Editor’s note: This article (and report) was written by the clever clogs at Home Games. You can read their original here. 

Game’s go through a lot of stages from ideation to executing and testing during the publishing cycle. But having a game published and up and running in the app stores is only the first step in making it accessible to the widest audience possible. For game creators, the app stores are the main point of contact with users, and they are the place where users will decide if a game is worth downloading or not. So, in order to put everything in your favor, you will need to make sure your game is presented in the best possible way, with its main features displayed and with images and wording fully optimized. That’s where app store optimization (ASO) comes into play.

Every element of the app store page has the power to drive downloads to a game. Some time ago, app store optimization’s main focus was on texts—names and descriptions would include keywords and be fully optimized to showcase the app’s attributes while earning the first spots in search results. While this is still the case, lately the focus has strongly shifted to optimizing the visual aspect of the app store page, and now elements such as icons and screenshots are prioritized when attempting to drive downloads to a game. And this is what we’re going to tackle in this article.

Welcome to the app stores‍

Before digging into the keys of image optimization for the app stores, let’s go over its four main elements and needed assets:

• Icon: Along with the app name, the icon is one of the the first things a user will see when entering the app store, and is essential for a good first impression. Simple and recognizable, make sure the game’s icon is not only visually appealing, but also a strong reflection of what the game is about.
• Feature graphic: This image will appear everywhere the game is featured in Google Play Store, so it should synthesize the entire gameplay experience. Also, if you have a video, this image will be used as its cover.
• Screenshots: They are also meant to communicate the user experience. Screenshots are a chance to showcase an app’s UI and to convey its features, capabilities, and look and feel. In gaming apps, they are also an opportunity to display the game narrative. The first three screenshots are critical, since the user may not scroll through the end of the bunch.
• Video preview: Although not mandatory in neither Google nor Apple’s app stores, videos are a very compelling way of showcasing an app. A game’s video preview should clearly show the gameplay and follow the five seconds rule: the main message must be clearly stated in the first seconds and the user should easily understand the content of the game in that timeframe.

So, when it comes to images, how do we deal with ASO for games? The first step is to have attractive, good quality visual assets, but when it comes to the app store, it’s also critical to take a very data-centric approach and to measure the assets’ performance in detail. For this reason, it is important to prepare a good A/B testing plan before the games are published, in order to have the assets ready and to avoid losing momentum after launch.

Preparing an A/B test plan involves, on the one hand, a good knowledge of the product and its marketability and, on the other hand, a research process to be aware of benchmarks and current app store trends and best practices. Both of these elements will inform the design of the different images in the first place, to make sure they bring forward the most iconic visual aspects of the game and they convey its main message in the most effective way.

An ASO research process includes benchmarking games of similar genres and themes, analyzing their visual style and the way they display their narrative. By taking a look at the icons, for example, you can observe visual patterns like the most used colors, or the kind of elements that are featured (main characters, environments, logos, etc.). Once you have extracted some conclusions, there are two possible paths: following the trends or going for a differentiation approach. And that’s where testing comes handy. Research will provide ideas and direction for designing the assets, but in order to know what will actually work in the app stores, everything should be tested.

Testing for the win

All the visual elements named above have the potential to improve the app store’s performance and have an impact on a game’s marketing success. In the next paragraphs, we’ll go through some A/B test experiments performed for the game Investment Run for icons and screenshots.

The first experiment tested different icons to evaluate their performance compared to the original, more generic icon used at launch. Unlike it, all the variations featured characters and all of them performed better than the initial listing. Of them, the first and the third variations center on the gameplay, one showing a successful path and the other one an obstacle. Both performed remarkably better than the first option.

The second experiment takes advantage of the possibility of organizing screenshots in different orders, resulting in different narrative options. In this case, three sequences were tested focusing on different aspects of the gameplay.

The first variation shows the character between gates representing different investment opportunities, emphasizing the possibility of making choices that will impact the outcome of the game. In most of them the character is at the same stage of wealthiness as shown by his skin.

The second variation shows the obstacles the character faces through his investment path. This variation focuses on the challenges and difficulties, and turned up to be the least successful of them all.

The third variation highlights progression by showing improvement on the character situation, seen on his growing pile of money and better clothes. This was the winning bet, showing that choices are an appealing element of the game when associated with character progression.

These are only some examples of the many elements that can be tested in the app stores. The screenshots displayed above, for example, present different environments and show variety. Another test could isolate this visual component and test the same game progression but in different environments or with different skins. What matters is to do the tests and to make the decisions based on them.

App store optimization is a mix between research and testing. At Homa, we have a dedicated Creative Department that actively works with Product, User Acquisition and Data Analytics teams to increase games’ stores visibility and KPIs. An ASO specialist will regularly monitor and analyze a game’s performance in the store and will also overview how similar games are doing to be aware of the latest market trends and benchmarks. If you have a creative profile, don’t hesitate to check our open positions in the Creative Department.

Squid Game games turns Mobile

Netflix released the new show, Squid Game, on September 17th 2021. Over 132 million people watched the show in the first 23 days of its release, with 4.4 million new people subscribing to the platform (presumably to see the series). It’s easily a new record for Netflix, overtaking Bridgertons number 1 spot. Netflix have even announced that they’re going to make their own “Squid Game” game, as an attempt to increase its popularity in regions like North America.

Netflix aren’t the only ones reaping the benefits of this Korean Battle Royale style show. We’re being flooded with memes, halloween costumes, and merch around the hit, all across the globe. But more importantly, mobile games. We’ve seen hundreds of hyper-casual games enter the app stores, all inspired by the Squid Game theme.

With the topic still trending and being at the forefront of everyone’s minds, we wanted to dive into the data side of things. Using insights from GameIntel, we’ve kept a close eye on the top-charting games in the App Store, specifically out of the 200+ titles, who made it to the top.

We’ve pulled this data from GameIntel

All of the data featured in this blog is from GameIntel. It’s our market intelligence tool, built for developers of all sizes to research industry trends and track the charts in the mobile gaming market. You can see the top hits for all major nations, check out global hits and top-performing publishers, and even discover performance and usage estimates for top games. And much more.

We’re specifically looking at the Top Charts and Global Hits. We’re interested to find out which Squid Game-inspired titles made it into the top charts, in which countries, and for how long.

Why does “Squid Game” make such a good mobile game?

If you haven’t had a chance to watch the show, there are six rounds (games) that the contestants need to make it through. All of which are based on Korean children’s games. There’s tug of war, candy carving, and different dice games (plus the now famous Red Light, Green Light). And due to the nature of hyper-casual games (being quick to develop due to their simple gameplay and mechanics), each round can easily be turned into a hyper-casual game.

Netflix has essentially handed over a platter of hyper-casual games with it’s very own trend to developers. Millions of players are wanting to try out these ‘trials’ for themselves, and they’re turning to the gaming industry to make it come true.

Insights from GameIntel

Earliest game launched: 闯关游戏模拟器-抠糖饼

The earliest game we can see in the top charts for the App Store is 闯关游戏模拟器-抠糖饼 by 成蛟 何 (which loosely translates to “Breakthrough Game Simulator-Sugar Biscuit”). It launched in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on the 29th of September, only 12 days after Squid Game was released, and soon after reached #2 in the charts.

It copies all of the challenges from Squid Game. Interestingly though, the developers have chosen to include the keywords “Sugar” and “Biscuit” and “Simulator” into the title. This may be due to the popularity of the second round in Squid Game, suggesting that this is what players are searching for in the App Store.

Despite it being launched on the 29th September, it didn’t reach the top 20 charts in China until the 2nd of October. Which is incredibly impressive, to go from initial launch to charts in just a few days. The game stayed in the top charts for the first couple of weeks, and then fell down to #67 from the 18th of October onwards (just a month after the show was aired). Most likely due to other games making their way into the charts.

UPDATE: We’ve just learned that this was a copycat app. It’s now removed from the App Store due to copyrighting infringement. So although it was the first game to reach the top 20 games (from what we can see), it actually isn’t the true first game to make it as a hit. That goes to K-Games Challenge, the next title we talk about.

First game to make it global: K-Games Challenge

Next game to hit the global charts was K-Games Challenge, by Supercent. In similar fashion, it looks at all of the rounds featured in Squid Game. It was launched on the 2nd of October, and it reached the charts in Portugal and Brazil on the 4th October.

It was the first “Squid Game” title to make it global, just 2 and half weeks after the initial release of Squid Game. On October 5, it hit the charts for the United States, France, Canada, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and more. And it reached number 1 in almost every country on October 6th. It is arguably the first game to truly take advantage and set this trend.

Currently shining with a 4.5 rating with 17,300 reviews on the App Store in the United States. Similar to the previous title we chatted about, it stayed in the top charts until the 18th of October. It’s now ranking at #190 in games, and #60 in Simulation.

Top ranking game to hit number 1 consistently: Candy Challenge 3D

Then we have Candy Challenge 3D, created by Idil Morgul. Released on the 2nd of October, this title didn’t make the charts until October 7th (20 days after it aired). Unlike the first two titles we’ve talked about, this game is more focused on the second challenge in the show: cutting a shape out of a honeycomb without breaking it. It’s adopted the keyword ‘Candy’ in its name, and most of the images and description is around this specific challenge.

It does bolster other challenges, but these are secondary to the core concept. It’s worth noting, it’s stayed in the charts ever since, and has hit number 1 repetitively in multiple markets. Using our machine learning, we’ve also awarded this game a score of 32,000, beating K-Games Challenge.

This could be down to the game’s positioning, using the second candy game from Squid Game. But it’s been the highest ranked game to hit the charts, and been consistently in the top 10 for the longest time. It has the highest rating, too, being 4.58 and having over 37,000 ratings in total.

At least 3 games in the global top 10 charts are “Squid Game” titles

From the 9th of October, there were at least 3 games inspired by “Squid Game” in the top 10 game charts, in almost every country. Which held true for a good two weeks, until the 25th October. During its peak, we were seeing around 4 or 5 games inspired by Squid Game in the top 20 games for every country.

Since then, we’ve mainly only seen two games make it into the top charts regularly; Candy Challenge 3D by Idil Morgul, and Survival Game – 3D Challenge by Kien Nguyen. Which just goes to show how very fleeting trends can be in the mobile gaming industry, and how important it is to jump on them from the get go.

“Challenge” is the top keyword for chart-hitting Squid Game titles

Out of the top games with the “Squid Game” style that we’ve seen in the top 20 charts since launch, 70% of them feature the keyword “challenge”. Due to IP reasons (or so we think), these games can’t use “Squid Game” in the title (or at least shouldn’t). But they’ve all incorporated part of the show into the descriptions and titles.

