How to Optimize an app for the Apple App Store

Optimize an app

With over two million apps in the Apple App Store, it’s now more important than ever to get your app noticed in the app store by Optimize an app.

Why you may ask yourself? This is because more than half of all users use an app store search to get to the desired app before downloading it.

To stand out you can use paid: Cost Per Install (CPI) campaigns, advertisements, affiliate campaigns, or social media promotions. This allows you to achieve the necessary hype about your newly launched mobile app. But not everyone has the budget for this. If this is the case, you can of course always use the organic method.

The latter method is used by 98% who launch an app. App Store Optimization (ASO) plays an important role in this to ensure that your app performs better in the app store rankings organically.

Table of Content

What is ASO?

Simply put, ASO is the process of optimizing mobile apps so that they rank higher in search results. The goal here is to drive the maximum achievable traffic to your app page, allowing the app to be downloaded.

Higher Rankings = Better Visibility = More Downloads

This is the underlying concept of ASO.

We now have an idea of what ASO is. If you want to learn more about this topic, read our article “ App Store Optimization (ASO) – ensuring downloads ”. Now let’s look at some factors that you need to consider in order to rank higher in the App Store.

Both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store use their own unique algorithms to rank mobile apps. To optimize your app for both platforms, you will therefore have to use two different processes.

At Glamorous Goat we are often asked why optimizing an app for both platforms is different from each other. This mainly concerns the question of what you should do to improve your score on both platforms.

Knowledge about ASO for the Google Play Store is discussed in several places and is quite well known. Unfortunately, when it comes to mobile apps for the Apple App Store, many developers and marketers still think that the same process can be followed as for the Google Play Store. So this is not the case.

Let’s take a look at what to look out for to help your mobile app rank better on the Apple App Store. We will also look at how this differs from the Google Play Store.

Number of downloads

Apple takes 30% of the total revenue earned by a mobile app available through their app store. Revenue at Apple is related to the number of times an app is downloaded from their app store. From an Apple point of view, it is therefore important to highlight apps that are downloaded the most. This is the biggest revenue for Apple. So these apps will appear at the top of the search results.

The Google Play Store also uses the total number of downloads but also looks at other factors. These are a number of UX factors and user dwell time for certain apps that are taken into account to rank apps. So you have to pay close attention to what is being looked at for each app in order to score well at the Google Play Store.

Apple is only concerned with the number of app downloads. The number of downloads is the strongest factor to rank different apps on their app store.

Unfortunately, the number of downloads is a factor that you cannot directly influence. In order to get the ball rolling for your app, it is important to carry out a number of promotional activities.

How can you promote your app?

Press Releases: Notify high-authority PR websites when the official release of your app will take place. This can help with the first push in the right direction. In addition, there are app discovery platforms such as ProductHunt that can help deliver extra attention at the start of the launch.
Social Promotions: Advertise the launch of your app on all your social media pages. Ask friends and family to test the app and take advantage of word of mouth. During the process, you can already get the first good reviews.
Reach out to Influencers: Collaborate with and reach out to local influencers to advertise your mobile app. By using their network you can increase your own audience.
Events: Go to events and exhibitions related to your industry. Make the app known to the people who matter in every possible aspect.

Keywords

We all know how important keywords are to Google. You can literally add keywords in your app description and app title so that your app becomes relevant for a certain search query. These will then be included in the ranking at the Google Play Store.

Playing with keywords, on the other hand, is limited with the Apple App Store. You only have a space of 100 words for this. Keywords you use elsewhere are probably a waste of space in the App Store.

This means that you have to be very careful with the use of keywords in order to reach a certain group in the App Store. By using a tool like “Google Keyword Planner” you can get an idea of which keywords you should use to reach a certain target group of your app niche. When you have selected a focus keyword, you can use the AppAnnie tool, for example, to generate suggestions for other keywords. You can then prepare an analysis of the competitors.

When you have selected the most strong and relevant keywords to target, use our following tips. This allows you to make better use of the small keywords you can play with on the App Store.

Unlike the Google Play Store, repeating keywords in the App Store makes little sense.
Using the plural of keywords makes no sense at all with the App Store. This automatically keeps the plural of the selected keywords.
Use short keywords and don’t completely write out numbers when necessary to save the number of words.
Use a comma instead of a space to separate keywords.

Ratings & Reviews

The ratings and reviews you get for your app are an important factor for both app stores. It’s obvious why. Google uses app reviews that you have received for the latest version of your app to show the ratings in the play store. Apple uses all the reviews you’ve ever received for your app.

When was the last time you downloaded an app to your phone (Google or Apple) without looking at the app’s ratings and reviews? Of course, you always do!

Following a study, 70% of all users look at the reviews of an app to determine their purchase (download) decision. The higher the ratings will lead to more downloads and this will increase the ranking of the app. It’s as simple as that.

Again, this is a factor over which you have little control. We’ll give you some tips that will help you get the right kind of reviews for your app.

A fluid UX will always provide good feedback from your app.
Never ask for feedback after a bug or crash report. Most likely you will not hear good things.
Don’t beg for high ratings. Always ask for honest reviews in a friendly manner.
Try not to disrupt your user’s UX by asking for a review when they are busy with something in your app.
This will likely lead to bad reviews or in the worst-case scenario, the app will even be removed.

visuals

Your app should be visually appealing enough to persuade the user to download your app.

People are attracted to beautiful things. Our brains are like this and your app should not be short of this aspect. This factor is therefore important for both app stores in order to increase the number of app downloads.

By visuals we mean: app screenshots, app logo, website of the app, and the introduction video. Literally, anything visual that a user interacts with on your main app page has to look great.

Here are some tips to make sure your app stands out visually:

A beautifully designed app logo that has received attention is a must.
App screenshots and other visuals must be of high quality.
App visuals should fit your brand and generate a sense of recognisability.
Provide a short but good introduction video on your app page. We all know how well a video can work to pique people’s interests.

Conclusion

We’ve looked at a number of points that can help your app score better at the Apple App Store. Of course, there are many other factors that directly or indirectly affect the rankings of your app. This may not be as many as with Google, but if you focus on these four points you will see improvement. By optimizing your app, Apple’s algorithm will do the rest for you, allowing you to enjoy more downloads of your app.