The process of improving your app on play store and Apple store is called as App Store optimisation. So in App Store optimisation, you optimise the listing of your app on the respective platform to attract more users to download your app.
Three Components of App Store Optimisation
Aso has three major components.
1 Impression.
2. Click through rate
3. Conversion.
The process may slightly differ based on the platform. For instance, it is big different on Google play and different on iOS app store.
What will this guide cover
In this guide, we will cover every thing about the App Store optimisation and what are the key components and how you can go about optimising for every single variable that is present in the App Store optimisation process
Why Optimising The App is Important – Does it matter?
As of 2023, there are over 3.5 million apps in Google play store and over 3.9 million apps on iOS, App Store. Given that there are so many apps, it is very important that we optimise the listing in order to get higher number of users to download the app.
Three ways to acquire Users and how ASO helps with all
There are many ways to acquire users. This could be broadly put into three categories.
- Paid acquisition.
- Organic acquisition.
- Affiliate, also known as third party referral.
App Store optimisation may not only help you in improving your organic visibility, but can also help you with the Paid acquisition and with the third-party affiliate as the process improves the conversion rate.
Why should you do App Store of optimisation?
App Store optimisation can help you lower the cost of Paid acquisition. At the same time. It can help you acquire more users organically.
We have seen cases where App Store optimisation alone can lower the cost of paid acquisition by 20%.
What are the prime objectives of a App Store optimisation?
- Improve visibility and get more impressions.
- Increase organic app downloads.
- Cut user acquisition costs.
- Improve the brand reputation.
Difference Between Google & Apple ASO
When it comes to optimizing your app’s visibility in search results, Google and Apple employ different approaches. Google places significance on the textual data within the app listing itself, taking into account keywords to improve discoverability. In contrast, Apple provides a dedicated keyword field where you can include all relevant keywords directly. Furthermore, Google offers the flexibility to modify your store listing, including text assets, on the Play Store at any given time. Conversely, Apple requires you to submit an update to make any changes to your app’s listing. These distinctions highlight the varying strategies employed by the two platforms in managing app metadata and updates.
Ranking Factors for Google Play Store
- App Title
- App URL
- App Description (Both short and long description)
- Average Ratings
- Conversion Rate
- MHR Score – Most helpful review section – because it impacts the CTR.
- Download Velocity (In category ranking)
- Backlinks (new addition in 2023).
- Engagement Time
- Retention
Ranking Factors for App Store
- App Title & Subtitle
- Keyword field.
- Ratings
- Crashes
- Engagement & retention
Do Backlinks Matter in ASO
Not in iOS, but in Android they now do (Since 2023). But then you ought to look for geniune links, as Google’s SpamBrain is very good at detecting paid links. And more than the backlinks, Google also look for some patterns – like who clicked, what anchor, conversion rate as a result of it, etc.
In iOS, we’ve not seen any empirical evidence of backlinks helping ASO. A good way to get backlinks is to add your website url in the app itself as users tend to discover and share it. We can write a lot about backlinks, but it is outside the scope of this article.
App Ratings & Reviews – How do They Help
App ratings ensure a higher CTR, which in turns improve your app’s ranking. This is a ranking factor on both Android & iOS. Fortunately, both Android & iOS has mechanism to identify and delete fake reviews. This ensures integrity of both the stores. According to our findings, Apple mostly deletes any fake reviews within 72 hours, whereas Google Play doesn’t allow the reviews to impact the rating for 2 days. However, during that period, the developer can reply to the user.
You can also track your app ratings – we’ve got a tool that helps you do that, and see how it impacts your store listing conversions and rankings.
Translating & Localising App
This is one of the most negated tools on both store. The difference between a well localised and not-so well localised listing can be huge. You certainly can get more users from non-english markets. You should aim to translate in as many common languages as possible.In one of the cases, translating an app in Arabic resulted increased the conversion from ~8% to 30%, which was very close to English (35%). Localisation is a very important tool to improve the conversion rate. Also, the extent of the localisation is important. For example – just translating the text listing can be enough for Arabic users, but Japanese users typically start converting when the entire in-app experience is localised.
When should you translate?
You should aim to translate as soon as your app is launched, this does give you some advantage in ranking.
A/B testing in App Store Optimisation
A/B testing is essential to improve your conversion rates. It improves your keyword rankings, help you get into similar app sections. You can A/B test – even if such options are not available by default on the platform. You can in fact, test for anything and improve your app’s search visibility. You can A/B test – listing, screenshots etc.
App Store Optimisation & Vitals Such As Crashes & ANRs
Vitals are quite important on both platforms. On Android, they usually hit the app on the similar app section, and thereafter, on the rankings. Google obsesses so much about vitals – that they have numbers where one could benchmark their vitals against their peers. The better you do on vitals, the more natural rank movement you are likely to get. Similarly, Apple does not prefer the apps that have high crashes. If your app is out of the vitals threshold, you should strive to fix it within 7 days. Out of all the vitals, crashes, followed by ANR’s are the most important. We have our Play Console Looker Connector, wherein you can get this view.
Does Adding Ad-Mob improves your App’s visibility?
No. It doesn’t. We have analysed millions of keywords, and did not find any evidence of that. We ran a lot of tests on various apps that were using Ad-mob and also have engagement data of those apps – we didn’t see any evidence of it.