• Candy Challenge 3D
• K-Games Challenge
• All challenges – survival game
• Survival Challenge 3D
• Survival Game – 3D Challenge
• Survival Games: Life Challenge
• Dalgona Challenge 3D!
• 闯关游戏模拟器-抠糖饼 – “Breakthrough Game Simulator-Sugar Biscuit”
• Bridge Race Master
• Cookie Carver

Some games are just copying the artstyle

Even if the game isn’t about Squid Game, we’ve seen titles incorporate the iconic mask into their thumbnails and other elements, in an attempt to jump on the trend quickly. Bazooka Boy, by Supersonic Studios, was originally released in August 2020. Its icon used to be of a yellow avatar holding a bazooka. In their latest update on October 15th, they’ve changed their icon to incorporate a ‘legally distinct’ Squid Game mask and assault rifle. A reference to the guards in the show.

Their ranking has been steady. But since the switch, they’ve re-entered the top charts, hitting #14 in India on October 6th. But this is still a unique way to increase your games traffic and popularity, without making major updates to your game.

Or they’re using Squid Game in their ads

This insight came to us by chance, but it’s no surprise. Some developers are jumping on this trend, and using the show’s theme and featured games in their advertising strategy. Take Shelter War: Last City as an example. We stumbled across one of their ads, which clearly features the ‘Red Light Green Light’ mini game. But when we dived into the title and did a bit of digging, we couldn’t find any evidence of this in the gameplay or their release notes.

It could be that this was a limited-time event. Or perhaps locked in the far, later levels of the game (we hope that this is the case). But it’s clear that some devs are piggybacking this shows success in lots of different ways, especially to optimize their user acquisition campaigns.

Squid Game is still taking the market by storm

It’s only been a few weeks since its initial release, but we’re seeing more and more games enter the charts, all based on the Squid Game theme. These are only a few of the findings we’ve discovered in GameIntel.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on what happens next. So make sure to watch this space (or sign up to our newsletter – just below) for any updates. You can also sign up to GameIntel and do your own digging. We have a free version you can explore, check it out!

That’s not all that GameIntel can do for you. Hear some other stories, created with data:

• Umami Games case study: how gaming studios can start self-publishing and scale post-IDFA
• 2020 in Metrics: Understanding Casual and Hypercasual Gaming Markets
• Mobile playtime increases by 62%, with IAP up by around 30% in Q1
• How Wargaming uses GameIntel to focus on successful game ideas

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by TapNation. Make sure to check out their version here.

The question of how people find your content is a tale as old as the internet. Having the best story or the most innovative gameplay means very little if no one can find it, never mind play it.

Which is why ASO (App Store Optimization) is so important. It plays a crucial role when publishing your game. And it isn’t as time-consuming or complicated as you may think.

At TapNation, we help make sure new players find your hyper-casual games by using the best ASO techniques and most effective marketing strategies. If you have great intuitive gameplay, we want to make sure everyone in the world is playing it.

But if you’re just looking for some simple advice to get you started, well here a few tips that we recommend:

1. Icons Make First Impressions

The vast majority of potential players will judge everything about a game on its icon. It’s impossible to understate how important it is to have something that not only catches people’s attention but also intrigues them enough to download your game.

The first impression for most games comes from their icons

Never judge a book by its cover. As nice as that is, unfortunately, this isn’t the case for the app stores. There are hundreds of thousands of games on the app stores, and your little icon will be one of the first things a potential player sees. So you’re going to want to make it stand out.

Quick tip: Run A/B tests

When working on your icon, research what similar games in your space are using. Focus on your best competitors. And then experiment with your own. You don’t want an exact copy, but you should be able to pick out some good trends. Make sure to A/B test to find out which ones work best with your own audience.

Why should potential players be drawn to your game?

Having an icon that stands out within the crowd of games is a large part of the difference between success and failure.

But making it eye-catching is only half of the job. It shouldn’t lose what the essence of the game is about. It needs to represent the game accurately in a tiny square next to other similar squares. The ideal situation is finding a way to stand out with an image that intuitively speaks about how the game is played and what makes it unique.

Quick tip: See how your icon sits against your competitors

You can put together a test group if you want, but it may not be needed for this. To get a better idea of how well your icon is perceived, a common trick is to take a screenshot of the top apps and slot your icon within the mix. If it doesn’t immediately catch your eye (or your friend’s or family member’s), it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

2. Perfect Your Names, Screenshots, and Trailers

You’ve tackled the icon. What next? Your name, screenshots, and trailers.

These are all secondary to the icon. But they are equally just important, and crucial to turning someone’s interest into an actual download, and eventually loyal player.

All three need to stand out in the context of the app stores. Everything needs to revolve around capturing the core gameplay and what makes it exciting (without seeming generic or uninspired). Capturing the essence of a game in just a few images and words to entice interested users is what it’s all about.

Quick tip: find the best screenshots of the most exciting part of the game while avoiding text and UI

Everything needs to accentuate the unique look and feel of the game.  You want to help people instantly understand how your game is played, and what makes it stand out from the competition.

You want to educate, excite, and convince – all on one page. Which is one of the most challenging parts of publishing your game. So make sure you’re showing and talking about the best parts of your game at this stage.

Quick tip: Research keywords when figuring out your name

You might already have an idea of what your game will be called. But whatever stage you’re in, we’d recommend performing some keyword research for your title. Usually, you’ll want something short, descriptive, and unique.

3. Limited Text and Trailers

You don’t need to go overboard when it comes to your text and video trailers. Most people decide whether to download a hyper-casual game based on its icon and screenshots first and foremost, but that doesn’t mean text and trailers are useless.

Using text and trailers to highlight key features and make basic calls to action are okay, but it’s easy to get carried away and just lose players in a wall of text or a long-winded tutorial.

The best use of text and trailers comes from making clear statements about the gameplay that people think are hard to find in other games. Especially with hyper-casual games (which should be simple and intuitive anyway).

Quick tip: don’t forget to localize your text and images

One last side note for any text featured in the app stores is to remember that everything needs to be localized if your game is launched in multiple markets.

Standing Out In Context

Remember: your game will instantly be judged based on its icon. So before you do anything, perfect that. All of your hard work will be for nothing if they don’t click on your icon.

Standing out in context and letting that eye-catching icon lead to people playing your game is the goal of ASO.

So that’s the gist of it. But there is a lot more you can do when it comes to perfecting your game on the app stores. If you have any questions, or just fancy learning some more tips and tricks, then feel free to get in touch. We’d love to have a chat.

“One does not simply hit the top of the app stores” – Boromir, Lord of ASO.

Seriously though. Getting your game noticed on the app stores is no easy feat. Just like websites have SEO (search engine optimization), app stores have ASO (app store optimization).

So I thought it best to ask some of the industry experts. I took the time to talk to a bunch of different developers, some with games on the Google Play store, others with games on the Apple store. And some with games on both. Simply to see how they set up their game’s pages, what they felt was most important, and to discover their top tips when it comes to the Mobile Store Page.

I’ve compiled them into a bunch of takeaways, but I’ve kept all of the quotes in so you can see what they exactly said. Here’s who I spoke to:

• SnoutUp, a solo developer studio who created Iron Snout
• Josh Presseisen, the founder (and sole member) of Crescent Moon Games
• Kevin Andersson, the founder of WhyKev
• Callum Lory head of Ampersand Game Studios

With the fellowship ready, let’s get started.

1. Players will judge a game on its icon

I asked everyone what they thought was the most important asset to pay attention to on the store page, and the majority went with app icon. It’s one of the first things a potential player will see, after all. Here’s what they said:

SnoutUp: “My vote goes to the icon. Without paid acquisition, getting your game seen in an overcrowded marketplace is very tricky. Having a catchy icon makes every impression more likely to lead to a download. And more downloads, as well as higher CTR, lead to better rankings.”

Josh Presseisen: “It’s hard to say these days when so many factors are important for ASO algorithms… But the icon is by far the most important thing and it has always been that way. Take extra time designing your icon, showing other devs, family, get their feedback. It’s so important to have an icon that stands out above others. Otherwise, you’ll instantly be getting fewer downloads than you would with a carefully designed icon.”

Kevin Andersson: “In the App Store, there’s this feature that’s called an App Preview which is about 10 seconds of gameplay. So it’s like a mix of the trailer and actual gameplay from the game. I think this video is the closest to what the player will experience. Almost like a 10 second “let’s play” video right in the store next to the purchase button.”

Callum Lory: “In terms of acquiring a player, it really depends on where they are coming from. If the potential player is just browsing the app store, then, in my opinion, the app name and icon are the most important. Otherwise, if they have been brought to the store page through an ad, then the screenshots are the most important.”

2. And you need to make sure that icon stands out (tips below)

Everyone seemed to agree that the icon is probably one of the most important aspects when working on ASO. So the next question on my list was, what exactly should you consider when picking out the app’s image?

Here’s what the experts advise:

SnoutUp: “For the icon, I try to find something that stands out in the list of similar games. Easy to recognize, scaled-down and ideally, reflects the gameplay.”

Josh Presseisen: “Does it represent the game well? Does it make sense with the content of the game? Does it stand out above other top icons on the store? It’s good to make a copy of the App Store page with the top apps that you are competing against, put your icon in there next to them, and see how it looks. I am not in any way saying you should make icons similar to the other top icons. But you should make sure that it stands out and you can quickly spot it at a glance, at any size. Its important for quick recognition when a potential player sees it.”

Kevin Andersson: “The first thing I do is take a screenshot of the store and try to find a color from the game that would fit well beside other games/apps. Something that might make it stand out when you scroll.”

Callum Lory: “The things we think about when designing the app icon are:

• Trying to make it stand out to someone when they’re looking at a large grid of apps.
• Establishing a clear association with our app, so that users know exactly which game they’re looking at just from the icon.
• Not just using our standard logo, but having a custom asset made specifically for the app icon which features our main player character.”

3. Devs have mixed feelings on trailers

I asked the group about trailers on the app stores, and honestly, I got mixed feedback. The general consensus is if you want to have a trailer, great, but make sure it’s good. Everyone seemed to prefer a preview of the game instead.

Here’s what they said:

SnoutUp: “I think they’re good to have, but I don’t believe they really drive downloads that much. Good screenshots are enough! I recently asked my Twitter followers about app store trailers and most of them agreed that videos are not that important.”

Josh Presseisen: “I go 50/50 on that one. I feel that trailers can either help or harm your game. If your trailer is good, and the gameplay is interesting, then it can instantly get someone interested in playing your game. If not, it could have the opposite effect on downloads.”

Kevin Andersson: “Honestly I don’t feel that it’s so important since the App Preview is already there.”

Callum Lory: “I’d say a trailer always helps promote a game, and helps give any potential player a much better understanding of what the game is before they decide to get it. Whether they are necessary depends on a lot of different things. For example, the complexity of the game, whether or not screenshots are enough to honestly portray the game in a way that sells it to the potential player, as well as what the target audience is for the game.

I think the target audience is probably the most important factor. Perhaps you’re trying to acquire users who don’t bother with trailers, or are in an area of the world with slow internet connections, and don’t want to load an entire video for each of the thousands and thousands of games they could download. In that case, a trailer isn’t necessary. There are also several freemium games that have shown that a trailer on the store page isn’t needed to be in the top free games. Right now, we don’t have a trailer for our game on the app stores. But we do on Steam and Itch, and we’re looking into getting one made for the app stores too!”

