ASO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it practice. In Part 3 of this six-part master class, we’ll dispel common myths that keep you from establishing the kind of baked-in routine necessary to keep your apps rising up the charts.
As the end-game shifts from driving app installs to inspiring lasting loyalty, App Store Optimization (ASO) is moving up the list of what app companies have to get right across the complete app marketing funnel, not just at the door of the app store, to increase both conversions and user engagement.
First impressions count—a lot—so it’s important to “wow” your audience with effective and emotive visuals (screenshots and icons, for example). But figuring out which elements to optimize, and how to test and measure your success can be tough. You can’t take shortcuts, but you can save budget and man-hours by using campaign data combined with a handful of essential tools to make the small changes that will make a big difference.
This is where Using ASO To Super-Charge Your App Audience — the second of the six-part master class series developed by VB to accompany the forthcoming VB Insights ASO Practitioner’s Guide — helps developers prioritize what they need to test and address as they seek to increase conversions and ignite emotions through effective imagery. (It took place May 18, and you can listen to it here.)
During the 30-minute webinar David Lane, Founder and Managing Director of Fat Fish Games, and Mika Levo, Head of User Acquisition at Pollen VC, shared the details of how a smart approach to A/B testing equipped Fat Fish Games to increase the app install rate for its flagship game, Bubble Heroes, by 18%, cut CPIs by half, and save weeks in manpower. The effort, part of a wider, data-driven ASO strategy, also helped catapult Bubble Heroes up the charts, prompting Apple to list it as “Game of the Week” in 80 countries.
Determined to take his app to new heights without increasing budget or the headcount of his six-person team, Lane worked Pollen360, the user acquisition advisory service offered by Pollen VC and headed by Levo, to distill campaign data into a concrete plan to increase conversion rates.
“The objective was to make our app-store presence work harder for us in terms of both paid and organic installs,” Lane recalls. “We decided that the best place to start was to increase the conversion rate of the people who visited the app store.”
Together with Pollen’s Levo, David zeroed in on KPIs that allowed him to conclude that “boosting the 10% conversion rate — which added up to a cost per install of 0.40 euro cents — to 35% was a realistic and attainable goal, and a huge first step toward significantly lowering CPIs.” Rather than throw money at ASO, the decision was made to “do what we could internally, beginning with creatives, to increase the conversion rate.”
It turned out to be a smart move, allowing the company to focus on making incremental, and affordable, changes. It’s also where the free A/B testing tools that gives app companies the ability to test their app-store landing page on Google Play enabled Fat Fish Games to experiment and implement at a rapid pace.
In the case of the Bubble Heroes, Lane recalls that testing progressed from deciding the icon composition (which game character should be shown or omitted) to determining the most impactful colors and combinations. “Testing the different variations of the colors, for example, allowed us to see a 32% uplift in install rates, so we immediately took that to the next level, drilling down to test more combinations and make more incremental changes.”
But experimentation and a laser-focus on metrics didn’t just allow the company to pinpoint the images that boosted app conversions. The exercise also alerted Lane to the key details, such as sample size and campaign scope, that app developers should factor into their own A/B testing.
During the master class, Lane shares his hard-won lessons and learnings around sample size and campaigns (“typically, we saw that running a campaign for 7 to 10 days allowed us to collect the data we needed to actually declare a winner in our A/B tests”). Levo further discusses his top pick of attribution partners and the tools you can use to replicate your experiments and results in the Apple iTunes app store (since Apple doesn’t offer free tools to A/B test your app landing page like Google Play does).
Join us for ASO Sorcery: Exposing The Myths And Revealing What Works For Your App, Part 3 of this six-part master class series. Oliver Kern, noted growth-hacker and Chief Commercial Officer at Lockwood Publishing, equips app companies to distinguish “urban myths” from industry best practices, and shows how you can monitor the metrics that will tell you you’re on the right track.
Don’t miss out!
In this half-hour master class, you’ll:
- Put urban legends around ASO to the test in a no-holds-barred “mythbusters” marathon
- Determine how (and when) changes to your app-store presence will drive positive results
- Identify the tools, techniques, and strategies that will encourage installs and boost sharing
Speakers:
Peggy Anne Salz, VentureBeat analyst
Oliver Kern, Chief Commercial Officer, Lockwood Publishing
Watch for the next three parts in the ASO master class:
- The terrible truth about Black Hat tactics
- Localization — how it relates to ASO and why you need it
- Video in the app stores and getting it right