App stores are growing exponentially, and competition is only becoming more intense by the day, with many businesses struggling to get their apps noticed, let alone downloaded and used. The challenge of standing out among millions of apps is daunting, especially when traditional marketing efforts fail to deliver the desired visibility and engagement. By the end of 2023, Apple’s App Store hosted 2.29 million apps and games, and the Google Play Store, 2.61 billion.
In such a saturated digital ecosystem, how are newly launched apps meant to compete?
Successful use of App Store Optimisation (ASO) is what your app needs for effective and sustained growth. By effectively using the ASO strategy in your app growth efforts you can significantly improve discoverability in app stores, drive organic downloads, and enhance user retention.
In this post, we will cover what a successful ASO strategy can mean for your app, what elements it consists of and how you can measure its success. Let’s dive in.
What is ASO?
In many respects, ASO is what SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is for websites. The difference, of course, is that ASO exists within the context of App Stores. ASO aims to optimise various elements of your app store listing to improve ranking, maximise appeal, and increase your app’s overall discoverability.
ASO focuses on improving various on-page and off-page elements, such as titles and keywords, screenshots and other visual assets, descriptions, reviews, and more. The primary goal of ASO is to drive more organic downloads by improving the app’s searchability and attractiveness in the app store listings.
In short, ASO is an essential tool for app developers and marketers to ensure their apps can effectively compete with and be found by the target audience among millions of available apps.
Why is ASO Important?
App Store Optimization is important because it will directly influence your app’s discoverability, reach and download rates, which are critical for success in a highly competitive app market.
With the effective application of the ASO strategy, an app can achieve higher rankings in an app store’s search results, leading to increased visibility and more downloads without having to rely solely on paid advertising. Improved app visibility attracts more relevant users, which will then enhance your user acquisition and retention rates. Higher rankings and visibility ensure your app is more likely to appear in front of users who are actively searching for it or its related features. This means the app will see increased downloads from interested users.
This will boost the app’s growth and profitability and also build a loyal user base, contributing to long-term success and sustainability in the app marketplace.
Now that we’ve covered the concept of ASO and what it can mean for your app, let’s explore its benefits, strategy, and associated KPIs in more detail.
What Are the Benefits of Using ASO?
An effective ASO strategy provides a multitude of advantages that collectively drive an app’s success. Developing a high-quality app is extremely important, but simply isn’t enough. Businesses must ensure their app is easily discoverable, attractive to potential users, and capable of retaining those users long-term.
On the surface, App Store Optimization seems to only improve your app’s visibility, but in fact, it offers much more beyond that. Here are the benefits of ASO:
- Improved user engagement and retention: ASO helps attract users who are more likely to engage with and retain your app through its alignment with app store search algorithms.
- Higher conversion rates: Effective ASO enhances the appeal of your app’s listing, from engaging visuals to compelling descriptions, which encourages more users to download your app.
- Cost-effectiveness: Unlike paid advertising, ASO drives organic growth, reducing your overall marketing spend while still achieving impressive download numbers.
- Enhanced credibility: A well-optimised app store presence builds trust and credibility with users, as high ratings and positive reviews reflect the app’s quality and reliability.
- Sustained growth: With ongoing ASO efforts, your app can maintain and improve its ranking over time, ensuring long-term success and a competitive edge in the market.
- Better user experience: Optimised app store listings provide clear, relevant information that helps users understand your app’s value, leading to a better user experience from the outset.
- Improved brand awareness: As your app ranks higher and attracts more downloads, it enhances overall brand visibility and awareness, helping you build a stronger brand presence.
- Global reach: ASO, combined with localisation strategies, allows your app to reach and attract users from different regions and languages, expanding your app’s global footprint.
Each of these benefits plays a vital role in creating a successful app that thrives in the digital landscape.
Using ASO Strategy to Boost Your App’s Success
Implementing strategic App Store Optimization (ASO) techniques is essential for maximising your app’s potential. Here are some key strategies to get you started:
Keyword research and optimisation
Conducting keyword research for mobile apps implies building a comprehensive list of keywords that reflect the app’s functionality. Usually, such a list is divided into core, mid and long-tail keywords. This covers the entire spectrum of words the app’s potential users may use to search for the app. App Store Optimization Tools are instrumental in streamlining the keyword research process and making it efficient, especially when it comes to doing ASO for multiple apps.