4. Screenshots need to show off the essence of the game (not your UI or menu)

So we’re not too worried about trailers. But what about screenshots? For these, avoiding UI and menu shots is always a good way to go. And after talking to the team, they mainly recommend showing off the most exciting aspects of your game.

Here are their tips:

SnoutUp: “I record gameplay videos and go through them, looking for the juiciest frames to use as screenshots. Something with most motion and particles! Usually, I select multiple images to show a variety of in-game areas and objects, sometimes create collages with unlocks and cosmetics. Generally, I avoid shots of menus, unless I have a nice logo to show off.”

Josh Presseisen: “Similar to the icon, you want to pick images that best represent what your game is all about. The images should stand out and be engaging, pulling the potential player into the atmosphere or content of the game, and getting them interested.

Also, if you have text, it’s important to localize the screenshot text in any language that is available in the game.”

Kevin Andersson: “For my game, there aren’t too many different camera angles. But if it did then I would try to highlight that. Then, I would try to showcase different areas that you visit in the game to show the player that there’s a lot of variation.”

Callum Lory: “We focused on gameplay pictures and intentionally didn’t show any UI or menus. The pictures we picked were the ones we felt told a story with our mechanics and gameplay. For example, just dodging a bullet, jumping into a wormhole, or picking up a bunch of points and your drone companion giving you an ok-hand emoji.”

5. Text on screenshots needs to be carefully considered

Although not essential, if you do want to add text to your screenshots, make sure that they’re there for a reason. Anything that will support the gameplay or give a reason for the player to download your game.

There’s a bunch of things to consider here, though, so here’s what the experts had to say:

SnoutUp: “I know for sure that whatever I put over screenshots will make me cringe after I’ll read it in a few months. So, I either ignore overlays completely or slap a few basic calls to action together with higher quality character art.”

Josh Presseisen: “Text that describes important gameplay elements that could make a player interested in your game. How much content does the game have? (Like how many levels or characters, etc.) Does it have multiplayer? What game mechanics stand out above others in your game compared to others?”

Kevin Andersson: “I started by looking at what other games were using on their screenshots and then reading reviews of other games to try and find out what people complained about. So I decided to focus on letting people know that there were a lot of levels and that you could unlock outfits to customize your characters.”

Callum Lory: “Currently, we don’t have any text over our images, but we’ll probably be changing that in the future!”

6. Know where players look and think about what they expect

For this, I asked the team ‘what do you feel jumps out most to players and gets players interested’. Essentially, what makes your game stand out from the rest?

There was a mixed reply here, so I’ll let you peruse their advice.

SnoutUp: “If a player is already browsing a game page, then it would be ace if the first gameplay image they see would meet their expectations raised by icon, game name, and whatever they were browsing app store for. At least that’s how I browse for games.”

Josh Presseisen: “Definitely the icon [gets players interested], followed by the trailer/screenshots. I believe fewer and fewer people actually read the description of the game.”

Kevin Andersson: “I think that a unique mechanic is what usually grabs the players attention, this could obviously mostly fit the type of games I’m playing.”

Callum Lory: “In terms of our game, and what we’re showing off from it, I feel like primarily it’s the aesthetic we managed to achieve for the game – cosmic and colorful, but also cartoony. In addition to that, I think it’s also the “controlled chaos”, or a sense of “method to the madness” that we’ve tried to establish with our gameplay. In terms of the app icon versus trailer versus screenshots, I’d say it really depends on where you’re getting your players from. If you’re using ads to promote your game, definitely the trailer. If you’re relying on organic traffic, that I’d say the app icon is probably the most important as it’s the first thing players will see before deciding they want to go visit the store page. Once they’re on the store page, I would imagine the app icon is pretty much ignored, and then trailers and screenshots take over as the most important.”

7. There isn’t really much difference between the Apple Store and Google Play

This is a question a lot of developers ask: “What about when uploading assets to Apple vs. Google? Should I be changing my artwork and assets for each?”, and the general answer is, no. There’s not much difference between them at all.

But this is what the team said:

SnoutUp: “I feel like audiences on different platforms might like specific things and be attracted to different store materials, but I haven’t done enough research to base that on more than my intuition. I never tried creating different assets in different stores either.”

Josh Presseisen: “One of the main differences is that on Google Play you can upload a YouTube trailer, which makes things quite a bit easier than doing the very specific 30 second App Previews on iOS. Other than that, they are very very similar, with some specific requirements for the size on each platform (such as a 512-pixel icon on Android and 1024 icon on iOS) Google Play also lets you A/B test anything in your App page to see which gets more clicks (a very nice feature to have before launch!)”

Kevin Andersson: “I haven’t uploaded to google play so I wouldn’t really know. But I do like the short gameplay snippets you can upload to App Store, gets right into what the player would experience.”

Callum Lory: “The key difference I found between the App Store and the Play Store was that the Play Store was not restrictive in terms of what screenshots you provided. The App Store, on the other hand, required several screenshots each for specific resolutions that matched some of their devices.”

That’s it for this roundtable. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and taken something away from this article. And if you enjoyed this post, let me know on Twitter what you would like to learn about for the next topic and I’ll keep that in mind.

Till next time

In June 2019, GameAnalytics hosted a mobile gaming event to talk about casual gaming, which we called ‘The Arcade (R)Evolution: Making Hit Casual Games‘. Valeria Castro of Platonic games somewhat stole the show with her presentation – speaking with wit and passion about how to find a niche in the world of hyper-casual gaming.

If you couldn’t make our last event, don’t worry. Here’s Valeria to fill you in on what you missed (and here’s the video of her talk):

We’re Platonic Games – a 10-person dev team from Madrid. You might know us if you’ve ever played Kawaii Kitchen, Happy Hop or Sailor Cats. As you can probably guess from those titles, we make super-cute, hyper-casual games. And there’s one question we get asked a lot.

Can we actually compete against the big developers?

In reality, no. We can’t. But the good news is that we don’t have to. Let me explain.

Big developers have three things in abundance that most studios won’t be able to match, which are:

• Resources
• Experience
• Market access

But we, as scrappy little underdog developers, have a few advantages of our own:

• We can take more risks (because we don’t have millions invested in each new project)
• We can build unique, more intimate communities
• We can find niches

Finding a niche is the key thing. When there are two billion customers up for grabs, we only need a million (0.05%) of them to play one of our games for it to be successful. And what better way to target them than by figuring out what exactly is missing in today’s market.

How we found our niche

When I founded Platonic Games in 2015, before we did anything, we sat down and had a long hard look at what gaps we could potentially fill in the market. The runner genre was popular and endlessly diverse. But there was one genre where we didn’t see much variety – games for girls.

If you search for games for girls, you generally find three things: cooking games, dressing-up games, and ‘taking care of something’ games. There are plenty of good games in this space, but no one was taking the more mainstream genres and making them appealing to girls. There were very few cute, girly runner games.

So we decided this would be our niche. Next we needed to find a way to ‘own’ that space. No matter how fun and awesome our games were, few gamers would play them if they were lost in the jungle of the market.

The power of keywords

We didn’t know much about keywords. But we knew that searching ‘cute’ returned an ocean of games in which ours would be mere droplets. So we looked for more distinctive keywords.

‘Kawaii’ turned out to be ideal. It’s not only a less-used synonym for cute, but it’s also a more specific one – it evokes the Japanese aesthetic of super-colorful, childlike, ‘aww’-inducing cuteness. I grew up around all things kawaii, so I thought it would be hot property as a keyword. But it wasn’t. We were the first ones to really use it.

Having such a consistent visual style makes it much easier to create a recognizable brand. Our merchandise, our website, and social media (and, of course, our games) all carry that distinctive, memorable look – so our users always know what to expect from us.

How we built our kawaii community

There are a few things we did, but for the sake of this blog and presentation, I’m going to talk about 3 key steps we followed.

Step one: Telling users the truth

We wanted the people playing our games to know who we are. Many people still assume all games are made by massive companies who just want to milk money from them. We knew we could build a stronger community by telling them the truth – we’re a little team who love making games, and every download and every review makes a difference to us.

10% of our players now leave us a review, which massively helps us improve our games and engage more with the people who play them. And it makes us happy to know people are enjoying the games we’ve worked so hard to create.

Step two: Knowing your target audience

We knew about 80% of our players were girls and young women. But that wasn’t enough to understand them or know how best to communicate with them. This is where the ample reviews came in really useful.

Our reviewers were unlikely to say things like, “well designed, effective core gameplay loop, enjoyable to play”. They were more likely to say things like, “OMG I F***ING LOVE THIS GAME SO CUTE OMG” (followed by an endless stream of emojis)

This tells us a lot. Our audience is excitable, animated, and passionate. Just because they enjoy hyper-casual games, doesn’t mean they have hyper-casual personalities. By learning this about our users, it allowed us to write and speak on a more direct and personal level. This really does go a long way, and can help build a long-lasting relationship with your players.

Step three: Use the right social media channels

We started out on Facebook and Twitter, simply because they were the channels we knew best. But our artists (who are much younger than me) said that with our kawaii style and our target audience, Instagram should absolutely be our natural habitat.

They were right. After two months on Instagram, we’d already gained more followers than our Twitter and Facebook accounts had gained in two years.

These followers are much more active too. This is probably because Instagram is the perfect place for us to talk to our followers the way they talk to us – informal and excitable, with lots of capital letters, emojis, and hashtags. (Although we generally leave out the curse words.)

Setting clear goals

We aim to release one game every six months. For hyper-casual, that’s quite a long time. But we have high standards for our finished games – we don’t release a game until it’s really polished.

We usually start out developing three or four concepts, and then narrow our focus to just the one we think is strongest. And we always soft-launch our games to no more than ten thousand players – just to make sure there aren’t any problems we’ve missed.

We have clear goals for retention rates too:

• 40% day 1 retention
• 15% day 7 retention
• 5% day 28 retention

This makes a big difference in free-to-play. For advertisers, it doesn’t matter if you have ten million downloads – with anything lower than 10% retention after 7 days, you won’t make much money.

We also like to make our games ‘friendly free to play’, so we design our games around the video ads they’ll host. We want players to watch the ads because they want to, rather than because they have to.

There are still plenty of niches out there

Hyper-casual games are growing fast. If you know the market and can see where the gaps are, you can create a whole new community of gamers who’ll come straight to you for the kinds of games they love playing.

That’s the power of having a niche. You just have to find the right one, and then create and market your games to fit neatly into it.

Thanks for reading. If you wanted to catch up on the other talks during GameAnalytics’ event, you can find them here. Also, here’s a copy of the video, in case you wanted to see me in action:

How We Found A Hyper-Casual Niche – Platonic Games

During this event, Valeria from Platonic Games took to the stage, and showed us just how exactly her small-time studio tackled the competitive market by finding their niche in Kawaii mobile games.

If you fancy watching the other talks from this event, you can find them here:

• The Latest Trends for Hyper-Casual Games – GameAnalytics
• Hyper-casual in a Hyper-competitive Market – Voodoo

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by our good friends at AppFollow. You can read their version here.

