4 Terrifying Myths About App Store Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
They could be blocking your app’s long-term growth — here’s how to prevent them
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is no stranger to digital marketing. For apps, it has an even greater role. As most users must visit the app store in order to install an app, regardless of the traffic or acquisition channels, it generally has only one chance to convert a visitor into a user. That being the case, it’s crucial for app store assets to be optimized for conversion.
However, the execution of CRO often falls short. Some of the common mistakes include:
- Short-sighted attempts that go in circles: Most CRO strategies revolve around experimentation. Most experiments are developed for short-term purposes. Ideas are tested, then tests are measured, then measurement leads to the application of a variant. It all repeats in a loop. The lessons or what they mean are rarely fully considered.
- Short-lived attempts that flop due to low impact: App store conversion rate (CVR) is a relative metric that depends on app impressions (traffic) and app installs (conversions). A higher CVR is often taken for granted as an indicator of strong performance while it merely shows a shorter distance between the two-component metrics. High CVRs could also come from near-zero installs and impressions, as long as their distance is close. If your strategy focuses solely on CVR uplifts without questioning their implications, such near-zero impact is what you can expect.
- Short-cut attempts that fail to go beyond hacking: Many app store optimization (ASO) professionals are self-proclaimed experts or “growth hackers.” They roam the Internet and offer free content about “top 5 tricks” or “top 10 hacks,” but oftentimes, they’re of little value. Tricks like keyword-stuffing, which used to be the number one hack in ASO, led to thousands of app suspensions because it became illegal. They’re shortcuts — neat, quick, and unreliable. Only long-term strategies are reliable.
So, how do you avoid making these mistakes?
It’s 90% a matter of mindset. Think wrong and you’ll execute wrong. One reason why someone might think wrong is that they believe one of the below myths—that prove to be incredibly destructive when followed blindly. But luckily, each has its own antidote, too.
Myth #1: CRO is the same as A/B testing
When a marketer is asked how they structure a CRO strategy, they often start by describing their A/B testing plan. This is likely due to the first myth: CRO is all about A/B testing. But it isn’t.
In fact, it covers a much wider ground than any form of experimentation. In a nutshell, CRO means anything you do to make CVR uplifts happen. A/B tests just happen to be the single most efficient way to assist it, by validating the ideas that can be used in CRO. Without them, you could still find ways to increase app store CVR. But it would only prove more difficult since you have no sense of “tested and proven” directions.
The real difference between the two concepts comes from their respective purposes. Again, A/B testing serves to validate ideas, not to directly increase CVR. The ideas can subsequently be adopted for CVR uplifts in a campaign or project. This is where CRO happens — where ideas are applied in reality. In short, you test to learn and optimize for results.
To avoid the pitfalls of this myth, consider developing a two-phase CRO strategy:
- Phase one consists of a testing plan. You’ll get to test all you can there. No further actions are required. The primary output at this stage is a library that contains all the learnings you could draw from the test results.
- These learnings will feed phase two, where you establish an action plan. Here, the tested ideas and concepts are turned into tangible materials and launched into the app store. Graphic designs and copywriting, among other tasks, will be involved.
Myth #2: CRO for the app store only benefits ASO
App store CRO is predominantly linked to organic CVR uplifts. While their connection is undeniable, it isn’t the only connection CRO has with app marketing. As almost all traffic required for app installs goes into the app store eventually, from both organic and paid UA channels, CRO affects the impact of both ASO and advertising campaigns.
Marketers who believe in this myth tend to plan their CRO efforts, especially with A/B tests, solely based on organic (ASO) activities. They typically include keywords, app store metadata and visual assets, sometimes the browse channels like featured collections (e.g. App of the Day) and category ranking. Messaging approaches and marketing concepts being deployed on Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, and Snapchat, to name a few, are at risk of being overlooked. This implies a major risk of inconsistencies across UA channels.
Why are inconsistencies bad?
Imagine your TV streaming app was promoted on Facebook for Star Wars and on the app store for Game of Thrones. The difference may often go unnoticed, except when some fans of the former hate the latter. They might refuse to download the app and click on ads for Star Wars because they support it, but later feel betrayed by the app store listing that promoted a franchise they dislike. When Facebook campaigns bring in loads of traffic then the app store listing turns it away, CVR drops — and it has nothing to do with ASO.