Compelling app title and subtitle
One of the first things anybody will learn about your app is its name. Your app’s name or title is your opportunity to communicate the purpose and value of your app immediately.
In the context of the Google Play Store, the app title holds a lot of weight. It identifies the app regardless of where users interact with it—Google Play search results, Top Apps charts, or Featured sections. The Google Play ranking algorithm attributes the greatest value to the words included in the app’s title. Therefore, it should contain the app’s highly relevant keywords with high search volume.
The title length in both the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store is limited to 30 characters, so each word used should offer value.
A useful way to optimise your app’s title is to combine a brand name that makes the app stand out with a word that communicates your app’s purpose and value proposition with one of two core target keywords. E.g. Google Maps, MyFitnessPal, Snapchat.
Such core keyword inclusion sends a signal to both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store ranking algorithms about the app’s relevancy to those core keywords. Unlike the web, app stores’ ranking algorithms use fewer data points to rank a mobile app for specific keywords. Hence, optimising the app’s title and subtitle can be crucial points of your ASO strategy.
Engaging visuals
These include your app’s icon, app preview video and screenshots.A mobile app’s icon serves as a visual representation of the app and allows it to stand out on a smartphone or tablet home screen. It’s part of the app’s branding and requires careful consideration. See below for tips on creating a striking app icon:
Use platform-specific designs
An app icon that fits well on iOS devices may not appear as well on Android; this is why you should use platform-specific designs. Using platform-specific designs in your ASO for app icons ensures compliance with platform guidelines and enhances visual appeal, leading to higher user trust and improved download rates. This alignment boosts visibility and integrates seamlessly with the platform’s ecosystem, optimising user experience.
Align icons with your brand identity
An app icon must not only communicate what your app does but also represent your brand. It should be consistent with your brand’s image and all other touchpoints to deliver a coherent experience.
Legibility
Avoid using text unless necessary. Icons are designed to communicate an app’s purpose through symbols and graphics. The text loses legibility when scaled down.
Ongoing evolution
Ensure that you continuously test and optimise your app icon. Ongoing improvement is critical for keeping up with market expectations. Look at leading brands to gain insights into general design trends and keep an eye on competitors to see what direction your specific industry is heading. An app icon refresh can help your brand stay current and signal to users that you’re committed to optimising their experience. Here’s an example of an icon revolution from Instagram.
In the case of the screenshots, you’ll want to visually communicate the app’s story, showing its core features front and centre. In the example below, Snapchat effectively utilises screenshots to clearly communicate its core value proposition, enabling potential users to easily grasp the app’s functionality.
With an app’s video preview, best practice would be to pack the app’s most prominent 2-3 features into a 30-second video clip, with a stress on the first 10 seconds to ensure potential app users understand the app’s purpose and value.
For example, the video below immediately communicates the apps purpose and its features to its users, quickly followed by reviews from authoritative figures to build brand trust.
Comprehensive app description
This gives you a chance to explain what your app does and how it can solve potential problems or fulfil needs.Write a clear, concise, and informative description that describes the app’s functionality, benefits, and unique selling points.
Use bullet points and short paragraphs to enhance readability. Both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store share a 4000-character limit for their app descriptions. Please note, that unlike the App Store, Google Play indexes keywords included in the long description. This means that optimising keywords in your Google Play long description can directly affect your app’s search ranking and visibility.
Positive reviews and ratings
App reviews and rating optimisation involve managing app users’ communities and taking marketing steps to encourage them to review your app. Both Apple’s iOS App Store and Google Play Store provide app developers with tools to reply to users’ comments and address their concerns directly.
App reviews and ratings serve as first reference points for potential mobile app users, once they see a particular app listed in app stores. It’s important to reiterate that the authenticity of app reviews and ratings is paramount; deceitful or inaccurate app marketing practices backfire on your app brand’s reputation and ruin your efforts to build a sustainable app business.
You can read more on our insights on app performance and their reviews here.
Localised content
To reach a broader audience, optimise your app’s content for different languages and regions. Localisation implies a number of important steps, from translating the app to a native language to factoring in more colloquial expressions people may use to search for your app in a local app store. For more information on app localisation, check out our comprehensive guide here.