Social Quantum is a video game company whose #1 game, Megapolis, was first launched back in 2011. And as most of you will know, their game, Megapolis, is a long-standing city builder that has become one of the top worldwide mobile games over the years.

Pretty much from day 1, Social Quantum worked primarily with paid traffic. And for those long-standing developers reading this, back then this was more than enough to attract gamers. But as the app stores were growing, it became obvious that using only paid acquisition was not enough anymore. For Social Quantum, this meant looking for new and more creative ways to get more gamers.

In this post, Social Quantum and AppFollow have teamed up to share key techniques into how developers can increase their organic installs (and what they did to improve Social Quantum’s by up to 110%), as told by Mary Kulikova at AppFollow.

What were the key issues?

Setting up an ASO strategy can be tricky. Specifically, because you can’t be sure which assets or keywords will work, and the results may not be obvious while you’re experimenting. In the case of Megapolis, we tried several strategies before finding the right asset that led to a nearly instant boost of installs.

Here are the main steps we followed:

Preparations

Every app has some basic ASO on their app store page, even if they don’t focus on App Store Optimization. At the very least you have an app title, icon, some descriptions, and screenshots. In the app store, the game page is the face of a product, and a good-looking page attracts far more users. What is even more important is the way the game looks from the search page.

So the first thing every developer should do to get more users is to renew a game page according to the latest trends of the mobile games market. Which tends to be a burning problem when it comes to old-school games.

Step I: Icon and keywords

Megapolis started its return to glory by conducting several tests on the icon. The biggest problem here being that the old icon looked far too archaic for new players.

After several tests, we were able to find the highest performing icon, which surprisingly is the 4th one in this graphic.

Additionally, the ASO managers used the AppFollow Keyword Research Tool to find essential keywords for the title, subtitle, and game description. It was the first time we worked with keywords deliberately, and it absolutely paid off.

Among game developers there is the opinion that you must not include keywords in the app title — your brand name should work for you instead. But rules are arguably made to be broken, and so we decided to bend this rule and actually added keywords in the app title. We found the best fit for their category and used keywords like “city building” in Megapolis’ app title.

After that, we updated the subtitle and description (on Google Play) and filled in the keyword field in the App Store.

Results

Shortly after launch, the number of keywords in the top 10 doubled in Google Play and increased threefold in App Store. Adding new localized keywords in every localization had also improved the game’s organic visibility.

Still, that wasn’t enough for the Apple App Store. So the experiment continued.

Step II: App preview video

As Social Quantum already had app preview videos before, this was the perfect place to start with the next set of experimentations.

This is the preview video used back in 2017:

Using this video, we made a deep analysis of this video, as well as our competitors’ videos, and found out that it had become completely outdated. According to the market trends, we needed a more dynamic video with more diversifiable content and shorter CTA captions.

So alongside our product team, we chose the main mechanics we wanted to show. We ended up removing the personas we used in the old video to make users focus on the game features. The video has become more dynamic and the call-to-actions are shorter and clearer.

This is the final version of the preview video:

Due to Megapolis’ game age, we made a pre/post test for the video. This approach doesn’t require extra test tools, we just measured conversion rates and the number of installs before and after this change. The most important thing is to make sure you only change one asset in the update (you want to be comparing apples to apples, after all). We knew that this kind of risk could cost us, but we still decided that it is worth trying.

The results

The update with the new App Store preview went live on the 11th of December. Despite being released for English locations only, we saw the first splash in installs the day after. And despite this being the perfect excuse to get the champs out, we knew that the results could be partially affected by a seasonal install spike.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, make sure to learn more about AppFollow here. Equally, there’s a ton more resources out there that you can dig your teeth into, some of which are:

• Hyper-Casual Gaming: The Latest Stats and Trends You Need to Know
• How to Boost App Downloads by 700%
• 5 Key Lessons To Boost Retention And Increase Engagement

If anything can be said to be ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’ when it comes to digital, it would be classic search marketing. That’s the case for nearly any product you want people to discover online, whether it’s a t-shirt, a gadget, or a mobile game or app. All of these can be searched for online, and are easier to find when good SEO has been applied.

Search marketing is about a lot more than just using the right keywords; you have to understand the philosophy and thought process behind creating your game’s app store listing and website in order to properly optimize it. Here’s how to get started.

Search Listings = Pull Versus Push

One of the first things you should remember and one of the main arguments for the effectiveness of search engine optimization (or app store search optimization as the case may be) is that it puts your product in the path of a user who’s ostensibly already looking for what you have to offer. You don’t necessarily have to sell them on your game completely cold if they are already searching for it or something like it when they arrive at the search results pages with your game’s listing.

This applies to users searching for your game (or similar games) on the web, as well as searching for your game in the app stores. You want to make sure that you’re easy to find when searching for your name and similar terms, as well as be linked in related content or lists of games in the relevant categories, complete with enticing screenshots and descriptions.

The same goes for organic search, especially if – or when – your game gets more popular and people begin seeking it out in various ways in addition to stumbling across it in the app store. So what’s the difference.

ASO Versus SEO

One key thing to keep in mind that is although app store optimization and search engine optimization aren’t totally dissimilar, they are definitely two separate tactics and should be considered and measured separately.

The reason for this separation is that general search engine optimization (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) requires distinct strategies in comparison to optimizing for showing up in app store search results.  SEO encourages you to treat it like a popularity contest, structuring so that you can show up and get noticed far more easily through general searching through clever use of appropriate keywords and finding the right channels for your game. Meanwhile, the best ASO comes from your ability to create an enticing listing that’ll catch the eyes of any would-be App Store scroller.

That said, optimizing and controlling your app store listing (in terms of the content you supply, at least), is the start of it, followed by making sure your organic search engine results are squeaky clean and your own site (as well as any positive press) are at the top; it all starts with the listing in the app store and extends from there.

The algorithms for the app stores and the regular search engines aren’t totally within your control, but you can and should do everything you can to make sure your game is presented to the best of your capabilities, and here’s how…

Keywords Are Key

Knowing what keywords are the most relevant and successful for your game is perhaps the most important part of both search engine optimization and app store optimization. While some of the keyword targeting should be obvious (e.g. the name and type of your game), it’s also important to use the various keyword tools at your disposal, like Google’s Adwords keyword search tool – the keywords you uncover through the Adwords tools are useful for more than just paid search; these keyword lists can be great inspiration for crafting your app store descriptions as well!

You don’t want to stuff your descriptions in the app store with keywords, but finding similar terms to how you describe your game – or even the words your competitors use – can help you improve your game’s rankings and even exceed the competing games.

ASO Tactics For Game Developers

App store optimization has been a buzzword or key topic in the game development world since the app stores themselves were created. While there is a wide range of variations and disparate opinions on the differences between optimizing your Google or Apple store listings – the general activities and best practices for both are pretty similar – but you do have a little bit more control over your app store listing than how your game appears in the app store search results, or listings in general.

That said, there are definitely some activities unique to optimizing your app store listing. Moz has a great rundown and this guide by the cofounder of Incipia is excellent as well, but perhaps the best tip is to think about how your customers would describe your game in their own words.

[bctt tweet=”How best to market your games using ASO and SEO? It’s dangerous to optimize alone, take this guide:” username=”GameAnalytics”]

Looking at your competition and the type of keywords and general language that they use is also essential. According to Forrester, 63% of apps are discovered through the various app stores, meaning that it’s essential to have a listing that shows up at the top for relevant keywords and is as enticing as possible in regard to the title, description, images, number of downloads, and reviews. Granted, the latter two items aren’t things that you can always 100% control, but they are certainly influenced by the first three elements of your listing, which are absolutely within your remit.

This is where choosing your game’s name wisely (descriptive, inspiring, and easy to remember but sparking real interest – here’s a good guide to copywriting specifically as it relates to games in general), and describing in a way that hits popular triggers and inspires people to download it and learn more will go on to pay dividends. Again, that’s easier said than done, but here’s an article – and here’s another – that will get you started on writing compelling descriptions for your game that will inspire downloads and installations.

SEO Tactics For Game Developers

The app store isn’t the only place where your audience organically discovers your game, even if that is where they actually download and start to play it. Often their discovery can be via organic search, links from gaming blogs, gaming news sites and articles, and social media. It clearly helps if your game is at the top of the rankings for relevant search terms!

Perhaps starting your own blog on your game’s website (you do have a website for it, right?) to help boost your search rankings with fresh content as well as documenting the process behind creating your game and helping your potential players feel more connected and involved. There are lots of other things you can and should do on your game or company website in order to maximize its value, and this article from DevDog outlines them well. Note that these things also apply to the individual game landing pages if your company has one website that covers multiple game releases.

How Do You Boost Your Rankings?

There’s a number of ways to improve your app or game’s listing search rankings, including making sure things are properly categorized and tagged, your descriptions are keyword rich and enticing, and that every piece of metadata or element in the app store listings are fully filled out.

What’s more, it’s important to keep testing and adjusting your descriptions and metadata if you aren’t getting the results you desire. What you initially think are the right keywords, descriptions, and even screenshots might not be the right choice in the long run, so that’s why it’s important to keep optimizing even once you’ve released your game into the wild.

Even after you get your game’s listing and website or landing page to an ideal place as far as search engine results rankings, there’s always something to tweak, watch, and optimize. SEO and ASO are things that require constant attention and an ability to keep up with the trends, and that starts with reporting…

Tracking Your SEO And ASO KPIs

You’ll want to track all these activities along with the rest of your marketing efforts, and the KPIs for SEO are myriad but relatively easy to discern. The rankings are the obvious thing to pay attention too, but there are plenty of other metrics that you should care about as well.

App store ranking, search engine results page ranking, number of views, the corresponding number of downloads, number of positive reviews, number of click-throughs to your game’s website (if applicable) from search, and the corresponding number of downloads or installations that occur via your website. If you keep a close eye on these metrics, then you’ve already got a great head-start on knowing where your SEO and ASO are working, and where they need optimisation.

Tracking the effects of your efforts might be the most important factor of all; the algorithms for the app stores and the search engines are subject to change at all times, so you need to constantly be monitoring and adjusting in order to get the best results.

With more than 500 games submitted to the App Store every day, it’s hard to imagine a more competitive environment to get noticed. That’s why every little improvement to your listing is particularly important. With an average conversion rate of 4.47% (for games on the iOS App Store), even the smallest of changes can be hugely influential to your success or failure.

Of course, a quality app or game is what matters the most. A well-optimized listing won’t fix this. Yet, what steps should you take once your game is polished? When your UI is on point, gameplay is fine-tuned, well balanced, and all bugs and glitches are detected and fixed.

Once you’ve dealt with all of the above, you’ll want to pay closer attention to App Store page. In fact, optimization of each product page element can take your conversion rate to a whole new level. However, such great results require thoughtful A/B testing, consistency, and patience.

This guide will help to get your bearings in the art of crafting a high-converting app store page for your game. We will deconstruct optimization of the most impactful product page elements, such as app icons, your app name and subtitle, your screenshots, the app preview, and the description.

