Commonly held myths stop many developers and mobile marketers from reaching their full potential on the app stores. In this week’s ASO Academy, let’s play a game of Myth or Fact: ASO edition.

Seasonality is an important aspect of App Store Optimization, especially during the holiday season. How have apps updated their store listings for the holidays?

The Google Play Short Description provides users with a quick introduction to your app. While the Long Description can delve into specifics of app features, the Short Description needs to be more concise. With that in mind, let’s examine how the Google Play Short Description helps with App Store Optimization and the best practices for writing one.

App Store Optimization is important for apps of all types, from educational apps to mobile games. With schools having teachers instruct remotely and many closing down for a month or longer, mobile apps can help educators assign homework and students complete their assignments. Continuing with their theme of featuring apps that can be used while users are sheltered in place, Apple just featured a list of apps for helping with homework. This makes it a good time to understand how homework apps can utilize App Store Optimization.

There are apps out there for nearly every purpose, and all of them can benefit from App Store Optimization. As workers and companies look into telecommuting options that enable them to work from home or on the go, apps offering such capabilities should examine their App Store Optimization to ensure they’re reaching and converting the optimal number of users. Here are some ASO tips for telecommuting apps.

New app developers may feel overwhelmed trying to get their apps discovered on the stores. They may have heard that App Store Optimization (ASO) is important to succeed, but might not know what ASO is or how to get started. As such, we’re here to answer the first question every developer looking into App Store Optimization needs to ask: what is ASO?

Choosing a name for your app is important in more ways than you might think. Not only is it key for your branding and informing users of its purpose, but it also is essential for App Store Optimization. Your iOS app’s title and subtitle influence your keywords, provide value propositions and have an impact on conversions, so you should fully understand the best practices for naming your app.

Black Friday is well underway, and consumers are busy buying both in-store and online. Shopping apps have been preparing all month for this day, as well as the upcoming Cyber Monday, knowing that ranking high in the App Store and Google Play Store search results for that keyword can be very beneficial. App Store Optimization is the key to earning those high search rankings, so with that in mind, we’ll take a look at how shopping apps have updated their ASO for Black Friday.

App Store Optimization is vital for any app. It helps apps both reach users and appeal to them, through research and best practices. But once your ASO strategy is in place, how do you know if it’s working? What do we use to measure the success of ASO? There are several factors one can look at to determine how well their App Store Optimization is working.

Users are the undeniable backbone of any product’s success. While it is best to develop a commodity that is well-received by users, it is just as crucial to keep users engaged and happy so they are actively using that product. To stay ahead of this, developers and companies maintain consistent Reputation Management strategies using user feedback to ensure that the needs of their customers are heard and to keep them coming back. But what happens if there’s an update or new product that isn’t well-received? If the users are unhappy and the developers stand their ground, can a company, product or app still find success? Let’s look at the power users have on apps, developers and companies and whether they were able to force change.

As people increase their time on their mobile apps, it begs the question of how well apps are retaining users? Developers continue to struggle retaining users after they have downloaded an app. According to AppsFlyer, the number of users that remain on an app after downloading is roughly 10-12 percent after seven days and drops to a dismal 4-5 percent after thirty days. AppsFlyer has the retention rates broken down into divisions for both iOS and Android that include the click-to-install rates. Retention rates are looked at from every angle, and were examined through organic and non-organic users by comprising data of users who were active on days 1, 7 and 30. While the rates have technically improved year-over-year, developers are still finding it difficult to retain users. More developers need to improve their app’s metadata by practicing App Store Optimization (ASO), which will improve app retention rates.

Choosing app store keywords for an app’s store listings has at times been viewed as the holy grail of app store optimization. The thinking was that finding the magical combination of low competition, high traffic words would drive heaps of organic traffic to even the worst of mobile apps. While keywords are a big part of ASO, Gummicube considers the initial selection of keywords as much less important than the building of a complete acquisition funnel, and the ongoing optimization of target keywords and phrases as they support the funnel.

Positioning mobile apps in the app stores globally for discovery and installs from the massive organic app store search traffic volumes is one of the best long-term strategies for success in the app stores. Creating an app store listing, testing and regularly adjusting to changing market demands is called app store optimization or ASO. In the below whitepaper, we will introduce:

Before a potential user sees an app's description, screenshots, video or ratings, users see an app's icon. Used as sort of an app logo - the app icon's primary role in app store optimization for Google Play is in conversion. There are many theories on app icon design, from which colors to use to the use of text vs no text. Generally, the goal should be to efficiently communicate the app's main features or otherwise align to them. "Efficient" app icon design in this case means "simple". Because of the impact of the App Icon design on app conversion, we we recommend asking potential users, via a focus group or polling an email list.

What is the impact of mobile app name length? If Apple provides 255 characters for my app name - and indexes each word for search, why not just fill it to the brim with keywords? Not only does Apple provide 255 characters for app name, but also weighs keywords found in the app title more heavily than those found in the keywords field.

App Localization is important because mobile is a global phenomenon - with smartphones surpassing PCs and expected to exceed 2 billion devices in 2015. Consider for 2014:

Chartboost, a leading Mobile Advertising Network, reports Cost Per Install (CPI) has increased from $1.66 to $2.69 over the last 12 months - a rise of 62%. The cost per install is often lower than competing traffic channels, and advertisers often wonder how much they should expect to pay per mobile app install. There are six primary factors that influence an advertiser's CPI.

A new report released today confirms earlier findings indicating a mobile app’s ranking in the iTunes App Store is now taking into account ratings and other metrics in order to help determine its place on the charts. According to Appurify, the Google Ventures-backed startup behind an app de..

Just like SEO optimization for web sites, it’s important for developers to tweak their App Store listings. Check out our post on VentureBeat here: