App Store Optimization - beyond the basics with CMA

“An overview of how CMA transformed the ASO approach for a client within the Telemedicine sector, vastly increasing store visibility, download traffic and store view->install conversions.”

For an infographic summarizing some of the key findings in this case-study, please click here

Introduction

In a market that is becoming busier by the day, and where competitors are raising vast sums of VC funding, discoverability and user acquisition focus are a must for any app aiming to succeed in the Telemedicine arena. A fundamental part of that is optimizing your App Store presence, which is exactly what CMA were briefed to do, and achieved, with some outstanding results.

The dedicated CMA team assembled for the project included an iconographer, designer, data analyst and lead ASO Consultant, initially undertaking a 4 week review of the App in question. From this review, a detailed 30-page report was produced and presented back to the client, which included not only the immediate proposed changes, but also an ongoing test-and-optimize plan to deliver further improvements (in collaborative fashion) over the next 6 months. The enhanced ASO strategy was implemented by CMA alongside the client's dev team, and there were almost immediate, compelling improvements.

Search Term Ranking

One of the more common topics focused on during an ASO engagement is the area of keyword ranking. For CMA, this isn't just about stuffing these into titles & descriptions wherever you can, but understanding how these search terms fit within your portfolio, your competitor's landscape and also the broader App Store ecosystem. This requires a LOT of data analysis, and a team that understands how to build analytical models - miss this crucial piece out and ASO simply becomes creative guesswork.

Once the data had been fed through our models, certain terms were excluded as inefficient (too long vs. yield), overly competitive (better addressed with CPT adverts), or simply too ambiguous (for instance, the term "GP" returns a swarm of racing games). The model, along with an expert eye from our ASO Consultant, delivered an optimal set of search terms with strong & targeted traffic, good coupling (words that link with others), and minimal space requirements. After validation & refinement of this list, stage one was complete for iOS...

The Play Store is another matter - thanks to Google's excellence in search technology, the Play Store adopts a more complex ranking system, indexing on the descriptions themselves. This requires more cunning, and isn't simply a case of stuffing as many terms as you can into an incoherent sentence (we've seen this done many times, and it will only serve to hinder your ranking in the Play Store). Google have way more developers than you can imagine, all dedicated to stopping you gaming their algorithm, so if you've thought of a way to cheat the system the chances are they already have too, and will penalise you for doing so. That's not to say you can't be clever about how you design & structure these descriptions though, and that's exactly what the team did, using a sophisticated, data-driven approach we've built up over years to drive our client's Apps to the front of the queue, and to encourage visitors to install.

The search term ranking improvements we achieved, as you'll see from the table below, are compelling (the arrows show the same keyword before & after). There are of course many new keywords we've also introduced, that all now rank within the top 50. Most importantly however, all of the pivotal keywords rank within the top 5 search results - many at the number 1 spot.

Not only are these a great improvement to the original ranking, many of the large traffic keywords above (including some new ones we've introduced) are now outranking the client's largest competitor who recently received a sizeable $28m funding round and have been spending heavily on user acquisition. A positive result all round, and testament to the unique CMA approach!

Discoverability

Although largely speaking, in the area of Telemedicine, most traffic will be driven by users looking for help when they need it (hence a big focus on keywords), traffic from the casual browser shouldn't be written off, as there are billions of such browsers in the stores each week. Focusing on these 'browsing' users resulted in the team doubling the app install traffic our client was receiving on a weekly basis - another great result!

The position your App obtains in its designated category is heavily influenced not just by your store setup, but also on the install volume, user retention, reviews & feedback (amongst a few other things). This is an area CMA has a unique advantage in, as we have Consultants in our team that are highly experienced in post-acquisition messaging, and using this to not only improve user retention, but also solicit higher volumes of feedback and positive ratings. This is exactly how we helped our client truly stand out above their competitors (we actually downloaded the competitor apps and were shocked to see no evidence of lifecycle messaging at all).

