Mobile applications have become the preferred choice for everything done online. When people are in search of finding new app, they visit immediately the app store, whether Google Play Store for Android devices or App Store for iOS devices. But when there are millions of apps, as of July 2023, Google Play Store has 3.5 million applications including your app, how would you manage to get your app to stand out? How would you make sure that your app appears on top of search result pages? The answer is App Store Optimization or ASO. If you follow the industry-best ASO checklist, you are certainly in a position to cash in on the huge market potential of mobile applications.
Here is an interactive guide to the highly-recommended ASO checklist that we have developed after thorough consultation, collaboration, and discussion with web app marketers and ASO experts.
Ready to dive in? let’s get started!
Before we move ahead to share some tips that you should follow to get started with ASO, it would be a good idea to have a brief understanding of what ASO means and why should you have a well-drafted ASO checklist.
What is App Store Optimization?
App Store Optimization Mobile App SEO or App Search Optimization are the different names of the same process of improving the visibility and discoverability of mobile apps on the Google Play store or Apple App Store.
ASO is a great way to increase the app’s conversion rates and get more downloads. Various aspects of the app such as app name, app description, keywords, screenshots, rating, reviews, and the like are optimized to increase the appeal of the mobile application.
ASO experts take advantage of the working of Apple’s and Google’s algorithms to make sure that your app shows up on the top of result pages and gains enough visibility to attract the attention of visitors.
Why Should You Tick on Your ASO Checklist?
ASO is critically important. It helps you in many ways in securing your ultimate objective of gaining maximum downloads. Some benefits of launching and adhering to the industry-best and well-recommended ASO checklist are discussed below:
ASO Helps Improve Visibility:
Improved visibility is one obvious advantage. When users use certain keywords or browse specific categories, the well-optimized mobile apps have higher chances of appearing high on result pages. This improved visibility helps you gain more organic impressions and resultantly a higher number of downloads.
ASO Enhances User Acquisition:
The well-designed and implemented ASO strategies help market developers to attract highly-quality visitors. ASO strategies engage genuinely-interested visitors in your app’s offering and thus help you increase organic traffic, improve conversion rates and enhance user acquisition.
ASO is Cost-Effective:
ASO is a cost-efficient way to optimize your app with a minimum budget. Unlike paid advertisement, ASO focuses on optimizing the existing assets of your app within the store. It needs just time and effort to ensure long-term results in the form of increased organic traffic and improved conversion rates.
Overall, App Store Optimization is key to improving the visibility, discoverability, and success of your mobile app. If you put in place a well-designed APO checklist, you will end up having increased app downloads, enhanced customer acquisition, and sustainable growth and profitability of your app.
Now, we move to our main topic of discussion, what is the generally recommended checklist of practices that you should practice for the optimization of the app?
What ASO Checklist Should You Put in Practice to Ensure App Optimization?
Here are 2023’s best ASO practices.
Know Your Customers and Level of Competition:
First thing first, put in yourself your customers’ shoes by understanding their demographics, location, preferences, and behaviors. You should know your customers’ language, their top reasons to download mobile applications, and your competitive edge. The more you know about your customers, the better as it would help you offer a personalized user experience.
Knowing the competition is equally important. You should know which keywords your competitors are using and design and implement an ASO strategy in light of these data insights. You can use various tools such as Keyword Explorer to kick off the search.
Use the Right App Name:
The name of the app is what tells your potential users about the application. Therefore, coming up with a unique and catchy name is an important element of an effective ASO strategy. You should consider the following factors while choosing the right name for your app.
- The name should be creative, catchy, and memorable.
- The name should reflect the core function of your brand, and it also describes what your app does.
- It should be keyword-optimized. You can add keywords in your app’s name which is relevant to your domain, niche, or target audience. It will help improve the ranking and visibility of your app in the store.
- You should try to incorporate keywords at the beginning of your app name. This practice is not recommended for well-known brands because people search for their products with their brand names. But if you are not a well-known name, go for using keywords at the start of the name of your app.
- Keep the name short and sweet and easily searchable.
- If you are looking for a global audience, consider the internationalization of your app’s name. It entails avoiding culturally and religiously sensitive, and offensive names. Furthermore, the name should not be challenging in local or regional languages or accents.
Keep in mind that the name of your application is essential to your branding and user perception. Brainstorm the name, research it thoroughly, and consider other options as well before choosing the final name. Your name should be reflective of your brand personality and image and must resonate with your target audience.
Optimize the App’s Title with Appropriate Keywords:
When you search in Apple App Store you will find the title, icon, and first three screenshots of the app, likewise in Google Play Store, you will find the title and icon. In other words, both these stores prioritize titles and it does play a key role in App Store Optimization. Therefore, pay serious attention to the app’s title.
- Write a compelling, concise, and engaging app title. The title should be descriptive, easy to understand, and carries the unique proposition of your brand. Some important points you should keep in mind while crafting an app’s title.
- You should incorporate relevant keywords in your app’s title. Multiple studies reveal that apps using relevant keywords in their title rank more than 10% higher than apps without relevant keywords.
- There is a character limit in both Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Both allow you to write up to 30 characters or less. This space allows you to add keywords. But avoid keyword stuffing, it will leave you in a disadvantaged position.