To avoid such a mistake, you need to understand the bigger picture of app growth. Improving your app store listing’s conversion power goes beyond organic growth. Almost every attempt to promote the app ends up depending on its app store listing as the gatekeeper.
All relevant stakeholders need to be aware of and work together on this, and the key is communication. Talk to the owners of other UA channels promoting your app, align your CRO efforts on all levels with their campaigns, and advocate cross-channel collaboration. That’s how things are kept consistent.
Myth #3: CRO should be separated from traffic optimization
ASO is often split into smaller parts. It’s either by asset types (e.g. visual assets vs. metadata), or on-page vs. off-page elements, or visibility (traffic) vs. conversion (installs). The last kind is the most common that I’ve witnessed.
In general, marketers are overly concerned about either how to increase the traffic that flows into their app store listing or how to improve the CVR into installs, rarely both at the same time. Here’s why that’s bad:
- If traffic is prioritized over conversion: Conversion risks being overlooked, so related mistakes are more likely to occur and the app would easily fail to convert the increased traffic into installs. That’s a wasteful approach.
- If conversion is prioritized over traffic: The traffic is at risk of being neglected, so the audience size isn’t big enough, which means your app could appeal to a tiny market that, even at 100% CVR, won’t bring much revenue because there aren’t many customers.
You need to optimize both simultaneously. This is tough. Keeping tasks organized and manageable is important so you have to prioritize one over the others. This means you usually need to separate conversion and traffic-related activities and elements in ASO. But you don’t have to. The app grows with users, and users are humans, not a data point in a UA funnel. The key, therefore, is to focus on the human beings who use your app.
When you focus on the users, you’ll be concerned about who they are, what they want, what they expect from your app, what makes them install it, and how many they are. These questions cover both the traffic and the conversion sides of ASO, and they revolve around one and the same thing: People.
This presents a much bigger challenge: To see ASO and app marketing beyond the technical, mechanical level of “funnels”, “KPIs” and “tracking.” Aside from its age-old limitation, namely the ability to only provide correlations, not causations, this approach also has a more modern weakness: The ability to only answer the “What” and “Who” of UA, not the “Why” and “How.”
Complex dimensions such as users’ attitudes and desires, along with the connections between different actions, for instance, belong to a totally different world. It’s qualitative data. Product and marketing analytics, for this reason, need to evolve beyond the quantitative-only approach.
Myth #4: CRO is all about fostering conversion increases
The most surprising myth about app store CRO pertains to its purposes. Traditionally, CRO is used to foster uplifts in CVR. The number one question marketers consider is: What can we change in the app store listing so the app’s CVR will increase? It isn’t wrong one—it’s just weak on its own.
As explained earlier, CVR is a relative metric dependent on two others, namely a traffic-related one and the installs. Traffic-increasing campaigns would frequently be carried out with little to no regard for their CVR impact. For example, you may perform a category switch to have better rankings in top charts and even gain a category rank badge on the store listing of your app, but the new category appeals to the kind of users who have nothing to do with the app. They’d end up seeing it without installing it, and so CVR drops.
The exemplified category switch campaign belongs to app store visibility, but its implication has everything to do with CRO. It needs to be anticipated accordingly. This means, apart from increasing CVR with active CRO projects, you also need to prevent other projects from decreasing it.
Such a defensive CRO strategy can be simple with the right starting point: The mindset. Once again, keep in mind your users are humans. In every attempt to boost the traffic by reaching out to more users, ask yourself: Are they also the right users who would install the app, and why? A handful of users who would install and use the app extensively would be more valuable than a million of those who abandon it after a day.
It’s also important to track and measure CVR after any new ASO activity is initiated. For instance, you have just made a metadata update with new keywords, and it has brought in significantly greater traffic. But the increased impressions aren’t successfully converted into installs, so CVR starts to drop. If you don’t track it right away, it will stay under the radar.
If it remains unnoticed and unattended, it could escalate quickly. Maybe you target irrelevant keywords that belong to users who aren’t interested in your app. Maybe those keywords are great but the copywriting built on them isn’t. Either way, you’d never know unless you keep your app’s CVR in check all the time.
App store CRO might seem like an unfair game. Few resources exist to lead you in the right direction. Traps may appear in many forms. Some of them are obvious and on the operational, task-oriented level. Others are more abstract and related to your way of thinking. They’re myths as opposed to factual information.
Hopefully, the above four myths, with their proposed solutions, will help with your CRO strategy. You can avoid the mistakes before they happen.
