What’s on the horizon for app store optimization (ASO) practitioners in the coming year? ASO practitioner Marlon Franco shares his predictions.

App store optimization is evolving at lightning speed. As 2016 begins to wind down, it is time to examine the app marketing landscape for the upcoming year (2017).

There have been lots of developments in ASO over the past 11 months. A lot of the prominent trends of 2016 will continue and grow in 2017. As Apple and Google’s algorithm updates constantly keep business owners on their toes, several other trends are expected to take shape next year.

Here are a few things look out for in the ensuing months:

App Store Optimization for user intent

Keywords, yes keywords will still be important. Typing in simple words yields simple results. People today know exactly what they’re looking for, and app store is getting much better at identifying user intent. Therefore, users are now entering full queries or phrases in the search box, which gather data and heuristics to provide results more effectively.

In 2017, brands will need to place value on optimizing their app content based on intent rather than specific keywords. For your ASO strategy, it will be critical to:

Investigate. What are users searching for that brings them to your app? What questions do they want your content to answer? Use ASO keyword tools.

Optimize. Once you have gathered the information and found areas that need work, make the changes needed as soon as possible.

Adjust. Keep up with analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. Then, update accordingly.

Cross-channel marketing

Cross-channel and multi-channel marketing is a must to maximize your ASO efforts. In actuality, these 2 coined terms are different. Multi-channel simply means establishing a social presence on more than one platform. Cross-channel means you are using several marketing channels to market your brand in an integrated way.

For example, if users are browsing IAP content on a mobile app but decide not to buy, you can send them targeted ads based on their searches via email or via social media.

Multi-channel marketing is being used by marketers for so many years already. It’s not something new. In fact, Cross-channel marketing is the extension of it. The primary goal of cross-channel marketing is promoting brand presence across multiple channels so that people can move seamlessly between devices and platforms to make a purchase.

Increased mobile growth

Mobile accessibility has reshaped ASO over the past few years. Mobile search is rapidly growing and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down in the future. Traffic distribution has been shifting away from the desktop and moving towards mobile devices. This is why many websites are already getting the majority of their traffic from mobile devices.

A year ago, Google reported that mobile searches had surpassed desktop searches on their search engine. Since then, the company has taken many steps which signal that mobile, not desktop, should be considered as the default user experience. They recently announced that it has begun experiments to make its index mobile-first.

Mobile optimization is already extremely important in ASO strategies. However, it will prove to be mandatory in 2017.

Voice search is the next big thing

Voice search has been an ongoing project for a few years now. Yeah I know, there’s a lot more to be done here, but it has already become one of the fastest-growing search options. The appeal here is undeniable. It’s hands-free, fast and futuristic.

As digital technology improves with each update, the error rate of voice search plummets. In a keynote speech at SMX West 2016, Google’s director of conversational search, Behshad Behzadi, said that the speech recognition error rate has been reduced from around 25 percent two years ago to just 8 percent today.

The goal for voice search next year is to go above and beyond voice recognition and evolve into voice understanding. This involves several changes with respect to:

• previous searches
• location
• context
• personal information
• keyword research based on spoken queries

There’s no denying that voice search is one of the biggest trends of this digital era. With massive improvements to Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, ASO marketers would be wise to closely examine voice innovation and think beyond text-based queries in 2017.

Closing thoughts

Next year will be a big year all around. Users are becoming increasingly connected and engaged with the content they consume using their mobile devices. It is very important for ASO marketers to factor these upcoming trends into the bigger picture in order to be prepared to take on future challenges.