App Store Optimization and Organic Growth for your Mobile App

The term ASO stands for App Store Optimization and includes all activities that help to increase organic downloads for your app portfolio. This might include AB tests in the Google Play Store, changing the meta information for your game, or optimizing the keyword rankings.

On an overall level, there are many things that you can do to either increase the visibility or conversion rates for your app. I am only going to give you a brief overview of what you can do, since things are moving fast. 

The activities below can be summarized into the following chart for a more profound understanding of which factor has the most impact on visibility or conversion rate for your app. If you have limited resources, you have to plan your ASO updates accordingly and only spend time on things that matter the most. 

Please note that all the activities “can” have an impact and in today’s world this is not guaranteed. E.g., a Store Feature might work well for the Top 100 grossing publishers as they get the best front page placements from the Stores, however for smaller apps a feature might only lead to a few hundred downloads.

To increase the visibility of your app is one of the main goals of ASO since the Stores are flooded with apps these days and to drive attention to your app is very difficult to achieve. The biggest driver to letting people find your product is to use the right keywords in your metadata.

You can place the keywords at different locations such as: App Title, Description, Promo texts, Subtitles, etc. Finding the perfect keywords is a difficult process and takes some time, but we will start simple.

Organic growth can be a big driver for downloads in the store and therefore should be handled appropriately. When you are writing store description texts or coming up with app names, you should not randomly pick some words that you like. You should rather do proper research first on which keywords and phrases are best for your specific use case.

The volumes of the keywords are a good starting point to look out for. There are millions of searches performed each day on the two major platforms, which will always result on some sort of SERP (Search Engine Result Page) that showcases different apps that are popping up for this search term. 

Put yourself into the shoes of your customers. Try to answer the question: “What would my user search for when they want to see my app?”. When you have a Mercedes-Benz licensed racing game, it could be f.e. “Mercedes racing game”. When you offer a poker game that everybody can download, it might be something like “poker app free”. It is good to formulate some of these phrases to get an idea of what the customers might type into the search fields.

After you have come up with 10–50 keywords and phrases, you want to check if they are really worth a try and check them for their volumes. As in SEO, there is a correlation between short tail keywords and a high popularity and long tail keywords that have a lower popularity as only fewer people are searching for it. There are plenty of tools to check for keyword volumes, such as:

• Google Trends (free to use, only shows indices — not real numbers)
• Google Keyword Planner (free to use, requires Google and Google Ads account)
• Apple Search Ads (free to use, require Apple Search Ads account)
• Sensortower (paid service)
• Apptweak (paid service)

Keep in mind that it might make sense to start writing your texts with more long tail keywords with less competition because you might rank higher for these.

It is a common practice to write your store texts with keywords and phrases that many apps are competing for. Let’s take the keyword “racing game” for example. There are tons of other racing games out there that have this particular keyword in their descriptions and app titles as well. (= plenty of apps are competing for this phrase). So the question arises if you should include this for your racing game as well? The answer is: “It depends”. 

When you find out in your competitor research that the other racing games that are popping up for this term are AAA game with millions of downloads. You might never directly rank for these keywords, as there is little chance that you are entering the top 10 or 20 with your indie game. So what else can you do? The answer is: Finding your niche!

Even though you have a hard time ranking for the main keyword, like “racing game” you might find it easier to rank for long tail keywords such as “racing game with karts for free”. The search volumes for this term might be lower, but on the other hand, you will not have to fight major brands with tons of new downloads every day.

In the keyword competition analysis, you want to find out more about the apps that are already ranking for your preferred term and if you see a chance fighting against them in terms of ranking positions. Sometimes it makes sense to use keywords in your title and description that fewer people are searching for, but you are climbing the ranking ladder eventually.

After finding the best fitting keywords with high-volume and low competition, you have to decide if they are relevant for your app and audience. There is nothing worse than stuffing irrelevant terms into your store texts! You should think twice before adding keywords like: Candy Crush Saga or Zynga Poker to your texts because they have a high volume.

The stores are very strict these days when it comes to inappropriate naming and keyword usage that is not showcasing the purpose of the app. So please review your text ideas carefully and kick out every term that is not matching the overall idea or feature of the app. When your app is not free to use and is not translated into Italian, please do not advertise it as such.

The other big factor of ASO is to increase the conversion rates of your app. That means that from every 100 visitors, you want to convince as many people as possible to download your app.

Whenever a user is typing out a search query, a list of apps is shown (=SERP, Search Engine Result Page) and you as a publisher want the user to click on your app and install it.

There are some major things that we can do to increase the conversion rates and all have some pros and cons. I will just give a short overview below, as things might change in the future.

Google Play has a nice AB testing tool that is free to use for everyone with a developer account and a published app. The icon is the first thing that I would test because it can have a major influence on conversion rates as the icon is shown in the SERP and on the app page as well.

Try to emphasize on the idea of showing relevant and unique ideas on the logo that is grabbing attention. You can always take a look at competitors and completely other apps as well. Deconstruct their strategies and take a look at what they did in the past.

The special features and the most important functions of the app are shown with suitable screenshots. The app can be shown from its best side in these product images. If, for example, a testimonial was found for marketing the app, this is the ideal place to communicate this. Known and learned brand images or key visuals can also be used on the screenshots so that they can be quickly noticed by the target group and assigned to the brand. 

