Posted on July 27th, 2017
Mobile apps – a growing market that affects nearly every person in the world. On top of creating an app, developers must market their apps to a specific audience. For an app to advance, keeping their audience in mind throughout every step of the optimization process is crucial. As technology continues to grow and the app market progresses, developers need to continually market their app to their target audience. Recently, as more and more developers crowd the marketplace, some have started adjusting their app’s metadata toward millennials. Smart phone users around the world run into the billions and within the US alone 85 percent of smart phone users are millennials. For the most part, once an app goes live on the App Store or Google Play Store, roughly 25 percent of the world’s population can access the app. Even though 25 percent seems like a small number, it still adds to an app’s overall visibility. Should developers really focus their efforts on targeting just millennials, or should they broaden their scope and target everyone? Generations of Users In today’s society, it is a commonly known fact that millennials have grown up with technology more than previous generations. For most, their daily life consists of staying connected through their mobile device, which strongly includes the use of mobile apps. Even emerging markets such as India have millennials making up the largest population group, meaning there are rapidly growing markets with easy to target audiences. While ASO best practices highly suggest targeting your app to a specific audience, targeting only millennials can limit your app’s visibility in the app stores. By focusing on only one group of individuals, your app can never reach its full potential or become relevant to other generations of users. Instead of focusing on just one generation, it’s important to look at what your app does and understand who the app is intended for. Once you understand who your target audience is, it will be increasingly easier to optimize your metadata.
Posted on July 1st, 2017
Coming up with the next great app can be exciting, but when looking at the current mobile app market, entrepreneurs realize that the nearly 3 million apps completely saturate every app category. It’s tough to get noticed in any category, but how do the top apps do it? They start by monitoring the current app market, researching user trends, defining user behaviors, creating a targeted demographic user base and carefully distinguishing which category fits their app best. By monitoring competitors and current app market trends, developers can make crucial changes using ASO best practices before wasting their time and resources launching an app prematurely.
Posted on May 9th, 2017
People think the toughest part of creating a mobile app is simply gathering the funds and launching the app. However, one of the most difficult parts of maintaining a mobile app is continuing its success post launch. Developers need to understand how to navigate and manage the challenges that occur after launching their mobile app. To continue being successful in the App Store and Google Play Store, developers need to be strategic and have a clear vision of what direction they want to take their app. The best marketing tool to ensure growth post launch is App Store Optimization (ASO). This marketing tool will help developers monitor and manage their growth and continue their marketing efforts by using real-time mobile data based on user trends and behaviors within the app stores to drive discoverability to their target audience. While ASO is available to all developers, there are common mistakes that many developers tend to make after launching their app.
Posted on May 1st, 2017
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Posted on April 27th, 2017
Toward the end of September 2016, Apple reduced the character limit allowed for app names, which caused a frenzy among developers focused on App Store Optimization. It pressured many developers to restructure their app’s title tags since keywords in title tags that exceeded 50 characters on the App Store would no longer be ranked.
Posted on April 22nd, 2017
While many developers have followed ASO best practices and improved their app’s metadata (title, description and screenshots), not many focus on the app’s preview video. The preview video is in place to improve conversion rates by engaging the audience and showing users the app’s core features. Unfortunately, it’s a forgotten part of the app’s metadata. Developers need to optimize their preview video with ASO to increase their odds of converting users and encourage them to tap “GET.” What’s a Preview Video? Preview videos are one of the first visual representations of your app that users will see when searching in the app stores. On an Android device, the video appears at the very top of the listing, encouraging users to interact with the gameplay and see how to use the app before scrolling down to read the description. For iOS, the preview video can take the place of a screenshot and is always listed first in the sequence. A preview video is supposed to be rich in content and deliver the app’s message well. There are three common types of preview videos developers tend to use, and those are:
Posted on April 20th, 2017
It seems every time you go to either app store’s home page there are new apps popping up in every category. The Apple App Store alone has over 2.2 million apps, and the Google Play Store has even more. Last year alone, there were 130 billion downloads on the App Store. Competition is intense regardless of what app developers are trying to market for. One industry, however, stands out from the rest. Mobile games are constantly growing and gaming companies want to get their apps noticed by users. From what was seen at this year’s GDC, the mobile gaming industry is booming, and developers need to stand out against the competition. The only way to create more visibility for an app is by utilizing an ASO strategy.