[bctt tweet=”The 5 essentials of a top performing app store page for games #gamedev #indiedev” username=”GameAnalytics”]

1. Icon selection

Careful selection of your icon is essential. It’s the first thing your potential user will see so it should capture their attention and instantly convey the genre of game. Core ingredients of a converting icon are simplicity, lack of excess visual elements, ability to stand out among competitors without losing touch with conventional principles of your store category.

The truth is a game icon matters more during an app discovery process. Once App Store visitors get to the product page of your game, they pay very little  attention to the icon. So, the best way to perfect an icon is to run a series of category tests on the App Store. This will help you identify which of your icon variations perform better in the competitive surrounding.

If you study the icons of the top games, you’ll notice that the overwhelming majority use the same pattern: an icon depicts characters with their mouths open. It may seem silly, but the trick works. You can use this layout in designing one of your variations.

Indeed, numerous examples proved that placing a character in the game app icon impels a sense of action. Thus, a user wants to start playing right now. Sure, an open mouth is not the only option and it’s worth taking time to play around various facial expressions.

Testing of different characters on your icon is another highly recommended path which can lead to remarkable results. To give a recent example, MyTona ran a series of icon experiments for their game, Seekers Notes: Hidden Mystery. They started by testing a human character against a pumpkin head. The latter performed 9.3% better than the first one.

This result could arise from the fact that, for gamers, the male human character was less appealing than an inanimate object or maybe the open mouthed smile trumped the serious face. MyTona decided to go further and they added another smiling character during their next experiment.

The icon with the pumpkin head beat the serious man in a hat once again, but performed only 3.5% better this time. The new icon with the smiling witch smashed the previous two, with a 9.1% conversion lift. This experiment once again proved efficiency of ‘open mouth’ strategy and the significance of testing characters.

There are a few essential steps you should take when optimizing your icon:

1. Study the icons of games in your genre, notice common features;
2. Reflect best practices in your variations for testing conversion rates;
3. Play around with characters, their facial expressions, angles, etc.;
4. Opt for search or category experiments rather than store product page A/B testing.

2. App name and subtitle

App name is subject to a subtle yet important change with iOS 11 emergence. Now game titles in the App Store can have only 30 characters, so it’s high time to forget about packing them with excessive keywords.

We’d even recommend that you keep the name of your game under 15 characters. This will prevent it from being cut short in the search results and ensure a slightly better tap-through-Rate.

Subtitles familiar to Android users are among iOS 11 debutants. This new App Store product page element will follow the app name and be limited to 30 characters as well. It’s a good idea to use a call-to-action in your subtitle (“Explore a new world”), as according to our recent study, this alone can improve conversion rate by 15-20%.

Our tests also proved that abstract subtitles generating vision, idea or intent and using powerful language that resonates with your target audience can result in rise of direct installs. At the same time generic descriptions with no pragmatic information (#1 game) won’t help that much.

3. Screenshots

Landscape screenshots always ruled the show when it came to the gaming category. This trend is likely to become even more prominent with iOS 11 App Store updates.

The major change is that redesigned search results will show 3 portrait screenshots instead of 2. Therefore such portrait screenshots will get smaller making captions nearly unreadable and layout details incomprehensible.

Our recent study showed that the first screenshot that looks like an ad banner can result in 45% conversion increase in Search. Moreover, the usage of banner-like landscape screenshots can help to repel your game’s closest competitor, turning its app listing into a blind spot.

Social Point decided to test this theory on their game Monster Legends. They launched a search results experiment with two variations to test the original portrait screenshots  set against banner-like first screenshot in a landscape mode.

The latter variation beat the first one and reached 15.4% conversion. The result of the closest competitor was only 4.7% which proved the initial hypothesis about impressive banner-like screenshot performance in the search results.

Nevertheless, A/B testing of screenshots orientation is a must for every game developer. What works for other games might be toxic for yours. Angry Birds 2 is the brightest example.

They ran a series of A/B tests before game launch. Rovio compared the performance of  vertical screenshots with horizontal ones in the course of one of those experiments. Once the test yielded 99.7% confidence level, we got down to results analysis.

It turned out that portrait screenshots performed way better. Such surprising results could be explained by the fact that Angry Birds fans are not hardcore users on the whole and are more used to holding their phones in a portrait mode.

[bctt tweet=”How A/B testing app store screenshots helped Rovio improve conversions by 13% #gamedev” username=”GameAnalytics”]

The usage of portrait screenshots contradicted the game industry standards but helped Rovio enhance the converting power of Angry Birds 2 product page by 13% and get additional 2.5M installs just in a week after the launch.

If you examine screenshots of game-leaders you’ll notice a few patterns you can apply in your screenshots layouts. A golden rule for a game screenshot can be formulated: battlefield/gameplay background + favourite character + powerful Call-to-Action or key feature caption.

ZiMAD decided to test the above mentioned layout before uploading redesigned screenshots to the App Store. The renewed screenshots for the game Bubble Birds 4 depicted the favourite characters of gamers, captions became more action-packed and brief, new background represented a mix of art overlays, real screenshots, and gameplay elements.

It’s definitely worth testing the following screenshots set: a banner-style landscape screenshot should go first, the rest of screenshots should reflect the abovementioned best practices in their design.

Don’t forget about orientation, experimenting with it is a must. It also makes sense to play around different characters of your game and identify top picks of your target audience.

4. App previews

One of the major product page changes in Apple update is related to app previews. Renewed product pages can have up to 3 app previews on them. The length of each video is limited to 30 seconds.

They will be auto-played in muted mode directly from the Store, it concerns both search results and product pages. Changing pictures in a loop will catch more attention of users than static video posters. Yet, it’s vital to use new opportunities wisely.

First of all, it’s forbidden to show UI outside of your game. And it goes without saying that app previews should include the most relevant content, the one the App Store visitors will get without thorough explanations.

It’s a good idea to start your game preview with something visual like users’ favourite gameplay or text animation (static text will look like an old video poster). Once you decided to use text in your video, make certain it’s easy to read even in reduced mode shown in search results.

The function of the first app preview is to give a brief and dynamic game overview which should trigger desire to learn more about it. The second app preview can be a bit slower and more introspective focusing on a few features that make your game unique. The third video can show advanced features a gamer can experience within your gameplay.

The App Store allows you to localize these videos for all markets, but you’ll need to be sure that the impact of localization is worth resources spent on it. So, it’s recommended to start with optimization for silence. A muted app preview is to be as understandable as one with the sound on.

5. Description and promo text

Our statistics state that only 2% of users read full app description tapping on the “Read More” button. Changes of iOS 11 will barely change this trend. There are a few common rules for description: make it brief and informative, give solid reasons to install your game, highlight best features and uniqueness of your game.

However, the first 170 characters of your full description which represent promotional text deserve your close attention and consideration.

In general, smart promotional text can help to increase conversion on the average by 35% according to our research, (we’ve witnessed maximum lift of 75%). Above all, you should use game promo text to promote special offers and the most important updates.

Afterthought

There are more and less impactful app store elements for sure, and it’s necessary to start optimization with the most powerful ones: subtitle, screenshots and app preview. Nevertheless, a key to game success in app stores hides in complex approach to ASO. Maximisation of game product page conversion is impossible without constant testing and experimenting.

[bctt tweet=”The 5 essentials of a top performing app store page for games #gamedev #indiedev” username=”GameAnalytics”]

Great performance in an app store isn’t a reason for wrapping all ASO activities. It’s vital to remember that every app store is an ever-changing system. What works today might make your game gravitate to the bottom tomorrow. So, equip yourself with patience, precision, and diligence and get down to polishing your product page.

Overview

As of 2017 you can find almost 5.3 million iOS and Android mobile apps in App Stores which makes mobile app marketing a huge challenge for new mobile app developers and mobile app marketers.

The mobile apps market is highly developed and an increasing challenge for developers with Google Play adding almost 50 000 new mobile apps monthly. Mobile user acquisition cost (UAC) is also growing year by year which does not make it any easier with the average iOS app costing $3.04 in the United States according to Chartboost data.

Mobile app developers have many more ways to reach their customers, than those in “classic” commodities and services marketing, although this can be a bigger challenge as well.

What most characterizes mobile app marketing is its aim on return on investment (ROI). This factor provides data about the relation between– customer lifetime value (CLV), which provides the potential value of a customer compared to the customer acquisition cost (CAC).  Another important influence on income is the churn rate (yearly percentage of customers which unsubscribe), as a high churn rate creates the necessity of increasing efforts to find new mobile app users. Churn rate is relevant to each one of the following subparagraphs.

Here are the 10 most common app marketing mistakes

If you want your mobile app be on top one day, you need to pay attention to avoid the following mistakes:

1. Lack of knowledge about ASO – (App Store Optimization)
2. Mobile app development without a monetization strategy
3. Absence of critical app data analysis
4. Focusing on traditional forms of marketing
5. Low recognition of the app icon and its name
6. Absence of a pre-launch mobile app marketing plan
7. Focusing on obtaining new users without a strategy on how to keep existing ones
8. Lack of communication between the app developer and its users
9. No marketing actions taken before the official launch of the app
10. Not applying a viral strategy

1. Lack of knowledge about ASO – (App Store Optimization)

App Store Optimization (ASO) is an effective method of reaching potential users from the App Store and Google Play. Optimizing search results provides a way to not get left out from the very beginning. Over 60% of users discover new apps through searching in the App Store, which is why App Store Optimization (ASO) is so essential. The higher the mobile app appears in search results, the greater chance it will end up in the memory bank of new user’s mobile phone.

The following factors affect ASO (App Store Optimization) the most:

App name – amplifying efforts on positioning the app in the App Store is most important, as it brings the app closer to the majority of users. Taking time to figure out appropriate keywords that potential customers may use is also helpful. Also remember that changing the name of an existing mobile app might create a problem. Grapevine communication between users can also greatly increases an app’s popularity.

Keywords – the app’s description in the store is where we should use words our users look for. Speak their language! Research of your competition that has a higher search ranking can help provide some useful clues in this matter. After finding out what’s important for consumers, it is time for optimization, as there is always room for improvement of a mobile app’s description. According to marketing research, apps that have a keyword in their names have 10% higher ranking than ones that don’t, so keeping that in mind is most certainly helpful.

Competitive keywords directly affect the number of app downloads, and both factors affect an app’s position in search results. In this case, the difference between the App Store and Google Play is that Apple stores results from the app’s first 3 days, with an emphasis on the first 24 hours, whereas Google Play takes results from the last 30 days under consideration. Compared to other factors, it’s much harder to influence the number of downloads in ASO, which is why advertising the app from the very beginning is so essential. It’s also wise to consider additional actions on social networks as well as separate advertising campaigns.

App ratings and user’s reviews are also a part of ASO – the higher the rating, the higher the position in search results on both App Store and Google Play platforms. Unquestionably, the higher the mobile app’s rating, the better the conversion rate. If the app is to be offered globally, localizing it permits reaching a much larger target audience and increases the chance for more positive reviews. Well prepared in-app messaging, utilizing call-to-action (CTA) techniques, as well as a push of notifications may also encourage the user to leave a note or a comment. To minimize the amount of negative feedback from clients it’s useful to implement a bug report system or a contact form in the software.

