Optimizing Your Apps Visibility – The Basics
One of the most critical stats that go under most people’s radar, even digital marketing experts, is the following: about 60% of all downloads in app stores — come through search in the search bar, just like users search on Google Search. This figure can certainly give us some indication of the importance of organic marketing in various app stores. In the following article, I will try to explain what exactly ASO is, what it consists of, what the differences are between Google Play and Apple’s App Store, etc. In the end, understanding the basics of ASO can lead to an increase in exposures and downloads per app.
What is ASO and what does it include?
ASO stands for App Store Optimization. Simply put, it is about optimizing your app in the app store. ASO consists of several parameters that affect two key metrics: discoverability in the store, that is, how many users are exposed to the app in various app stores in general. And secondly, conversion rates on the app page itself (for example: how many people downloaded the app, how many people rated the app, etc.).
Visibility — Discoverability
Let’s start with the Discoverability part of the store, since the higher the number of users who are exposed to the app in the store, the higher the chance of getting a higher number of downloads to the app. Several parameters affect the level of exposure of the app in the store: keyword ranking, app ranking in general: number of installations, number of removals, number of users who rated the app, and more.
How can I increase the level of exposure in the store?
Keyword Ranking
Similar to website SEO, keyword rankings are, for lack of a better word key: it is necessary to perform in-depth keyword research for the app. Too to effectively measure the potential of your keywords, it’s crucial to research your competitors in-depth, understand all their and understand their audiences.
There are multitudes of useful tools designed to build a keyword strategy specifically for apps, as Sensor Tower or Mobile Action. These tools help you select the most important and relevant keywords for your application. These tools offer important information such as keyword difficulty, search volume, competition, and more.
App rating
It seems pretty obvious at first why app rating is so important for the success of your app, yet many people forget that besides turning off potential users from downloading your app, a negative app rating can significantly hurt your ranking in the app store. App stores use ratings to differentiate between quality app (when the rating is high) and low-quality app (when the rating is low). The app store will always want to show its users the higher quality apps, as they want to show users the most relevant apps with the highest rating with the highest potential of installations. The bottom line is, if your app rating is low, the level of exposure in the store will decrease accordingly.
Quantity of installations / removals
Another component that can help your app get maximum exposure in the store is the number of installations and the number of removals of your app. App stores measure the ratio between the number of installations and the number of removals. It’s not enough to get people to download the app, App retention (the rate is the percentage of users who continue engaging with an app over time) is just as important. This means debugging regularly: push notifications, and updating your app’s content. A useful piece of information — one of the worst things that can happen to an app is if the user installs the app and immediately after installation, they delete it. This is very different from a user who installed the app, used it for a while, and then removed it. As you probably know from personal experience, 99% of the time, the reason you delete an app immediately is because it either does not properly provide what you were looking for, or the app is just plain bad. It’s important to note that the install/removal ratio per keyword can certainly affect the number of app exposures in the app stores. The more users download the app after finding it through the same keyword, the higher the app’s rankings for that keyword will be.
Looking for ASO experts to take you app to the next level? you came to the right place
