The objective of this article is to present the main actions to maximize the chances of appearing first result when a search is made on the App Store or the Play Store.
The process of improving the visibility of a mobile application on stores and its conversion rate for downloading is called ASO (for app Store Optimization). ASO is to mobile applications what SEO is to websites.
According to Apple, 65% of downloads of a mobile application from the App Store occur directly after searching for it. It is therefore important to work on your visibility on the stores to maximize your downloads.
How to improve your ASO?
Here is a list of tips to improve your ASO:
• Choose a good name
• Choose good keywords
• Fill in the description
• Do A / B testing on the application icon
• Upload screenshots and videos from the app
• Adapt content to the user’s location
• Encourage users to rate and comment on the app
We will now detail each of these points.
Choose a good name
The keywords in the title have the most weight in the ranking. The title should be:
• relevant to the concept of the application
• easy to read
• unique
• be up to 50 characters long on the Play Store
• be up to 30 characters long on the App Store
• possibly contain keywords
Choose good keywords
Keywords are words that people type in to find your app. They are to be included in the title, the subtitle, the “keywords” field (only on the App Store) and in the description of the application.
To find the right keywords, ask yourself the following questions:
• What are the main features of my application?
• What are the synonyms that describe these features?
• What are similar apps called?
• What is the category of the application?
• What terms do people generally use in this category?
The Apparat tool allows you to analyze the relevance of keywords.
Fill in the description
The description should be:
• informative
• easy to understand
• clearly structured (bullet points, emoji’s)
• contain keywords (only for the Play Store)
• make a maximum of 4000 characters
The Play Store uses the words in the description to index the app, which the App Store does not. Keywords should appear naturally in the description.
Do A / B testing on the application icon
The idea is to design multiple versions of your icon and see which one maximizes the download rate.
For this you can use an A / B testing tool like Split Metrics?
Upload screenshots and videos from the app
Screenshots and videos do not have a direct impact on the ranking, but they do affect the conversion rate, which is one of the ranking criteria.
The objective is to present the main functionalities of the application to the user, by showing him the most beautiful screens.
Here are some examples of presentations:
Adapt content to location
The App Store is available in over 175 countries and 40 languages.
Text, image and video content can be adapted to each country and language. More information on this is available in this article.
Encourage users to rate and comment on the app
The number of ratings, comments and the average rating are ranking criteria on the stores.
In order to get more ratings, you can ask users to rate the app while using it. On the App Store, the rule is to request a rating no more than 3 times a year. It is advisable to request the rating mainly from users who have used the application a lot.
Please feel free to respond promptly to all user feedback on the stores and resolve any issues they have with the app.
Conclusion
ASO is a process that we recommend that you integrate into your marketing strategy and that can have a significant impact on the volume of activity of your mobile application.
If you are interested in these topics, you can take a look at this article on the launch strategy that was followed by Jock, a mobile dating app that Gala rim developed.