Performing all the above actions in the right directions may not only double, but even result in tenfold the number of downloads. Some ASO actions may take quite a while to take effect, therefore ASO needs to be constantly monitored. The optimal set of keywords after a few months is usually very different from the original ones created during the first optimization. In most cases ASO is greatly neglected by software developers, therefore giving it close attention may result in gaining a significant upper hand over the competition.

2. Mobile apps development without monetization strategy

Some companies have been looking for the right monetization model for years as it isn’t easy to find the optimal solution. Many players still tend to enter the market with a focus on obtaining new users, with the hope that they will eventually figure out a way to monetize their efforts. How we plan to make money from a mobile app should be written into its DNA. Monetization can’t be something we discover after years have gone by, as developing the right strategy for an app from the beginning will help guide its success and help find more of the “right” users.

Here is a short list of effective app monetizing strategies:

E-Mail – there are several ways of monetizing with the use of e-mail addresses. Mailing lists can be used to develop newsletters and offers that redirect the mobile users from the app to your home or partner websites. By using this method, you can create valuable content for your recipients, thereby increasing their conversion rate. Another solution which provides very good results is monetizing through affiliate networks by inserting links that lead to offers in partner programs. One other idea for monetizing is to put your sponsored content and native advertising into an e-mail message, which may give certain results, however it’s not as precise and effective as partnership networks. Simply having a mailing list provides options to share it or sell other subjects.

Paid mobile apps – this solution is not applicable for all types of apps, but in some cases, it gives good results. Oftentimes in shops we can find the same app in two versions – one free and the other paid. The free app usually contains just a small part of what’s in the full (paid) version which encourages a potential user to buy it. A similar method is to establish a free-trial period during which the mobile app is free for users, and then once it expires a one-time payment or a monthly fee is charged for further use of the app.

SMS advertising – it is always worth utilizing the users’ phone numbers database. Using an SMS on the registration and marketing agreements that follow, can create great new ways of reaching customers. As few software developers use this kind of solution, proper use of SMS marketing may give promising results simply because it is an area that’s not so crowded with other advertisers.

What’s the best type of message users should receive? According to feedback from clients – a message about discounts! It’s best if the message contains additional phrases amplifying the feeling of a timely, one-time opportunity, such as “Today only” and outlines a specific offer. Using SMS marketing channels can also help build a base of users that will later receive additional offers through filling forms on landing pages, such as: “fill out our survey and receive a 50% discount!” or “subscribe for our price alerts – don’t miss our special offers!”. It’s also important to know the destination your client goes to after following your message. The website users are redirected to has to be compatible with mobile phones – there is no room for compromises in this area of optimization. Ideally, the URL should be as short as possible. Also, it’s always good practice to add to the text message information on how to resign from receiving further notifications.

Sponsorship and partnership – mutual promotion can greatly influence the way companies are perceived. With partnership, it’s best to find a subject having a similar base of users with whom you can find a common thread. A good example of this is when localized functions used by one app utilize solutions offered and implemented in the other app. A new payment method implemented in the app may redirect to the app that originally offers this payment method. The positive side effect of such actions is usually improving the image of your app.

When it comes to sponsorship, one of the best examples of this kind of relationship was established between 3M and Evernote brands. The Evernote app allowed quick and easy transfer of notes made with “Post-it® Notes” from 3M. Their software automatically detected one of 4 colours of adhesive notes produced by 3M, and allowed adding functions to each one of them, such as applying a category to it or directly putting it into a category or adding a reminder to it. As a culmination of their co-operation, these two companies even released a special desktop dispenser that is designed to allow their users to profit from all the functionalities both parties offer.

Microtransactions and In-app purchases (IAP) – the foundation of this solution is to offer additional paid content as a part of an app that is otherwise free to use. This method is mostly used in games, where by an additional payment, players can get access to unique and special content such as skins, levels, virtual currency, new characters etc. Adding such a solution on platforms such as App Store or Google Play allows the user to spend money without leaving your app. When this was first used, this method of monetization caused a controversy amongst users, since some of them were spending resources unwittingly, or in some cases money was spent by children using their parent’s devices. However, after time, appropriate measures such as notifications and restrictions were introduced to make such transactions more transparent. The developers of some mobile apps utilise a model called “paywall”, which makes the mobile app impossible or very burdensome to work with without making some sort of payment.

There are several techniques that can help make this monetization solution effective and encourage the users to willingly pay for additional content inside the app.

Gradually increasing the difficulty level – this technique is utilised mostly in games. It allows the user to take full advantage of the product while simultaneously giving them an option to make purchases that makes further progression much easier. Bonus content offers usually work great with users that have exploited all the mobile app’s features. When making such offers, it’s good to offer a free sample of what is to come after the purchase. One good example of this are the options of “Revive” or “Save me” in games that allow the user to immediately continue gameplay. In most cases to receive such a possibility users pay with special currency that’s used in the game such as coins, crystals or credits that can be purchased in-game or otherwise obtained through a long and much more ardurous progression. Additional ways of luring customers to spend more are sometimes applied, such as in “Pokemon GO”. When users buy coins, they usually receive 6 different offers, each one being progressively better than the other, with an increasingly better yield of coins per amount of money spent. Another idea for additional paid content which might come in handy, is using a paid option to remove ads that appear during gameplay. However, it is important that it’s the user’s choice, not a painful necessity. If a large part of the screen is covered with add banner and too many full screen pop-ups are being served to the user it’s highly unlikely they will decide to express gratitude for letting them use the mobile app. It’s good to create sales bundles that aside from removing ads, offer additional features and benefits.

Receiving decent income from your app is also possible by implementing limited-time offers – the more exclusive and unique they are the better – some developers even customize offers and dedicate them to a specified user. Another interesting tactic is to create add-ons that differ highly from the normal offer and comparatively have much higher prices. This model of monetization is open for experimentation so don’t only look at “freemium” as a shortcut for some players, but think big. There are titles which have sold material goods through in-game purchases – for example Angry Birds offered plush toys or Fruit Ninja a wide array of mobile covers. Such models of monetization usually go along with advertisements as few users normally decide to buy. However, a very small percentage are oftentimes willing to spend large amounts for in-game purchases (around 2% of users can bring in over 90% of your profits). In this context, it is worth noting that part of the money spent by app users is taken by the store as a transaction fee – both App Store and Google Play charge 30%.

Display advertisement inside a mobile app is considered the future of promotion for the mobile channel by many marketers. The largest companies follow this lead, knowing that there aren’t many ways of reaching a potential customer that allow a high level of personalisation in marketing. Additionally, if the amount of time users spend on phones is taken into consideration, resources spent on advertising in that channel are still relatively low in comparison to other forms of media. On a daily basis, users can spend 3 hours or more on mobile devices, with some 80% of that time being used for mobile apps. Monetization using a personalized display advertisement can be very efficient and rewarding for various reasons. First, this helps to understand the context of use as well as helps gather data about the users’ locality, which is a help with geo targeting.

New ways of utilizing collected data are constantly being invented and developed. By using big data and self-developing algorithms user’s behaviour can be predicted much more accurately. Display advertisements come in various formats – from lower or upper screen banners, to self-playing video clips. Choosing the right format for your mobile app may require some testing to tune in with consumers, but again, the base to this is leveraging information and targeting. The right format for display advertisements is the one that is “appropriate” for users, although most of them usually declare they “don’t trust banner ads”.

3. Absence of appropriate mobile app analytics

Understanding the behaviour of mobile app users is vital when developing and monetizing a mobile app. As it is supported by many new tools, mobile analytics may give answers to many questions as well as provide new possibilities. Oftentimes, mobile app developers focus on getting new users and tend to neglect taking care of the ones they already have. Mobile app analytics not only answers the question of “how many?” but also “why?”. Each of the two major app stores prepare their own analytic tools corresponding to the following platforms (Google Analytics, App Store).

There are many tools available that can help you advertise and promote your mobile app using analytics.

Which metrics are worth measuring?

Session length tells how much time is spent by users after launching the mobile app. Session length is measured differently and has a different meaning for different types of apps. For mobile apps running in the background, such as Spotify, the intervals between when a user makes any kind of activity are taken into consideration. In this case, the level of user’s engagement with the app is what is measured. For apps that run one time and are actively used, the rule is – as long as the user “stays inside” the app the better. If on the other hand, we take a closer look at traffic and navigation related mobile apps, longer session lengths do not necessarily mean the users are happy. Such situations may occur because of difficulties users experience with the app, and the fact they need to spend more time to do what they want to do.

Retention Rate – this is one of the most important factors for marketers and provides especially good guidance for developers. It’s a factor that serves as benchmarking for many things, such as areas needful to work on to maintain the user base, to calculate how fast the app can be developed, how good is your customer service and finally how loyal your clients are. To calculate the user retention rate for a specific time period the number of users at the beginning of the period, the number of users throughout the period and number at the end of the period are used. For example – let’s say we had 100 users at the beginning of the month. During that month 25 of them resigned and we obtained 30 new ones, which results in a total of 105 users. The calculation looks like this: (105 – 30)/100 x 100 = 75%.User retention at the end of this month is 75% (meaning ¾ of the users “remained with us” – for mobile apps such a score is extraordinary). Why is retention so important? Research shows that the cost of obtaining a new client is 5 to 7 times higher than the cost of keeping existing ones. In addition, according to statistics, loyal clients are worth 10 times the amount of their first purchase.

ARPU is short for average revenue per user. This factor measures the median income received from one user by dividing the total income by the number of users. ARPU lets us test how efficient the monetization strategies we used are, and other factors to help set directions we should follow and goals we can strive for to reach further development. ARPU is also very helpful while implementing new services into software – when measured in specific time periods, it clearly shows how any changes made have influenced the overall mobile app.

App downloads statistics – is also a vital source of information for developing ASO strategies. Statistics of other developers are not easy to estimate as the exact number of downloads is available only for the creators of their own mobile app. With the help of other statistics concerning your personal users, the number of downloads helps verify how many times the app was downloaded, but wasn’t launched. For many developers, download statistics provide the first measure of success for their products.

Active users – this is the best metric to show how interested users are in our mobile app. It’s usually measured over three periods – daily, weekly, and monthly. If this factor is not favourable it means that additional promotion actions may need to be undertaken. If the active user’s ratio is high during a short period then lowers drastically, it means users probably didn’t find what they expected from the mobile app. It’s also possible that the mobile app didn’t provide a high enough level of value to keep the users for longer.

