A short crash course on App Store Optimization
Forward: With the continued growth of smartphones, and the plethora of ‘success stories’ about app developers who ‘made it big’ we keep seeing more and more apps in the app stores. The pipe dream of “I’ll just build an app/game and get rich” draws in more indie developers and big corporations alike to develop their app in hopes of tremendous success.
But let’s look at the numbers: Recent estimations claim there are about 2.2M apps on iOS, and around 2.7M apps on Google Play. A recent study shows that on average, the typical user spends about 77% of their time using only 3 apps. The rest of their time — a mere 23% — is divided across all other apps.
A typical user spends about 77% of their time using only 3 apps. The rest of their time — a mere 23% — is divided across all other apps.
According to this analysis, about 60% of app developers live below the “app poverty line” and are making less than $500 per month from their apps — not even recouping their development costs (not to mention any marketing spend).
60% of app developers live below the “app poverty line” and are making less than $500 per month from their apps
As CPI’s are on the rise and mobile ad spending is growing, finding cost-effective ways to reach your target audience is becoming even more scarce. With such a grim starting point, more developers are turning to ASO as a way to effectively grow their organic visibility and gain more traction for their app.
So how does ASO work?
The ASO basics
Before we start, ASO, just like any other marketing strategy, doesn’t work in a void: You need a solid product. Do your homework, test, and iterate, and make sure you have your product-market-fit and onboarding right. Once you have that, it’s time to double-down on ASO.
Most people think of ASO as “mobile SEO”, and only look to grow organic visibility.
AppStore Optimization actually has 2 major goals:
- Improve organic visibility and drive more organic traffic to the app page based on (relevant) keywords — the typical use-case when thinking of ASO.
- Improve app page conversions, from view to install — which also effectively assists in any paid media buying and drives down CPI — and is more often than not, looked over.
ASO Goal #1: Improve organic visibility to drive organic traffic
The first portion of ASO is all about research and keywords: just like traditional SEO, it’s a game of improving your perceived value by SERPs (only in this case, the SERPs are iTunes and Google Play) — while also maintaining actual value for users who read your app page.
Like any good marketing tactic, it all starts with understanding your product, your competitors, and your users.
Open a new doc and start asking yourself the following questions:
- What does my product do?
- What is the value I’m giving my users?
- What are my users looking to get?
- What would a typical user type in to search for an app like mine?
- What USPs (unique selling points) are my competitors promoting?
- What types of keywords/phrases come up when looking at my competitor’s (positive) reviews?
The basics of mobile keyword research
The first step starts with listing your competitors, their app names, short descriptions/subtitles, any related keywords that pop out from the descriptions, and their icons/creatives.
Now is when you’ll want to sign up for a few tools.
A good place to start is with AppAnnie, which gives you access to a free account, and provides you access to keyword ranking data as well as App Store Tracking. As you dig-in a bit deeper, you might want to consider signing up for one of SensorTower’s basic plans — which is a great resource for keyword research (it costs $79/mo and more often than not, well worth the investment).
Once your accounts are all set up, start running some keyword searches. Look at all of the data points you gathered earlier and start adding them to SensorTower. It’s important to examine where your competitors are placed for each keyword, and try to look for low-hanging fruit — i.e. keywords or phrases that have a relatively high search volume but little competition for those keywords/phrases. Just like with SEO — remember to spend time looking for long-tail keywords as much as possible (this is where all that low-hanging fruit hangs out).
Ranking #1 for highly competitive terms like “strategy game” or “productivity app” is going to be insanely hard — so start off with longer phrases where you can gain quick wins.
look for low-hanging fruit — i.e. keywords or phrases that have a relatively high search volume but little competition for those keywords/phrases.
Pro-tip: Think like a human. Yes, seriously. Do it.
Go to your phone, open your app store of choice and start typing. Let the autocomplete help you and give you ideas. Try to get into the mind of your users. What would they search for? Remember, most users don’t search using elaborate words or industry terms. Search for descriptors that explain your app in the point of view of your typical user. Also — don’t neglect typos. These can be easy wins, and are sometimes golden.
Utilizing your keyword research and building proper ASO phrases
Once you’ve completed your initial research, you probably have a list of a few dozen keywords/phrases where you want to rank. Pick around 10 important phrases to focus on initially. Mix it up; take a few short-term keywords and a few longer phrases for reaching that important long-tail. Again, avoid the generic one-word keywords as you’ll be fighting an uphill battle and your time is better spent on other phrases.
Now comes the important part — adding those phrases to your text.
Again, just like SEO — you want to signal to the SERPs that these words are important, while also making sure your text is valuable and helpful to users (without being too spammy).
In terms of importance, work your way from the top-down
Start with the title, then move onto the subtitle/short description, keyword string (iOS only), and finally, the long description.
Avoid overlap as much as possible, especially in the shorter texts (e.g. title, subtitle), since they take up precious space that you could instead use for additional keywords.
So a keyword that appears in your title should appear in your subtitle or short description.
For iOS — keywords that appear in your title/subtitle shouldn’t be on your keyword string. This lets you optimize the number of keywords you’re trying to rank for.
Now start working on your long description.
Try to add the most important keywords around 3–5 times in the description text, obviously in places that make sense and create coherent, valuable sentences.
A few extra tips:
On Android, use HTML formatting in your long description.
While some use it for emojis, you can use it for ASO! Take 2–3 of your most lucrative phrases and emphasize them with <b>, <i>, and <u>. This signals Google Play that these keywords are extra valuable and will help push up more “juice” to these phrases.
The “What’s New” text on Android is also indexed with ASO value.
This little-known trick can bring in a lot of value. Here’s how to easily do this in 2 steps:
Step 1: Choose 2 phrases
Step 2: Add an opening and ending sentence to your “what’s new” that wraps up your release notes.