If your app reached a plateau—a point at which there are fewer or no new users interested in benefitting from your app, consider app localisation to expand your reach.
Google Play Store
Google Play Tags: Google Play allows developers to add tags to their apps. Tags are critical for categorising the app and improving its discoverability within relevant search results and categories. Choosing accurate and relevant tags helps Google better understand the app’s purpose and target audience. These tags define a set of categories to which a particular mobile game or app belongs. By choosing the right tags for your mobile app or game you increase its visibility on the Google Play store. Apple’s app store does not have this feature.
App Store
Keyword Bank: Apple uses a 100-character keyword bank where developers input relevant keywords separated by commas. This field is crucial for indexing and ranking the app in search results. This attribute is not displayed on the app store. One of the best applications for keywords is app localisation for multiple app markets – you can specify a unique set of keywords in a particular language. This is particularly relevant in countries that have more than one dominant language, e.g. in the US, the set of keywords specified for Latin America will also be in use for the US App Store.
With these simple ASO strategies, you can enhance your app’s visibility, attract more users, and achieve sustained growth in a competitive market. If you need support in leveraging these strategies for maximum impact, get in touch with our team.
Now, to ensure the efforts you’ve placed into your ASO strategy aren’t in vain, you should know how to measure them. Here are the KPIs against which you should measure your ASO efforts.
ASO KPIs
To measure the effectiveness of your ASO strategy, it is crucial to track specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide insights into your app’s overall performance in app stores. Here are the main KPIs for ASO:
Visibility: A crucial ASO KPI, visibility measures how prominently your app appears in app store search results and top charts. Visibility directly influences organic traffic and user acquisition, as higher visibility increases the likelihood of users discovering and downloading your app.Monitoring visibility involves tracking keyword rankings and category placements, striving to secure top positions that maximise exposure to your target audience.
Improving visibility requires a strategic ASO strategy, including keyword optimisation, refining app metadata, and enhancing visual assets to boost click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates.By prioritising visibility as a KPI within your ASO strategy, you can effectively increase app discoverability and attract more engaged users, ultimately driving sustainable growth and success in the competitive app marketplace.
Conversion: Conversion is a pivotal KPI in any comprehensive ASO strategy, focusing on the percentage of app store visitors who download the app. It directly reflects the effectiveness of your app’s listing in persuading users to engage further.
As mentioned above, optimising for conversion involves refining elements such as your app title, visual elements, and metadata to communicate the app’s value proposition and benefits clearly. These features have a significant impact on capturing user interest and encouraging downloads.
Monitoring and improving conversion rates help ensure that your app attracts users and converts them into loyal customers.
By continually testing and refining these elements based on user feedback and analytics, you can enhance conversion rates and maximise the impact of your ASO efforts on app growth and success.
Installs: Installs represent the number of times users download and install your app from the app store. This metric is crucial as it directly correlates with the app’s popularity and user acquisition efforts.
A high number of installs indicates effective use of the ASO strategy and can boost your app’s ranking in the app store, leading to greater visibility and further organic growth.
Additionally, analysing install trends can provide insights into user behaviour and preferences, enabling you to refine your ASO strategy and improve overall app performance.
Monetisation: Monetisation, in this case, refers to the revenue generated from your app through various channels, such as in-app purchases, subscriptions, ads, and app premium features.
Analysing your monetisation metrics helps you understand which aspects of your app generate the most revenue, allowing you to refine your strategy and influence your app’s revenue potential.
The image below shows an example of an app’s tracked performance metrics (store listing visitors). The data and figures you read can be used to inform your optimisation strategies going forward.
A strong ASO strategy drives downloads and user engagement and maximises revenue potential by attracting and retaining users willing to invest in your app’s offerings. You can ensure long-term profitability and growth in the competitive app marketplace by continuously optimising for monetisation.
Conclusion
Implementing a comprehensive ASO strategy is essential for any business aiming to thrive in the competitive app marketplace.
ASO enhances your app’s visibility, drives organic downloads, and ensures higher user engagement and retention, all of which contribute to your app’s sustained growth and profitability. If you want to build more on your app growth knowledge, you can read more here.