The most significant statements should be placed on the first visible screenshot, as the user must first perform an action (swipe gesture) for each additional image. While screenshots are already displayed in the search results in the Apple App Store, they can only be seen on the actual app page in the Google Play Store.

If you are just starting out and don’t have a designer sitting next to you, try out these services that will help you with some initial design patterns for your app screenshots:

• The App Launch Pad
• Screenshots Pro
• App Mockup

With a product video, the user has the opportunity to see the app live in action before installing it. In the times of free editing programs and AI, it is easier than ever to produce and publish a preview video. Nevertheless, you should be aware that there are quality standards that must be observed.

To keep the production costs of a video low, you should start planning the concept as early as possible. For this purpose, various questions need to be clarified. If, for example, the app is to be shown in action on a mobile device in the video, this can be done quickly and easily using screen capture measures. If additional speakers, complex special effects or even actors are required, the price for the production can quickly multiply.

It is therefore advisable to create a storyboard right at the beginning to define the process, the core features to be shown and the desired camera settings and recordings. The storyboard is used both to plan the video content and to support the service provider who produces the video. This ensures that everyone involved has the same ideas when creating the visual content.

In the best case, the video should also be produced in different versions and dimensions so that they can be tested against each other and also used as ad creatives for ad networks. Currently, an industry standard has been established in which the most important features are presented at the beginning of the video and the total length should not exceed 30 seconds.

It is often worth taking a look at competing apps as inspiration for video ideas. From this, it can be deduced which video style is well received by the target group and which features of the products are highlighted. You can react accordingly in your advertising video and learn from the best practices of your competitors.

Every day, there are new AI’s popping up that will help you to create videos for your mobile app. Some links to check out:

• Runway ML (create videos from text input)
• Heygen (create video avatars and voice-overs)
• Canva (popular design tools, plus text-to-video features)

In the descriptive text of the app, you have the opportunity to emphasize the special core elements of the app and to convince store visitors who are still hesitant to install it with a well-thought-out text. The text should also be machine-readable so that search engines and store operators can index the right keywords.

The texts and the importance of keywords for the visibility of the app have already been discussed in previous chapters. This is about the positive influence of a text on the customer’s conversion rate.

When creating the descriptive text, care must be taken to ensure that it is easy to read for the user. Clear paragraphs should explain the usefulness of the app with short descriptions. Here, too, reference can be made to a social proof and the actual USP. If, according to the corporate identity guidelines, the company always communicates with the customer in a certain tonality, this spelling should also be reflected in the description text. 

The most important features may also be summarized as bullet points at the beginning of the text. This offers the user the simple opportunity to quickly find out about the properties of the app.

The localization or the cultural adaptation of all store content is a critical factor. Not only the app itself, but also the graphic and textual content (store assets) must be adapted to the conditions of the target market. In any case, a professional translation studio should be commissioned with the project.

This is the only way to ensure that gradual linguistic deviations and dialects are recognized and considered. This can have a significant impact on the acceptance of the store content by the target group and have a positive effect on downloads. 

Special consideration must be given to languages ​​that are also spoken across national borders. Using the simple example of the USA and Great Britain, there are a lot of different English pronunciations and spellings that every user would like to find in their localized store entry.

Canadian French also differs from European French in some places. This offers companies the opportunity to stand out from the competition through appropriate localization.

Read more about different cultures and try out the country comparison tool: Hofstede Country Comparison. Cultures are complex, and this tool can give you only an overview, but it is still helpful to better understand what different people would favor and drives their main motivations.

Improving the user funnel with ASO tactics or better ad creatives can reduce the effective CPI that you have to pay to an ad network when doing UA. The ad network calculates different performance scores for your campaign and the better your funnel, the more users the network can sell and the fewer impressions it has to show to its users (placement scarcity). 

In the example below, the publisher was able to increase the click rate of its ad creatives to from 1% to 2%. This has a positive impact on the amount of acquired users through this network and also on the effective CPI that has to be paid. The same is true if you can push your App Store conversion rate from let’s say 30% to 35%! This will lower your costs of acquiring a new user.

You should also use a proper naming convention. That will make filtering and sorting way easier in the future. If you are just naming your AB tests like this, you will have a hard time figuring out what you actually tested, right?

• “new test”
• “final-test-new”
• “asdf”

AB Test naming convention suggestion:

• <AppName>_<Language>_<Country>_<Asset>_<Idea>

Which will result into something like this:

• CandyCrush_en_US_Icon_newGreenBackground
• Calm_fr_CA_ShortDescription_BetterSleepBenefit

This article covers App Store Optimization (ASO) for increasing organic app downloads.

Key Takeaways:

• Focus on keywords: Research and use relevant keywords with high-volume and low competition in your app title, description, and subtitles.
• Target long-tail keywords: Consider niche keywords with lower search volume but potentially higher ranking possibilities.
• Avoid irrelevant keywords: Don’t try to stuff your text with unrelated keywords just for volume.
• Optimize conversion rate: Use powerful visuals like icons, screenshots, and videos to showcase your app’s features.
• Write compelling text: Craft clear, concise descriptions highlighting your app’s unique selling points and social proof.
• Localize app and store content: Adapt your app and store content to the specific language and cultural nuances of your target market.
• Conduct AB tests: Experiment with different elements like icons and screenshots to see what resonates best with users.

Remember:

• ASO is an ongoing process, so stay updated on changing trends and adapt your strategies accordingly.
• While these tips can help, results may vary depending on your app and competition.