Why there's a disparity emerging in the world of the App Store

As the App Stores continue to update their policies and ranking algorithms, with only a select few publishers keeping on top of these, we examine how this is leading to a 2-tier system of the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in the world of App Store Optimization (ASO). The spoils are there for the companies that invest in ASO however, and this article intends to offer an insight as to how, and where that investment should be made.

App Store Mechanics & Keywords

Firstly, we should consider the way in which the stores work (which as I sit here on the 9th October 2017 is correct, although likely to have changed a little if you're reading in the world of 2018 or beyond).

Traditionally, the Play Store, as it's operated by the search engine powerhouse that is Google, has favoured SEO-style description parsing, and less on static keyword lists. This has meant that if you wanted to rank highly with your Android app for keywords, you needed to be damn good at SEO to ensure your descriptions are carefully crafted. Conversely (and probably understandably), Apple shied away from such complex search indexing, instead preferring a much more basic approach of keyword lists.

That description is sadly an oversimplification of the way in which these algorithms actually work today. The Play Store will of course rank based on titles, ratings, publisher names and descriptive text, but earlier in the year it was updated to rate the search results (and your category position) based on a number of other factors such as user retention, engagement, acquisition volume & velocity and to a smaller extent review response rates. This has brought Google a little closer to Apple; as if to mirror Google, the iOS App Store ranking algorithm has been updated since the release of iOS 11 to bring it closer to Android. With the new App Store, search results aren't returned just on ratings, acquisition volume/velocity, retention, engagement and keywords - they are now influenced on the description itself (as an insider note, this will become 'official' later in 2018/early 2019), and this is making some apps, that thought they had a good setup, lose significant ground. This is without introducing additional complexities such as subtitles, promotional text fields and focus on in-app purchases as an additional, indexable item (if you want to discuss these further, please reach out as we'd love to bore you with the details!!).

Browsing Traffic

Mastering keyword searching is only one angle you can take at driving traffic to your landing pages. The next step is to focus on organic 'browsing' traffic, and as there are billions of such 'browsers' every month that could become your next customer, it's an area not to be neglected. There are a number of ways in which you can draw in those idly browsing the stores - either by becoming featured (or 'Editor's Choice'), by using a bit of advertising spend, or by topping the charts in your category/subcategory. Sadly, the latter two of these can be quiet expensive; to become featured however, is possible for free if you've created something that Apple or Google believe they can tell a story around (think unique, novel feature use, cutting-edge etc).

If you want to generate serious traffic from the home page, you generally want to be in the top 10 position of your category, although you will see diminishing returns on organic installs right down to position 200 (beyond that it's the wilderness...). With the current iOS 11 store front however, you want to be aiming a little higher than Android, as the card space has been reduced and when you land there you'll only see a few of the top ones by default. The way to get up there is by driving significant volumes of installs, sustaining good user retention & engagement (make sure you have a good lifecycle messaging strategy in place), and acquiring sufficient positive reviews and feedback - this can be expensive if you're in a popular category such as Games, and you don't have a viral factor akin to Pokémon Go. In a nutshell, if you want to be on the front of the App Store home page for free you need to be featured (this of course is also an option with the Play Store, although a little harder). With Google's new UAC ads however, you can start to buy your way to the front of the Play Store; I won't go into any more detail here, as I could write several articles about UAC as well as becoming featured, but these are all factors you should be considering as part of your traffic strategy.

Converting Browsers

Once you've driven traffic to your store landing pages, there's another task ahead of you - getting those browsers to download! Conversion analytics is (almost) as old as time, but there are some basics we still see on large brand store landing pages that surprise us. Disconnected images, poor iconography, substandard copy, lack of call-to-action, inefficient use of keywords, lack of portfolio-level keyword management (every client seems to suffer from this), missing localisation, videos without subtitles, inefficient search ad spend - the list is almost endless, and if people are assigned to look after these store pages, I would be questioning their credentials.

At the end of the day, it becomes a question of basic marketing and ensuring you do everything in your power to get that user from your store page to download your app - there is no universal design or solution to this, but you can get to the optimal setup for your app with a structured test-and-optimization plan across every asset of your landing page! I can't emphasise enough about the importance of a structured test plan - simply changing multiple variables willy-nilly with each test iteration will at best leave you blind as to what's impacting the results, and at worse lead you down a rabbit hole with anomalous findings.

The Disparity

What this means is that we now have a world where publishers that have kept on top of this (by either having a superstar internal team, or are using one of the very few capable ASO agencies), are overwhelming their competition left right and centre, and getting themselves at the front of the queue with billions of potential users. We commonly see smaller vendors, with comparatively small download volumes and minuscule acquisition budgets, significantly outperforming some of the largest brand names in the world! For example, ConsultMyApp delivered an ASO project for one of our clients recently, who were competing against another app that had just received $30m in Series B funding. After we completed the initial analysis and implemented the changes, they were ranking well above this competitor for nearly all of their key search terms - an incredible feat, but it does make you wonder what the competition were doing with all that investment....

Summary

In short form, all of this news is great, as we all like to see the underdogs perform well; it does however illustrate the point that ASO is far from a well-understood and managed process at many companies, and remains similar to SEO back in the late 90's. With that in mind, if you're looking to boost user acquisition and you haven't taken a serious look at ASO (or recently reviewed your setup and agency performance), I would stress this should be top of your list; certainly before you consider spending more money on the old acquisition channels, as if ASO is done correctly it delivers lower CPI's and higher average LTV's than any other source.

**If you'd like to read about one of our recent ASO successes, please feel free to take a look here!

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!