How can creatives change and improve your App Store?

One of the mistakes that several Advertisers make is to focus a lot on the user acquisition and not pay the same amount of attention to the App Store Optimization (ASO), which is the turning point for the user to see if they will download the app or not. Not having a good ASO strategy and investing in UA without thinking about it is a waste of money.

On ASO, there are two main different areas. The search optimization and the conversion one. The first one refers to all the optimization regarding app title, short title, keyword field in the App Store, or the Description in Google Play. The great majority of the search traffic comes from branded searches, a very small part from targeting competitors, and a minor part from generic terms. Unless your app fits a very significant and specific niche, where the users have a strong desire to solve their needs using your app, you should focus on improving your conversion rate (CR). A high CR is normally related to clear communication of the app's purpose and values, making it very easy for users to understand what your app is about just in a quick glance. That is why building effective visual elements on the store page is so relevant. The possibilities of visual elements are mainly three in the store: the app icon, the preview video, and also the screenshots.

The behavior of users in the stores might vary according to the vertical of your app or even how your store is built, but there are some interesting insights from the industry that you can use to create an even more effective store. First of all, do not focus on Android’s description to convince the user to download, use it to rank for keywords, less than 1% of the users read an app description, so it’s very unlikely that they read the whole text you put there.

Normally users do not spend time in the store, the average time spent on the store page is less than 7 seconds. Seven seconds is also the attention span of users watching the app’s preview video, and only 8% of them will watch the video until the end. Screenshots do not have a better attraction to users’ attention or engagement, only 1 in every 10 users will scroll through all the screenshots. Data Sources: Geeklab

All this data means one thing: Be as clear as you can in your visual communication. Users will only dedicate a few seconds to understanding what your app is about or even to decide if they should download it or not once they arrive on the landing page.

To start the process of improvement of the visual part of the store, think about your audience and what are your users looking for when they download your app. Secondly, analyze what your app competitors are doing, if something is interesting, don't be afraid to take it as insight. Third and last one, always have your product’s unique selling points (USP) in mind during the whole process. With these three processes already in place, you can align with your design team and share with them what you want to communicate to your audience.

Start with the design of the new visual elements, like building new screenshots, app icons, selecting the background color. Sketch an app preview video. Integrate all the communication that you will add to those design pieces, like the copies of the screenshots, the headlines of the arts, and also the script of the video. Lastly, think and discuss the layout, for example, the order of the screenshots, the orientation, size, and position of the headlines of the screenshots, etc...

You don’t need to follow all the steps exactly as mentioned above, but it’s important to have in mind that they all count a lot into the creation of effective communication. Also, before applying the new visuals or even building them, create some hypotheses and document everything so that after a few weeks, you’ll have enough data to understand the results of the uploaded visuals compared to the old ones or the ones you are using for A/B tests. Another recommendation is to start testing only visuals in English and with static assets and not videos. Videos are usually quite expensive and they take time to produce, so first learn with your screenshots (the colors, selling points, and wording) before producing a video.

By following these tips, you will likely be providing a clearer idea of what your app is about to your users and your CR might improve. This makes your user acquisition efforts less expensive, smarter, and also more effective.


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