Most app marketers don’t lay awake at night trying to think of how to get a good enough App Store rating to outrank Pandora, LINE or Netflix on the list of the top companies of all time in the Google Play store. Some big brands have big budgets for ASO, and their strategies are simply going to be out of the reach of most marketing budgets.
But even if you don’t have limitless marketing dollars to jostle for the absolute top spot, your app’s position in the App Store is critical, and there’s a lot you can do to make sure your app can easily be found by users and downloaded.
For that reason, ASO strategies have been increasingly on the minds and budgets of app marketers, with many companies making investments in manpower, new tech, and outsourcing, to try and make their app ascend up the charts.
We wanted to know what ASO tips and tricks top mobile marketers found most beneficial this year and asked them to share their number 1 ASO strategy that brought the biggest benefit to their app. Below are their responses and insight.
The best ASO strategies to improve App Store rank
Sam McLellan, Yousician
“It’s easy to get lost trying to chase 100s of keywords to try and rank on all of them. The majority of installs come from a handful of keywords, which is where you’ll have the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. Being able to identify those keywords and then adjusting app store fields to capitalize on them will deliver big returns in a short amount of time. Once you have those locked down, you can turn to the long tail or smaller traffic keywords to continue to build scale.” Sam McLellan, Head of User Acquisition at Yousician
Gabriel Sampaio, Rappi
“We have only recently been tinkering with strategies focused on ASO, recognizing it as a very important and strategic part of our business’s potential for organic growth. We have been doing some experiments regarding changing our listing title, description and improving metadata, mapping and including new keywords. The biggest win we have had so far was discovering that a simple change of our app listing category resulted in a big boost for us.” – Gabriel Sampaio, Head of Digital Media LATAM at Rappi
Rafael Camargo, InstaFit
“The best ASO tactic for us has been modifying the description of the app and improving the clarity of CTAs so users could find them more easily. We also watch all listing comments closely and proactively react to resolve any issues users may have, which helps us build trust with users as they download. We get in contact with app users who give us a low rating or app review and help them with any issues they may have, to not only improve each user’s experience but to improve our app’s functionality overall.”- Rafael Camargo, Head of Growth at InstaFit
Michael Jessen, eCooltra
“The A-B testing function in Google Play is your best friend. We ran extensive testing and changed our icon and screenshots based on the results we retrieved. We build our ASO strategies by running tests and optimizing based on the real measured results.” –Michael Jessen, Mobile Marketing Manager at eCooltra
Rocío Pérez, Liligo
“Make sure you have a clear description that explains your unique selling point and eye-catching app previews that generate interest. Images really help driving installs, but that being said, if you don’t already have a high rank, your listing’s visibility is low and therefore users won’t have the opportunity to see the app previews unless they are being sent there by active promotion.” – Rocío Pérez, Acquisition Manager at Liligo
Etienne de Guébriant, Etermax
“Increasing traffic to your app store listing is critical for increasing your rank, and nothing increases traffic like active promotion. But make sure your messaging is consistent throughout your users’ conversion journey. You want the user to feel familiar with your app by the time they get to the app store. Make sure parts of the ads you’re showing appear in the store, so that users associate the ad with the app and get that feeling of security.”-Etienne de Guébriant, UA Team Leader at Etermax
Arturo Camargo, Headway
“I worked with an app that saw 20% lift in conversions from visit to install with simple app store screenshot optimizations. We tested different hypotheses based on previous knowledge and user interviews. Sometimes something as simple as considering the size of the text on different mobile devices can have a massive impact. We also found that best practice was to use photos that showcased not just the features of our app, but the benefits as well.- Arturo Camargo, Head of Growth in Latam at Headway
