App Store Optimization

Before users can install your app, they need to download it from Google Play or the App Store. The process of making your app listing more obvious, discoverable, and compelling is called app store optimization, or ASO.

Everything from your app name to your app icon and app description matters for app store optimization, as do the app preview images and video that you can display in your app store listing. Also important: your overall app rating, which has an impact on how high your app is ranked in App Store and Google Play searches, and recent reviews, which are typically visible to people browsing your app listing.

Ultimately, app store optimization helps get apps installed and can increase conversion rates when people actually view your app listing. But you need good marketing to get users to that point. Your goal with app store optimization is to ensure that users decide to complete the process they’ve begun, pick your app, and click to install it.

This is challenging, because you have both limited numbers of words and images you can use, and users take an extremely limited period of time to make an install decision.

In order to optimize your app for discoverability and conversions, as Neil Patel highlights there are several factors to pay attention to, including but not limited to:

• App name & title
• Keywords in the title and description
•  Total number of downloads
•  Total reviews and average rating

Here are a few tips to improve each of these primary and secondary factors that impact your ASO.

Primary ASO factors:

• App name & title: Not only should you have a compelling name for your app, but including primary target keywords in the title can go a long way. Keep in mind that you don’t want to change your app title too often, so be sure to determine the keywords with the highest search volume and stick with those in the title.
• Keywords: In addition to keywords in your title, you’ll want to optimize the entire app store listing including description, images, and so on, with your target keywords. Unlike your app name, descriptions and other keywords can and should be optimized more often until you find the right ones for your target audience

Secondary ASO factors:

• Total downloads: The total number of downloads not only contributes to higher rankings in ASO, but also provides social proof to new visitors. Of course, if you’re a new app there isn’t much you can do to optimize this number other than focus on your primary ASO factors and delivering a high quality user experience after download.
• Ratings and reviews: Finally, incentivizing happy users to rate your app is another way to increase the number of positive reviews for your listing. The timing to prompt users for a review will change from app to app, but this is certainly an important piece to consider in preparing your ASO strategy.

Making a habit of revisiting these ASO factors each week is best practice. This is critically important to do, as Neil Patel mentions:

“If you’re not using ASO to increase your app’s search ranking, you’re missing out on the largest discovery channel available to your app. With hundreds of thousands of apps in each app store vying to rank above one another, the reality is most publishers are not investing in app store optimization.”

In order to help app publishers improve their ASO, Singular provides leading marketing analytics and attribution data, amongst other tools. In particular, these solutions can help app businesses improve their rankings in app stores in the following ways:

• Marketing analytics: Singular provides marketers a scientific approach to their growth strategy and helps app businesses determine exactly which channels—including organic search in app stores—are driving the highest ROI on their marketing efforts. When a specific ad campaign is working well, that provides insight into what consumers want, and the key words and concepts in that ad campaign might make sense to use in your app listing.
•  Mobile attribution:   Organic installs with ASO is typically just one of the channels that drive conversions for app businesses. With Singular, you’re able to collect and report on each channel with accurate mobile attribution data. This enables marketers to track and analyze the entire user lifecycle from discovery to conversion and determine their most profitable channels.

In summary, Singular provides marketers with the data and reporting required to accurately attribute conversions. With accurate marketing analytics and attribution data in place, marketers are able to better allocate their marketing budgets and make informed decisions about their growth strategy.