- Adhere to policy guidelines. For instance, as per Google Play Store, you cannot use any text that shows the performance or ranking of the brand. These and other guidelines should be strictly adhered to.
Write A Compelling App Description:
With App’s name and title, you have tried to convince search engine index relevancy of your app for a specific set of keywords, in the app’s description, you do this for your potential users. You tell them in plain and simple language about the unique proposition of your app, list the benefits it provides, and try to convince them to download and use your application.
You are recommended to focus your energies on your first three lines. Studies show that only 5% of the Google Play store and 2% of the Apple App Store bother to click “see more”. In other words, you have hardly 250 characters to describe your unique preposition and function of your mobile application.
You should treat the description as a living document. It means this description should be updated when there is any update in your app. Apart from the app description, the updates made in an app must be reflected in screenshots as well to call out new features and portray them as well.
Both Google Play store and Apple App Store allow 4000 characters, so you should keep in permitted length and add all features, benefits, and unique selling points of your app including keywords within the allowed space.
Make Your App Standout with Eye-Catching App Icon:
Keep in mind that a visually appealing, eye-catching, and memorable icon can be a great way to improve click-through rates and enhances potential users. It should be prominent enough to stand out from other apps available in stores and gives a fair idea about what your app does. It is the first impression of your app, and the first impression is the last, everyone knows this.
Both Google Play and Apple App Store have certain preferences and standards for icon size, geometry, and color schemes to remain compatible with OS. For instance, in the case of iOS, the icon should be sized at least 1024×1024 pixels. Google requires a 512×512 icon, and where it does not demand this condition explicitly, you should follow Material Design guidelines that discuss everything you need to know.
Further, you should avoid too many small details and the contrasting colors should be in a perfect combination. Simply put, don’t overcomplicate the icon with unnecessary and extra words and logos, the icon should be simple enough to convey your brand message even in miniature form in an app menu.
Most importantly, it is crucially important to conduct a competitive search to make sure that your app icon should be unique and would not be mistaken for other apps’ icons.
Add High-Quality Screenshots and Reviews:
Though screenshots don’t impact search engine ranking similar to icons, adding high-quality screenshots showing the best features and the latest updates of your app has a direct impact on the number of downloading.
You can add up to 8 and 5 screenshots respectively to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. But only 2 and 3 screenshots would be shown in the gallery on page load. Therefore, make sure to add important screenshots first detailing the functionalities and features of your app. They should be visually appealing and demonstrate your unique selling proposition.
Stores prioritize those screenshots showing customers’ reviews. You can add captions and annotations. Ask some of your graphic designers to add text overlay showing key features of your application. Keep in mind that screenshots are the largest visuals on app pages, make them as attractive and as engaging as you can, they have a well-tested key to increase downloading of your application.
Localize Your App:
If you are looking to tap into an international audience, keep localization at your top-most priority. You should localize metadata including app title, description, and keywords as per regional languages and cultures.
First, write content in the language your target audience loves to communicate. There are multiple low-cost translation options available that can translate descriptions, titles, and even screenshots to your target audience.
Secondly, both the Google Play store and Apple App Store allow localizing your listing, this helps a lot in improving your app in a specific market and discoverability of your application. Therefore, always tick the localization in your ASO checklist for improved conversion and increased downloading.
Manage App Reviews and Ratings:
App reviews and ratings have also a direct impact on your app optimization, hence, they should be part of your APO checklist.
Use in-app prompts and pop-ups to encourage your users to share their reviews on the store. The positive reviews would improve the creditability of your app and thus it will improve your ranking on search engines.
It should also be noted that reviews and rating counts matter more than sentiments. In other words, the volume of reviews would ultimately be rewarded rather than the proportion of negative comments or ratings. But obviously, negative ratings must be avoided. Ask your friends and members of your family to share positive ratings to build a pool of reviews and ratings.
You should provide your contact information as well so that dissatisfied customers may contact you directly and thus may be convinced to share negative feedback. Furthermore, respond promptly and directly to negative reviews so that both customers and app stores build trust in your app product.
Update your App Frequently and Fix Bugs:
Another tick you should make on your ASO checklist is frequent updating and bug fixing in your app. When you add new features, attempt to remove bugs, and come up with new security patches, it shows you are committed to providing a quality user experience. And this in return, improves your visibility and ranking.
But how do you convince your users to download new updates or versions? You can undertake many steps. For instance, you can add a note that prompts on log-in, show a push notification, or display a link prominently on the app navigation to convince your users to update the app.
Final Words:
Optimization of your mobile app is extremely important to achieve marketing goals. If you don’t tick on the ASO checklist, you will end up having abysmally low visibility and a resultant disappointingly low number of downloads. Every app developer avoids such a nightmarish scenario.
You can avoid this by putting in place an effective app optimization strategy. Tick all the checklists that we have shared above, you would be in a better position to have an effective ASO strategy. In this way, you would be in a position to surpass all of your competitors in the store.
But keep in mind that ASO is an ongoing and steady process. It will take time and would not make your app a roaring success within a day or two. Be patient, stick to the basic plan of action, and develop a data-based tracking and following methods to monitor the success of the strategy. This is the only way to earn handsomely from your app.