Mobile was at the forefront of optimization last year, shooting mobile touch points higher up the agenda. Are these going to make or break a company’s performance online when it comes to the customer journey? Probably not. Top priorities for App Store Optimization this 2016 were quality of the game, keyword research, app icons, consistency of messaging, and optimizing for clicks.
Brands have, on the whole, been taking great strides this year in optimizing search to drive visibility, downloads, and ROI. There are still some who are failing to make the most of the function, and as ASO continues to capture the largest share of online spend, there will be key lessons to bear in mind for brand ASO in 2016.
Social Networks
Social networks are one of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure consistency in aligning your brand messaging from an app or a game to its corresponding social channels. Failure to do so, will result in randomly selected text and images when a campaign is auto-posted on Facebook or Twitter. Imagine social posts that lack both the call to action (CTA). Horrible eh? The significant investment made in creative branding is totally wasted. It’s crucial to keep your posts relatively short and always include photos, as these boost engagement. In this age of mobile, social media becomes more important, not less.
Reputation Management
We should start paying more attention to reputation management. Feedback, reviews, ratings affect a user downloading your app once it is found. These factors also play a bigger role in ASO this 2016, and we as app marketers should develop a strategy to drive positive reviews.
Perhaps, proper utilization of paid app review services. Or a more innovative ways of driving app/game store reviews for mobile titles.
I recommend using a tool like Sensor Tower or LaunchKit to mine your reviews. This will definitely help you with user feedback and find relevant keywords to target in ASO.
Creating and optimising App Description
The topic of what makes great app description is likely to rage on for several more years as ASO inevitably comes into the app marketer’s toolkit. Tiana Crump, from Buildbox Games, believes that Apple could follow Google’s lead in 2016. The keyword density and quality in the app’s description may become as crucial for ASO as the submitted keyword list and app name, so we should need to be more dedicated to providing descriptions that actually explain what our app or game does.
ASO experts will need to spend more time writing detailed, ASO-friendly app descriptions whilst still making it easy for the user to digest. Remember that both Apple and Google want readability above all other aspects. So, starting today, make sure to write good app descriptions and be careful about keyword stuffing.
Algorithm Changes
In 2016, the subject that will initially be on all ASOs lips is the much anticipated algorithmic filter that will provide real-time updates for apps on the App Store and Google PlayStore. This change will enable a relatively large chunk of brand apps to recover further from previous drops in performance.
ASO is constantly evolving, and it will need to continue to adapt and grow as it comfortably sits across multiple channels and disciplines where a game or an app are still the primary conversion points.
Conclusion
Ultimately, there is still a lot that brands need to do across the entire purchase cycle, through to post purchase support. Hiring an aso expert will evolve through product development and with increased real estate during the critical purchase moments. ASOs will need to continue casting further afield to grow brand visibility via a good ASO strategy, and this strategy must support both the research and post-sales needs of the consumer. ASO success in 2016 will help enable this, driving increased impressions, boosted app or game visibility and supporting the purchase cycle nearer to conversion points.
