Mobile App Store Optimization (ASO): Tips You Must Follow

Did you know that Indians downloaded 6 billion mobile apps in 2016, a steep increase from the 3.5 billion apps downloaded in 2015? This fact comes courtesy research firm App Annie’s fourth annual Retrospective Report released on January 17, 2017. This phenomenal increase points to the fact that mobile applications are driving brand engagement like never seen before.

Shifting the comparison to a global scale, as of March 2017, Apple had a total of 2.2 million apps listed on its iTunes app store whereas Google Play led the race with around 2.8 million apps, as per Statista.

The Need for Mobile App Store Optimization

As companies look to create mobile apps for an already cluttered space, it needs to be understood that most of the app stores have well-defined ranking parameters. There is no point pushing another app irrespective of how graphically enticing or user friendly it is. Quite like the battle for websites to get to the top rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), optimizing your mobile app for app stores will help your app rank higher in search results and is one area that can no longer be ignored.

Things to Remember for Mobile App Store Optimization

#1. Understanding the Target Audience

To effectively do mobile app store optimization, understanding your target audience will be the key. Now is the time to ask:

• who the app is for?
• what will be the demographics of the user?
• what problem your app intends to solve?

#2. Competitor Analysis

An in-depth competitor analysis will give you invaluable insights on a lot of activities that can be planned to get your mobile app rank higher in search results. For instance, a Search Engine Optimization agency can help you narrow down on a list of target keywords for your mobile app store optimization strategy by studying the competition online. While doing so it will also be important to assess how easily you can compete with your competition over the same set of keywords or whether you would be better off targeting less competitive keywords instead.

#3. Naming the App

This is one area where a lot of mobile app developers and people entrusted with getting the apps listed on app stores go wrong. Longer titles are best avoided while naming the apps as these would anyhow get truncated. One of the common misconceptions that most people have is that keywords are only relevant for webpages. Any good digital marketing agency will tell you that Inclusion of keywords carries the same importance in app store optimization strategy as in website search engine optimization. It is therefore important to include the most appropriate keyword in the name of the app as well.

#4. Compelling Description

Your mobile app description should be persuasive and help clearly demonstrate the utility of the app to your target audience. You must aim towards the natural inclusion of keywords or the set of keywords in the app description.

#5. Reinforcing Credibility

Steps such as requesting the existing users for positive reviews can help build trust with future users. Featuring screenshots of the app is another good way of ensuring quick adoption of your mobile app.

#6. Localize your App Listing

Aiming to provide a localized experience to app users throughout the world? Both Google Play and Apple iTunes app store allow you the option of localizing the app listing that includes title and description in languages other than English. What that means is that depending on the location of the user, they will see a translated version of the app in their local language.

Conclusion

Remember: The end objective is to improve discovery of your app in app store searches. The fact that such an optimization effort is not going to be a one-off campaign but a consistent effort as per prevailing best practices makes it important to delegate this task to an expert app store optimization company.