App Store Optimization

INTRODUCTION

When Apple’s App Store opened its digital doors in 2008, it offered only 500 different iOS apps to its customers. A mere three months later, Google launched its store called Android Market with just 50 apps.

One decade later, users can choose from more than 1.9 million iOS apps, and 1,000 new ones are added each day. On Google Play, 2.8 million apps are available, and this number grows by 4,500 per day.

While this enormous variety is fantastic for users, it is a nightmare for app publishers, especially for those, who enter the market with their first app. It has never been harder to gain users.

Occasionally an app becomes a viral success without any marketing efforts. A famous example was Flappy Bird. The arcade game by a Vietnamese indie developer was downloaded more than 50 million times, and it generated daily ad revenues of up to $50,000.

Unfortunately, success stories like this are rare.

Many app publishers rely on buying traffic to grow their user base. But as more companies move towards mobile each year, this approach gets more and more expensive. For this reason, independent developers in particular must focus on another source for new users: Organic traffic.

Organic users are free, and scaling their number is possible for everyone. All you need to get organic users is knowledge about App Store Optimization, or ASO.

This knowledge is multi-faceted. App Store Optimization is one of the most challenging fields of Mobile Marketing. It touches many topics, and thus it requires different skills to master ASO:

• It requires a basic technical understanding of the app stores’ algorithms.
• It needs creativity to design visual creatives and catching texts that attract and amaze users.
• It requires analytical skills to evaluate the outcome of optimization efforts and draw the right conclusions from it.
• It takes empathy to understand users’ behavior and to deal with their feedback.
• It requires the will to learn and to keep track of technical developments that impact the app stores.
• And last but not least, it requires the stamina to keep researching and testing, even when the results are not as good as expected.

Many myths exist around App Store Optimization, and there is much content on the Internet trying to demystify it. One thing is indisputable though: If you want to make your app a success, there is no way around App Store Optimization.