So You’ve Built An App & Subscriptions Are Coming In. What Next?
Digital Workroom
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Back when we built and launched our first app we remember the feeling of there being so many potential things we could do post-launch that could influence our app’s performance, that deciding on what to focus our attention on next almost felt as large of a task as the launch itself.?
From our experience since then, we’ve learnt that letting the data guide you makes the process much more straightforward. To get the data required, we believe that your conversion funnel is the most important thing you can start building and monitoring as soon as your app hits the market.
Understanding your app’s conversion funnel will help you decide which areas to prioritise based on their performance.?
Your typical conversion funnel can be broken down into 4 core sections.
Today we’re talking about discovery. This is, for the most part, the primary source of traffic that your app will receive, building up the performance of this area will help bring more awareness to your app within its specific category.
When looking at improving discovery there are two roads you can go down:
We’re saving off-store marketing for another time as it involves every other channel outside of the app store and the rabbit hole can run very deep.
In-store marketing should be the first area you invest your time and effort into as it involves changes you can make within the app store by utilising existing systems rather than starting a strategy completely from scratch.
Below we’ve listed our top 3 elements of in-store marketing where we’ve been able to see significant impact relative to the time and effort spent. The 3 elements you can consider to be quicker wins in terms of improving discovery when just getting started are:?
Keyword Optimisation
This is, simply put, the use of relevant keywords in the metadata of your app to enhance its discoverability and normally involves putting yourself in the shoes of your potential users and thinking about the type of language they’ll end up using when browsing around for an app to suit their needs.
But as a rule of thumb, you can focus on 3 key areas to get started:
1) App Name?
This is the name you’ve given your app but it can also often help to add in descriptive words that give users an at-a-glance peek into what your app is about.?
2) App Subtitle?
This area is to further build up the general description of your app. Generally, while you aren’t given a lot of characters to work with you’ll want to aim to answer one of the following questions:?
3) App Keywords Field
While areas 1 and 2 are visible to all users browsing the app store. This 3rd area is not. The keywords field is the app store’s way of helping you find users searching for something you offer (e.g. a solution to a problem your app provides) but they’re unaware of your app’s existence.?
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Typically best practices suggest choosing keywords that are directly relevant to your app or users it aims to serve. Consider the terms users are likely to enter when searching for an app like yours.
Product Page Optimisation & Custom Product Page Testing
The product page is your virtual storefront and often can be the first real impression a potential customer will get of your app. There are a variety of changes that can be made to your product page to have it perform better and ultimately result in a higher volume of downloads.
Below is a short list of 3 possible areas where your product page can be improved:
It’s important to have a visually appealing and recognizable app icon that represents your brand and app functionality but be sure to from time to time consider testing out tweaking your app icon’s design.
Showcasing high-quality screenshots that highlight a variety of the key features and functionality of your app. Having a preview video can help as it is often much more eye-catching and helps provide a dynamic demonstration of your app in action.
Write a compelling and informative app description that explains the value proposition and key features of your app, from our experience we’ve found it better to keep these as succinct as possible.
Whether it’s a subtle change of using a different app icon, or an alternate set of screenshots, testing throughout the process of changes is very important. With the product page recommendations made above it is also important to note that within the app store, you can test out various combinations of changes at the same time through the use of the custom product pages feature.?
Custom product pages allow for your product pages to be tailored in a particular way to be shown to specific audiences. For example, if your app has some features that you believe are particularly useful to a certain type of user, you can set it so that if that type of user lands on your product page they will be shown a specific set of images that highlight the features most relevant to their needs or maybe you have the product page show a specific custom app description to highlight the specific benefits for them.
In-App Event Creation
In-app events are one of the app stores more recent systems that were introduced. It's a system to help enhance app visibility by serving users more timely information about apps that are actively trying to showcase their latest news.
Have an exciting change or addition you’re planning for your app? Make sure to take advantage of the in-app event planner within the app store and make an occasion out of it by launching an event.?
Normally if you simply release an update to your app, users may see it if they dig into the version history notes but running an in-app event will signal to a larger audience who may be browsing apps in your niche that your app is more active and currently has something exciting going on.
In-app events also do not have to be solely related to app updates but events can also be run when you have other changes planned for your app. Typically your events will have to fall under one of the following event categories:
So with the categories above you can plan around maximising exposure by tying an in-app event to as many app changes as you have planned.?
Hopefully, this gives you a good enough start to some of the areas you can optimise within the app store to help increase your app’s discovery.?