensive page design. In the second case, we see more vivid images and accents on the game characters.
The launch of the global test showed that the second option works slightly less efficiently than the first one. At the same time, when divided into countries, we see that in the United States and Thailand, the second design option works much better, on the contrary.
This, in fact, is one of the main advantages of flexible store listing settings. We can target the game page with different designs to different countries individually and achieve better results. For example, we could put the cat icon for the regions where it’s popular and do something completely different for the regions where people don’t like cats.
By itself, the rating spread for the same content could be explained by cultural peculiarities — all regions are different. Tradition, history, level of development — in general, all cultural background — affect how people perceive your content.
If we recall all the diversity of world cultures, it becomes clear that it’s simply impossible to take into account all the nuances in your products. But store listing tools are great because they allow you to test content, analyze results, and get all the knowledge you need. Just by looking at the numbers, for example, you can see that bright colors are popular in Sweden, whereas in Brazil, darker colors are preferred, and you just adapt the page according to the data.
However, there’s a new problem that arises. There are a lot of countries, and the spread of numbers is incredible. As a result, adapting the game page to each location is extremely expensive and time-consuming.
Therefore, we’ve decided to make a compromise solution and switched to testing content by region, not by country. The division is quite familiar: Europe (EU), North America (NA), South America (SA), Asia-Pacific (APAC) and, as a separate group, all other countries (WW).
By dividing the world into regions this way, we assumed that within each group, there would be culturally quite similar countries. It turned out to be a balanced solution. We didn’t lose the advantage of being able to adapt content to various aesthetic requests, but at the same time, we improved our efficiency because testing content for five regions is easier than for 200 countries.
For example, here’s the next icon data. We see that every region has a clear leader. And even the cat icon, which failed, if you look only at the average figures, managed to become a leader in Europe.
What happens after the tests are complete? It’s simple: Through store listing tools, you create several pages for your game, each of which is adapted to a specific region and contains different icons, screenshots, and text descriptions of the game.
It’s a good idea to keep testing and updating content from time to time. Fortunately, ASO tools offer a wide field for experiments. The most accessible one is working with text keys. You can rewrite texts from time to time, adapt them to the information agenda specific to certain regions and, thus, receive additional traffic. The simplest example is local holidays or other seasonal events that predictably increase audience interest in a particular topic. To catch this wave of interest, it’s enough to add a text with appropriate keys and a couple of thematic screenshots to the game’s description. The Live Ops tool, which is great for temporary events, is also a good practice.
A similar thing is with the game’s icons. You can change their design from time to time for certain holidays or for updates to your game. At Donut Punks, for example, we experiment a lot with the image of game characters on icons.
It’s somewhat different when it comes to the game’s screenshots. At the moment, there are two main approaches to their design. The first one is to post real screenshots with minimal editing, and the second is to post pictures with an emphasis on the text description of the game’s features and illustrations, which don’t necessarily reflect the actual graphics of the game. Within these two approaches, you can also experiment — the brightness of screenshots, the composition, and the accents matter.
Finally, Feature Banner is the most important unit for the Google store. This is an image that is displayed separately from screenshots, makes it into app collections and, moreover, is automatically pulled into Google Ads, which means it receives maximum coverage and audience attention. The better the Feature Banner illustration is, the higher the chance of getting the most out of the game’s promotion.
With all the variety of solutions, it’s important to remember that they directly depend on the audience you want to present your game to. Use store listing to identify trends that reflect people’s attitudes toward your project and how it’s perceived in different regions, and use this knowledge to find the most effective solutions.
Perhaps this way, you’ll discover new ways to present your game, and you’ll stand out among all those monotonous games with yelling characters on their icons.