4. Focusing on traditional forms of marketing

The definition of advertising varies widely and the differences between marketing, PR, customer service and the traditional understanding of sales fade away. If we attempt to market a mobile app just like any other product, we will have much lower chances of reaching our clients. If we invest only in traditional media advertisement – radio, newspapers, TV, or billboards, we simply won’t be where our users are. On the other hand, focusing only on the internet side (banner ads and e-mails) may decrease our chances when dealing with competition. As already mentioned, the main sources from which users can get to know about your mobile app are Google Play and the App Store and this is where the real fight for the user’s attention begins. Therefore, the best investment is to use mobile ad networks. Various methods can be used, such as CPC – cost per click, CPM – cost per thousand impressions, CPI – cost per install, which are among the many new formats of advertising that can be targeted for particular groups – all of which make mobile ad networks the most efficient way to promote a mobile app. It’s almost always better to focus on this area rather than on the “classic” channels.

5. Low recognition of the app icon and its name

First impressions usually determine whether a user is willing to get to know more about your mobile app or not. This is why the looks of the icon directly affects the number of downloads that can be counted on. A mobile app’s icon is the first thing that is going to draw a potential user’s attention in the shop, therefore it should be readable and correspond as much as possible with the nature of the mobile app.

What should a mobile app’s icon look like?

Scalable – this means the icon should look the same regardless of its size. When the project is ready, it’s useful to check it not only in different sizes, but also on different types of displays. The level of detail an icon contains may have direct impact on that question, so it’s worth paying attention to it in the early stages of design process.

Recognizable – an icon should stand out as one of a kind, so that it becomes engraved in the user’s memory. Again, too much detail in icon design may have a negative influence on its usability. It may be worth studying the icons of the most popular mobile apps in the shop, to see how their creators managed to attract attention to them. Creating a few versions of the icon and comparing them to one another, as well as to other icons in the shop may help in determining which ones look original and don’t stand out in a negative way.

Consistency – this means the icon should correspond with the overall artwork of the mobile app, screenshots in the store and the description provided to potential users. Well planned icons say much of what can be expected from a mobile app. One basic thing to remember when creating the icon is to stick to the same colour palette.

Quite often we hear about major mobile app developers changing their icons. One well known change was made by Instagram (changing the icon was ultimately considered a good choice)

and Uber was another (in their case, users consider this change to be totally “off the mark”)

To find examples of a good icon look at “top productivity” in Google Play.

Among the top 10 free mobile apps, most of them use a flat design and maintain a simple and compact appearance, however positions 2,5 and 6 stand out from the rest. The two flashlight icons are almost the same, in addition, they both use “realistic” graphics – something that many developers tend to avoid (example Instagram).

In the same category, mobile apps that allow creating interactive lists can be found. Most them basically rehash the same ideas, and even though they hold onto the appropriate minimalist form, they don’t look too original compared to their competition. One exception is Wunderlist, which looks quite original and well-thought-out (it was also redesigned to be flat).

6. Absence of a pre-launch mobile app marketing plan

Aside from classic channels of reaching customers, mobile app marketing should include actions in the fields of e-mail, SMS, social web browsers, in-game messaging as well as push notifications. Planning the marketing strategy for your app should be divided into 3 stages: obtaining the client, winning their involvement, and finally, retention and monetization. To obtain a new customer, actions on many fields need to be undertaken. To come out on top when facing competition with many other mobile apps, it may be necessary to utilise viral loops – take advantage of users commitment and encourage them to share with others. One good example of a developer using this type of marketing campaign is Candy Crush, who awarded players that shared information about their game on social media.

Further customer acquisition may come from partnerships. For example, co-operating with a phone manufacturer may get your mobile app pre-installed on their products or distributed along with others in bundles. Another, very reliable method of promoting a mobile app is using performance marketing. Co-operation with various ad networks is a very convenient opportunity to pay only for expected results. One great example of such a network is tapjoy.com. Even the internet giants such as Google created its original solution for its own platform – Admob. The basics of gaining user involvement and retention, optimize the mobile app towards UX (user experience). This means being sure you create a good first impression, perhaps prepare a nice tutorial, and monitoring of the flow inside the app. It’s well worth creating user accounts in a way so that they function well on many devices and platforms to maintain a consistency of user experience. Taking good care of the user is a goal which is achieved by developers not only inside the mobile app, but this includes notifications, support and caring for the community that grows around your product.

7. Focusing on acquiring new users without a strategy of how to keep existing ones

User retention is a critically important factor, although most creators often focus mainly on acquiring new clients and make them the main target of their efforts. The number of active users tells how many loyal clients you have. It is well worth taking care of the existing ones since, with time, they’ll become the “advocates and ambassadors” of your brand and their value will increase. Statistics in this case provide harsh results – just a few months after their launch, many mobile apps lose their entire base of initial users. It’s is a normal occurrence, that after the first three days over 70% of users that started discard the mobile app.

Maintaining a retention rate of 25% after three months is considered quite a success. Having a high outflow of clients is a very bad thing – it’s possible the app didn’t meet their demands and expectations and simply “doesn’t do what it’s supposed to”. Similarly, too many options in software may cause some issues – in general a mobile app works well, when it fulfils one single function or performs a certain narrow task users expect it to. Using personalization – recommendations and personalized search results can give a significant upper hand in keeping existing customers. When a mobile app seems to be “tailor-made” and offers unique content it may work wonders. In many cases using push notifications may help – for example after a user has finished a level it provides the user with statistics encouraging him to beat his previous record.

Duolingo uses this method to lure their customers into completing further courses. A very creative way of using push notifications can be noticed in Tinder – the app informs inactive users that their profile has been made less visible since they didn’t “swipe” for some time. Naturally, if the mobile app works too slow or freezes from time to time it will most certainly be hard to make someone “keep in touch with it” and a complete workaround may be needed.

8. Lack of communication between the app developer and their users

Even the best FAQ is not able to answer all the questions and solve all issues users may have. Being able to have constant contact with a live person can sometimes turn disappointed customers into brand ambassadors. When working on your project, it’s best to consider several ways in which users can contact the developer – the mobile app level included. Customer service is an important part of marketing! Being available to your users helps you to get to know more about their needs and expectations, therefore enabling you to make your product even better and thus more likely to draw the attention of loyal customers. Quick contact, especially on social media is considered a sign of great respect towards users – it sends the simple message “This company really takes care of its clients”. It’s also another ASO element – in the App Store, a “customer support” button can be placed right next to the “leave a review” section which is a very smart move. In this way, if the user is redirected to an appropriate form, he may give feedback about what doesn’t work so well in the app instead of leaving a negative and discouraging comment.

9. No marketing actions before the official launch of the app

Google Play and the AppStore are full of brilliant and perfectly designed apps that no one ever heard about. Their potential users may have already found similar solutions that were simply presented better, or they’re still looking for such an app, not knowing it’s even there. This is the reason the launch of the mobile app should be carefully thought out earlier, during the first stages of its creation. It’s even possible to create an initial base of users before submitting the app to the store. Incorporating this “early adopters” strategy and creating a base of “pioneers”, who will be the first to get their hands on new software may be a great first step towards gaining a large following. They can also be invited for beta testing, such as with the help of www.preapps.com/.

It’s always a good idea to launch a landing page to give feedback about your mobile app and how it’s developing as well as to provide the information about when it will have its launch. In this case, the most important thing is to offer a quick and easy way of signing up for a newsletter.

Users attention (as well as the attention of the whole industry) can be captured by mixing content marketing with good PR which can cause your mobile app to be talked about and commented on long before its actual launch. Posting messages on social media channels helps in finding recipients who will react to our efforts. It’s always worthwhile to make a bit of “noise” around your project – try to build up a certain aura of suspense as well as discuss it with people. In this way you can build public interest and create a following that will afterwards come looking for you. A good example of such actions is the Robinhood app.

Its developers were able to gather a huge base of 350,000 users before their actual launch!

10. Not applying a viral strategy

Thanks to having a viral strategy many mobile app developers have achieved spectacular success in a very short time, Zynga being a very good example. The company built its promotion strategies mostly around users, who were awarded with additional content inside apps for sharing information on social media about the entire variety of Zynga products.

A well thought out, viral loop strategy can significantly decrease the cost of new customer acquisition – all that is involved is letting the users advertise the app for you. People enjoy sharing experiences that gave them a certain thrill or bring positive value. If the mobile app is good and useful, and additionally an option to share it with friends for extra benefits, is implemented, people will definitely do so.

Regardless of the type of mobile app, the more involved the user gets, the more likely they will be willing to share your content with others, therefore becoming your own brand ambassador. A smart way of using this type of app marketing can be found in a game called Timberman, in which players can share the score they achieved with others, daring them to try to beat it. The person who is challenged clicks on the link and goes directly to the game download, becomes a new user, and shares his/her own score.

Viral loop strategy is especially helpful for fitness mobile apps, since such users tend to brag about their scores and achievements more than others. For this type of app, a “share” button is a must. When implementing such a functionality, it’s good to know that personalizing it will make it work much better. If the user is a part of a certain social media community, if possible find out which one and give them the option to share it there. When it comes to traffic or navigation mobile apps, it’s good to add an option for sharing pictures on channels such as Instagram – visual content always brings more converts. When working with such a service it’s worth noticing that adding a picture and text option to an ordinary message form by users is always going to bring more attention.

Something to avoid is involving users into unintentional content sharing. Such actions are always perceived as spam and gives the developers and their mobile app a bad reputation. Using recommendation strategies can be a help to make viral strategies work for your mobile app. A good example is Uber, that offers additional resources for further rides to a person that recommends the app, as well as for the person who accepts the recommendation and joins as a new user. If it’s not possible to share profit from the app in this way, remember that there are many other ways to award recommendations – the only important things is that both sides should be satisfied.

In conclusion

There are many other mistakes made in mobile app marketing. Some of which have different kinds of influences on the factors already mentioned, but they pretty much have the same common feature – they inevitably increase the cost of all the actions that are supposed to get your mobile app installed on user’s device.

Therefore, if a mobile app developer manages to avoid the mistakes mentioned above, it will be much easier to tackle any obstacles that may be encountered and eventually achieve success. As you could see, the key to almost every strategy mentioned and a clear mindset is planning ahead and drawing the right conclusions.

Outline

One of the most popular questions we get is how to lure more traffic for the Google Play app. We decided to showcase a simple text optimisation for an indie game app with a small amount of installs.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, we can’t disclose the name of the game but all the data in this article is real.

Introduction

So, what we initially dealt with?

• App: Game in Google Play
• Category: Card Strategy
• Country: USA

Preliminary data:

• Total visits per day: 329
• Total installs per day: 92
• Average conversion rate from visit to install: 28%

The information is taken from the Google Play Developer Console, country is USA, measure by “Country (Play Store organic)”.

Step 1. ASO-audit

Based on current app metrics we estimated which keywords and keyphrases made users in the US find and install the app as well checked which positions the app had in the search results.

The audit showed that in general the app’s semantic core was not bad. “Not bad” means that the description included almost all relevant keywords. Nevertheless, the app still wasn’t among the first top-20 for many relevant search requests.

How could we increase app visibility without incentivised or bot traffic? We needed to change the app’s name and both the short and long descriptions in Google Play.
Top-20 is a benchmark where you should start optimisation activities. Later you can increase your target up to top-1.
To collect the necessary data we used our own free AppFollow ASO Tools.