Posted on January 14th, 2017
The New Year is here, and with it comes a whole new batch of trends to stay on top of. With regards to mobile trends 2017 has the potential to be a unique year. Last fall Apple shook up the world of mobile in a major way by shortening their Title field and introducing Search Ads. This quarter, expect app developers to refine their technique when it comes to mastering the new App Store ecosystem. Look out for these trends in Q1 2017: Search Ads Get Refined As the year moves on, more and more app developers will begin to discover what performs best for Search Ads. Look for major developers to hit Search Ads even harder in an attempt to expand their search footprint into any relevant keywords. Similarly, as more developers begin to target wider swaths of Search Ads, they will also refine how to best convert users from Search Ads. As the New Year begins, make it a priority to learn the best practices for landing and converting from Search Ads.
Posted on January 3rd, 2017
App Store Search Ads are often cited as the number one trend to watch for app developers in 2017. Placed prominently at the top of relevant search queries, Search Ads show vital information about your app to potential customers and, in concept, can help even a small independent app reach the top of search. In line with the traditional ASO process, Apple ensures that their Search Ads work based on relevance and not based solely on the highest bidder. Even so, landing a Search Ad is not a guarantee that you will begin converting users right away. To get the most from your Search Ad, it is important to target the right terms at the right time. Just as trends shape the keyword landscape in the App Store, so too will they dictate which Search Ads are best for your app. To this end, any developer targeting Search Ads should take several steps prior to settling on a campaign strategy.
Posted on December 14th, 2016
Apple launched their Search Ads initiative just over two months ago, taking the world of App Store developers by storm. Many developers feared that these new ads, placed prominently at the top of search results, would nullify or somehow contradict the ASO work they had already done. In fact, the opposite is true – ASO and Search Ads go hand-in-hand. To understand how best to incorporate Search Ads into your existing ASO strategy, you must first look at how the ads work and what Apple wants to achieve with them.
Posted on December 13th, 2016
The holidays are almost here, and the influx of new phones, tablets and gift cards that comes along with them will undoubtedly bring a wave of revenue to the App Store and Google Play. Whether or not last year’s record-breaking $1.1 billion in App Store spending can be beat remains to be seen, but regardless app developers would be wise to plan ahead for the holiday season. A well-optimized app needs only a quick update to position itself strongly for the holidays. New creative assets, keywords and a blurb in the description can be enough to capitalize on holiday attention for an app that already has a dedicated fan base. But what about apps that have yet to be optimized? The influx of users that occurs each holiday season can only be fully capitalized upon if your app is appropriately optimized. A strong optimization will increase the number of search terms your app ranks for, and during the vital holiday season, this change alone can make a huge difference. On Apple, that means tailoring your title, keywords and description towards your target audience. Your app’s title should be descriptive and to the point, with a subtitle utilizing highly searched terms to flesh out your rankings and quickly explain your app to users. You only have 50 characters to work with, so be certain to focus on words that will improve your rankings. You want to target the most popular searches in the App Store while describing your app’s features at the same time. Your keyword bank is where you have more room to experiment. Of course, you will still want to use highly searched words in your keyword bank, as these have more potential for putting your app in front of the most users. Focus on words that are relevant for your app and searched the most by users. You may also target competitor apps in your keyword bank, but be careful in doing so – many apps in the store target competitors in their title and keyword bank, but only a few are deemed relevant by Apple. In order to be deemed relevant, your app must have notable similarities to its competitor, and you must position your app’s description in a way such that those similarities seem reasonable. Smaller companies often have difficulty landing large competitors, too, so watch out for that. On Google Play, optimizing your app works a little differently. Your app’s title is still important, but most notably, you don’t have a keyword bank to work with. Instead, Google crawls your app’s description for words that may be relevant to your app. Words that are placed at the front of sentences, or grouped together near similar words, are deemed especially important. That means the best way to optimize your app on Google Play is to create a description that features a bulleted feature list, almost like an outline, that details like features together with one another. Another important element of a Google Play optimization is your app’s Short Description. This is an 80-character field that exists to give users a clear, concise description of your app. The words placed here are especially important for establishing rankings and guiding users to your app’s most important features. By optimizing your app separately for each storefront, you can capitalize on the unique searches and trends that occur in each. And during the holiday season, with potentially over $1 billion being spent over just a few weeks, a strong optimization is more important than ever. If your app hasn’t been optimized yet, now is a great time to start.
Posted on December 8th, 2016
The holidays are a prime time for developers to update their creative assets on the App Store and Google Play. As we approach the end of the year and the impending App Store shutdown, be sure to take the time for a quick app update in this busy season – it can ultimately