As a nice test, take 2 fresh phrases that didn’t appear elsewhere — and pretty soon you’ll see yourself starting to rank for them too!
Localization is obviously important… and not just for geos with foreign languages. Localize your app page for other English-speaking countries (like Canada, Australia, and the UK) and diversify the strings you’re using accordingly. This will give you more ASO “juice” over time.
ASO Goal #2: Improve app page conversions: from view to install
The next step is to start working on your presence — icon and screenshots.
Remember the goal behind your app icon and each and every screenshot
Your icon is there to draw the eyes of users when they are searching organically within the store. Screenshots are there to help convert views into installs once they are already on your app page (regardless of whether they came organically or through paid efforts).
What is your immediate goal?
Are you focused on organic growth or on driving paid traffic?
If your goal is organic, start with A/B testing your icon.
If your goal is improving paid traffic, start with A/B testing your screenshots.
If your app is already live, check the app consoles (iTunes Analytics / Google Play Console) and set your app page conversion benchmark. This is your baseline, and from here the goal is to grow!
Or, you could just run a low-budget Facebook campaign to take out the guesswork
If you’re building a new app, a nifty little trick to help you pinpoint which graphics will perform best before you even launch, is to run a small Facebook ad campaign.
Build a campaign around your target market, with simple, unified messaging, and then use the various creatives you’re thinking of using for your app store icon and screenshots. Run the test with ~$100 budget, and review the CTRs. Once you’ve burned through the budget, use the graphics with the highest CTRs on your app page, to start with.
Always, always, always A/B test
On Android, this is fairly easy as Google Play’s inherent tool is a great resource to use. Simply select your objective (icon or screenshot, for example), set the variants and control group, and let it run.
If you’re on iOS this is a bit more tricky. You can check out StoreMaven, who is doing a great job at this (however, it isn’t cheap).
Another Option? Apple Search Ads
This paid channel lets you run keyword-based targeting for iOS users, and instead of showing your real screenshots, you can utilize other creatives and A/B test them against your organic conversion benchmark. True — this test only runs on paid traffic, but if it converts better than your baseline — you should consider changing the actual images, and then running a fresh test with a new batch of creatives. Remember: every day you’re not A/B testing, is a day wasted.
Final tips
A few extra tips before I send you off to start your ASO journey:
Reviews and ratings are crucial to your downloads, for 2 reasons:
- Highly-rated apps are pushed higher in the algorithms, in most cases.
- Research shows that users prefer to download apps with at least 4 stars, on average. This nice little chart from Apptentive research report shows the relative growth in App Page Conv. % when increasing in star rating:
Research shows that users prefer to download apps with at least 4 stars, on average.
QA Your App Thoroughly Every Single Time… A Simple Smoke Test Isn’t Going to Cut It
Always QA your app and make sure that each version that goes out to production is reliable and stable. An app with a critical bug can kill your business — plain and simple. If you’re getting a lot of 1-star reviews, it’ll be VERY hard to recover and get back to a stable ranking position. On top of that, you should always be encouraging users to rate you — but take into account that if you released a shoddy version, this can backfire gloriously.
Timing Is Everything When It Comes to Getting Good (And Plentiful) App Reviews
Map out your app flow and onboarding, and figure out the very first “wow moment” or “happy moment” in which users will be more inclined to give you a positive rating. Make sure this happens either on the first session (best case scenario) or 2nd session — but no later — so you don’t miss out on potential users who’ve already churned.
Always utilize an internal rating dialog first, to check if the user is happy. Only send users to review your app on the app store itself if (and after) the user indicated they’re happy.
The more positive reviews — the better you are positioned both in terms of the algorithms, as well as in terms of page conversions.
Another small tip is that at least on Android, review texts are also indexed — so if you’re sending friends to rate you, make sure they’re adding in at least one of the keyword phrases you’re targeting. :)
Not Even the Best ASO Can Save an Unstable App
Finally, stability is crucial, especially on Google Play. Google has recently put a strong emphasis on improving user experience across the app store, and Apple is rumored to be not too far behind.
Specifically, Crash reports, Hangs, and ANRs.
Google Play provides a reporting dashboard which gives you, your industry benchmark — always, always make sure you’re below the threshold! This has a tremendous effect on the algorithm, and even apps with great ASO and killer reviews can crash and lose their rankings if they release an unstable version.
I personally know a few very successful CEOs that drink their morning coffee with the ANR report to make sure their business stays stable.
(Famous) Last words
There’s still a lot more to dive into in the ASO world. Here are a few questions to start asking and areas to explore:
- How does app size affect algorithm changes?
- What about bundle name, or IAP naming conventions?
- How do we optimize paid traffic, and what do traditional SEO methods and backlinks have to do with ASO?
These and more are all great questions, but it’s time to end this post.
Get started on everything I’ve covered above, and you’ll already be off to a great start!
As your rankings improve and your page conversions soar, it’ll be the right time to start doubling down on A/B testing and advanced ASO tactics which, I’ll cover in my next post.
I’ll sign this off with my favorite Ernie quote:
“You can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets”.
Good luck!
Adir
About Adir:
Adir is the co-founder & CEO of Squareloot, a marketing boutique specializing in everything mobile. With over 15 years of marketing experience, Adir is the former CMO of Mytopia, Win.com, and Tacticsoft. Today, Squareloot provides entrepreneurs and startups external CMO services, covering the entire marketing needs from research and product-market-fit testing through product and game design, marketing strategy, and up to the execution of ASO, Social, Content and User Acquisition strategies.
You can read more at www.squareloot.com or connect with Adir on LinkedIn.