Step 2. Creating a Semantic Core

The most complex and important stage in ASO is collecting relevant search requests for the semantic core. Ideally, you need to add as many words and phrases as possible. Further, this will be the basis for all the text content: app name, short and full descriptions, even text on screenshots.

Important: Usually 2–3 keywords form one search request. Sometimes one keyword can be a search request but it’s not common. ASO strategy should take into account search requests not keywords.
To create the core we used some common knowledge and data from Google Play:

1. First, we wrote down our own ideas about keywords and keyphrases. To find more relevant search requests we also checked the app’s competitors;
2. Then, we had a look at search suggestions in Google Play in relation to the keywords selected in the previous stage;
3. We added the most interesting (and relevant) requests from Suggest & Search to the list for future monitoring;
4. Finally, we analysed how popular these requests are among main competitors by checking:

• current competitors’ positions in the search,
• general amount of apps for certain search request,
• amount of irrelevant apps that don’t match the search request.
• This should be enough to divide search requests to the most popular and relatively popular.

More details about how to create a semantic core can be found in this article.

Step 3. Text Optimisation

We decided that it’s better to improve app visibility for previously used search requests rather than add new keyphrases. That’s why, we:

1. estimated request relevance from the current top-1o and checked which apps are already visible there (if there are similar games and direct competitors or irrelevant apps from other categories, then it’s good to go);
2. used the most popular and relevant requests in the game’s name and description. In other words, added selected keywords and phrases to the name and first 167 characters of the description;
3. added the rest of the keywords (without changing the found words, not even their endings) to the second part of the description. The full description can have up to 4000 characters.

For example, if you need to include requests «card games» and «casino free» in the first 167 characters, add keywords «card», «game», «casino» and «free» in the beginning of the description. It would be even better if you manage to use the exact wording from the search requests.
This job doesn’t take that much effort but can bring really good results.

What to do if the words are repeated in the text?

At the moment we don’t have a clear answer about whether “the more words the better” and whether repeating them works well for apps. We notice different results for different apps. The best is to test different variations of wording and check if it works in your particular case.

Important: Save previous and new app names and descriptions somewhere on your hard drive. It’s better to describe in detail which search phrases were added and how many words were repeated in the text.
Also try to write down expectations, such as:

1. For which requests app will improve positions
2. For which requests app will decrease positions (that can happen if you de-prioritise previously used phrases)
3. For which requests app keeps the positions
4. For which requests app will be visible (new ones)
5. For which requests app will disappear

A bit of numbers in our case:

• Name: we changed the name from 17 characters to 28 and added one popular keyword which is simultaneously a part another 7 popular search requests;
• Full description: we added 100 extra characters (from 1628 to 1768) and changed first 167 characters by including 23 keywords;
• Just 50 search requests were taken in consideration. For 15 of them we planned to improve the app’s positions.

Step 4. Results

After all changes were done we checked the results. A good thing is that you don’t need to release a new app version for changing text in Google Play. Just save texts after editing — that’s enough.

Usually it takes 1–2 days to see the first results and the full report can be run once enough data is collected.

Eventually, new ASO strategy delivered even better results than expected. The game became top-1 for 7 search requests (5 before). Also, the game visibility improved a lot by reaching top-5 for 25 search requests (13 before), top-10 for 37 search requests (23 before) and top-20 for 47 search requests (36 before).

Obviously, once the game started appearing more often in top-1 and top-5, the amount of visits and installs also increased:

Important: use the same date range when comparing rates (visits, installs, etc.). In other words, compare 1–2 weeks “before” optimisation with 1–2 weeks “after”: Monday to Monday, Tuesday to Tuesday and so on. Also avoid taking time periods when running any marketing activities (featuring, advertising) — it might impact the numbers.

Totals:

• Visits: before — 329, after — 460. Increase 40%
• Installs: before— 92, after— 141. Increase 53%
• Conversion Rate: before — 28,03%, after — 30,58%

To clarify once again, we didn’t aim to increase these numbers by adding new keywords and phrases but only focused on old ones and improved app positions for them.

Step 5. What’s next?

Next, you should increase app visibility by adding new keyphrases and keywords to the description, improve positions for other search requests and work with conversion rate by changing main app page. Some example actions:

1. Launch A/B tests for app icon, promotional banners and screenshots;
2. Launch A/B tests for short text description;
3. Check what works best: promotional banner or video;
4. Work with your app ranking and reviews;
5. And so on, and so forth…

Conclusion

To sum up, we undertook the following ASO steps to improve the ranking of this game on Google Play:

1. Estimate current rates;
2. Perform competitive analysis;
3. Create semantic core out of found keyphrases;
4. Renew name and descriptions based on selected words;
5. Make changes and check the rates again after 7–10 days.

This is very basic ASO strategy that can be done by each of you. Perhaps, it might not give you the same results at once but keep trying. You can find the original article on the AppFollow blog.
Important: Consider optimising your app regularly because search results are changing all the time. There are also new competitors, new search suggests and general trends.

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App Store Optimization, or ASO, is an essential marketing tactic for most game developers. App Store Optimization refers to improving an app’s keywords, description and other attributes in order to rank higher in that marketplace’s search results. Making your app more visible on its respective platform earns valuable organic (unpaid) downloads.

What’s better than free downloads? Many mobile game companies cite organic users as the most valuable type of users. They are more engaged than users acquired through advertising. They monetize at a higher rate than users acquired through advertising. As reported by TUNE, the majority of app users find new apps by searching the app marketplace, but neither Apple nor Google publish exactly what goes into their search algorithm. Below are a set of best practices to increase your organic downloads and app store visibility.

Competitive Keyword Analysis

Before diving into the nitty gritty of ASO, you’ll want to research your current and potential keywords. There are many tools for both keyword planning and keyword spying. These tools let you know what an app currently ranks for. They also recommend similar keywords and show what competitors are using as their keywords.

Since the App Store layout change from iOS 6, Apple users scroll through fewer results. It’s more important to appear near the top of the search results. With this in mind, focus on keywords where you can rank in the top ten results for that search query. For app marketers familiar with SEO and SEM, this is akin to going after long tail keywords. Major brands and established apps have an easier time ranking well for high volume keywords. But for the average mobile game developer, there is a larger opportunity in going after less competitive keywords.

The App Store field for keywords only allows 100 characters. Keyword planning and spying tools like Sensor Tower and App Annie facilitate keyword research. With only 100 characters to work with, using smart and efficient keywords is critical.

Google Play does not use a keyword field. We’ll discuss these keywords later, but researching and planning is still hugely important to ASO on the Android side. Google Play displays either rows or tiles of search results depending on the device. Android users may see more results for their app store queries, but ranking in the top ten yields the best ASO results regardless of platform.

Mechanics of ASO

There are many attributes that affect app search results, and some vary by platform. For example in the App Store, there is an explicit keyword field where developers enter their keywords. On the other hand Google Play crawls the app’s description for keywords. Like the keyword field above, we’ll make note of these discrepancies along the way.

Use a Descriptive Title

On the iOS platform, there are two different app titles. The bundle display name and the iTunes Connect app name. The bundle display name is what appears on a user’s phone. This title should be 11-14 characters long and has no impact on ASO. The iTunes Connect app name is what appears in the App Store and has a 255 character limit. This title doesn’t need to use the full 255 – in many cases that would be excessive. However, it should be descriptive and include strong keywords.

Apps rank higher for keywords placed in the title field. The title field is one of the most underutilized elements of ASO. Take the hyper-competitive Casino category. Below are the top five results for the query “casino” in the App Store:

All the above apps have at least six words in the title and anywhere from 40 to 100 characters. They all use many of the same casino-related keywords directly in the title.

Some app marketers argue that a long title is bad branding or an ellipsis at the end of the title is detrimental to a company’s branding. However, it is clear based on Apple’s search results that keywords in the title drive downloads. To maintain the brand experience, add a dash or colon after the app’s name like in the image above.

Google only allows 30 characters in the app’s title. These keywords are still important, but there is less opportunity in terms of ASO. On Google Play, the majority of ASO lies in the description.

On both platforms, it is well documented that changing the title frequently will hurt an app’s rank for keywords. Decide on a descriptive title for your app that includes multiple essential keywords.

I’m On Google Play. Where’s the Keyword Field?

As many game developers who have an app on Google Play are already aware, Google has no keyword field. Google crawls the description to gather keywords. The best practice is to repeat any major keyword five times. The description field on Google Play will be read by both human users and text crawlers. Make sure to write the description in a way that is friendly to both groups.

Apple does not currently use the description field for ASO purposes. This section is still important in helping users understand what your app is about and why they should download it.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

Ok, that’s not quite true. But having an eye-catching icon and screenshots are essential for grabbing a user’s attention. Each app has a precious few seconds to show a potential user why they should install. Screenshots can show the user interface, gameplay, what makes your app unique, what problem your app solves or any other variety of activities. The important thing is that the screenshots are engaging.

Google Play has room for eight screenshots and the App Store allows five. In either case, the best screenshots should go in the first and second positions.

In addition to the screenshots, both Apple and Google also allow developers to upload a short video. Creating a game trailer is the ultimate opportunity to show a user why your app is amazing. Twenty to thirty seconds of gameplay will be more impactful than screenshots in most cases.

People Influence People

Ratings and reviews are another component of App Store Optimization. These pieces of user feedback don’t carry as much weight as the keywords or title, but can have an impact on how well an app ranks in the search results.

Between the two platforms, Google Play places more of an emphasis on ratings. Users will rarely see an app with a rating below 4.0 in the top ten for a competitive query. If you have any uncertainties about how users will respond to your app, it may be worthwhile to soft launch your game for a multitude of reasons including the impact on ASO.

It is rumored that Google also includes engagement data and uninstalls in their ranking algorithm. GameAnalytics can help improve these metrics, which we will cover in our upcoming post on Tutorials and First Time User Experience.

Localization

If you are uploading your app to multiple countries’ app marketplaces, localize the app to each country. It is only logical that users will download an app more frequently if it is offered in their primary language. Both Apple and Google have guides on how to make the translation easier. Consider adding updated screenshots as well as offering support for each language to achieve the most effective localization. Localization can be tricky without a native language speaker. However, this will help cultivate the app’s user base in multiple countries.

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As with any analytical pursuit, it is important to set goals and expectations. Implementing ASO best practices will not launch your mobile game to the top of the charts overnight. ASO is a gradual process. However, once you have implemented App Store Optimization, downloads will increase, users will find your app more easily and you will rank higher compared to your competitors. Be sure to continue to track your keywords throughout the process, and keep an eye on how many organic downloads you see each day.

TL;DR: App Store Optimization Key Takeaways

• Use a keyword research tool to learn how you currently rank for keywords and see what keywords your competitors are targeting Add your most important keywords to the app’s title
• Focus on keywords where you rank high in the search results – top ten is best
• On iOS, keywords come from your title and keyword fields.
• For Google Play, keywords come from your title and description fields. Important keywords should be included about five times.
• Localize apps where possible. An app optimized for English won’t rank well in a Japanese app marketplace.