Along with a change to the categories the App itself was submitted to, developing an approach that combined user acquisition, lifecycle messaging and ASO into a single strategy has now enabled the client to maintain a strong position within the top 100 apps. Balancing acquisition spend vs. return, this was deemed to be the optimal position to maintain the app, but can be easily increased/decreased as required by the client.

View->Install Conversion Rate

Getting a user to your store landing page is only one part of the challenge. Encouraging users to then install and use the product is a just as important! For our client, the existing imagery was overly-complex & disjointed, and the language lacked a clear call-to-action, so there was a lot of work to be done. As well as several improvements to the copy, creatives & icon (amongst many other elements following a thorough review of the 10 core ASO principles), the team improved the conversion rate by a solid 34%, ensuring that the additional traffic being driven to the store pages was now even more likely to install.

Cost-Per-Tap Adverts

Since mid-2017 Apple have supported CPT ad's in the App Store, which for a long time (in Europe at least) was only an option for Google Play. Now these adverts are cross-platform, the argument becomes even more compelling to adopt them as part of any robust ASO strategy.

For more challenging keywords that were either too competitive, too long or simply didn't make the original list, our client wanted to ensure they still had some brand exposure. Cost-Per-Tap adverts are a great way of doing just this, and ensuring your App always appears at the top of the store search results.

Our creative team designed a number of CPT adverts (as well as a test strategy to optimize them), and launched them to the store, making sure that even for competitive keywords, our client could still top the results!

App Portfolio & ASO

The client manages several apps under their brand, and although each app is targeted at a slightly different audience, there is a lot of benefit to be had in combining the ASO strategies across these to ensure they compliment rather than cannibalise each other. Using expertise from several of our other clients with large App portfolios, the team built out a highly sophisticated approach to keywords & CPT ad's which takes full advantage of the benefit of having multiple apps in the stores. This is yet to be rolled out across the other titles, although from experience we know this is going to provide yet one more competitive advantage to our client!

The Results...

The engagement is ongoing (you never quite finish testing & optimizing ASO!), but the initial results are compelling and highlighted below (they can also be found in infographic form here);

• Doubled the daily app install traffic
• All essential keywords are now ranking Top 5 (many at position 1), with lesser important keywords all achieving Top 50 ranking. This is a vast improvement on the previous setup, which was on average delivering results ranking 178th on average
• The ASO project delivered a lower CPI than any other acquisition channel in the client's strategy, and the project has already paid for itself through additional user acquisition.
• Improved conversion rate of users visiting the store pages that go on to install the App by +34%
• Reduced acquisition spend by blending user acquisition & ASO strategies to maximise the volume of traffic across organic & paid-for channels
• Improved store category position without increasing acquisition spend. This was achieved by implementing a best-of-breed set of user lifecycle messages to drive higher retention and engagement rates post-acquisition

ConsultMyApp - a bit about us...

We’re an independent Mobile Marketing consultancy practice based in London with years of experience across multiple industry verticals, from financial services, retail, travel & leisure & hospitality to games and iGaming. Significant experience across not just the 'pure' area of ASO, but also mobile messaging and user acquisition strategies puts CMA in an advantageous position against our competitors in the field of ASO, and which is why we commonly find companies coming to us after they have had a less than impressive experience from their existing ASO agency.

Everything we do at CMA focuses on the 4 pillars of the user lifecycle - acquisition, retention, engagement and monetization. To deliver exceptional results we design and implement innovative media and marketing strategies for each of our clients and their Mobile products, not only driving high-quality users to their App, but also ensuring those users are retained and fully engaged throughout their lifecycle with a comprehensive messaging programme.

For more information on the team or to have a look at some of our other educational material and case studies, you can visit our website at www.consultmyapp.com or please reach out to us by email: [email protected], as we’d love to hear from you and see how we can make your App the best it can possibly be!

For an infographic summarizing some of the key findings in this case-study, please click here