Growth Hacking - Mobile App Store: This is an exhaustive deck on app store optimization on iOS and Android based off my experiments over the last 3 years. I have driven apps over 100 spots for free.

1. App Store Optimization (ASO)
How to optimize for search and user installs
Haris Ikram
Director of Growth
Jan, 2014

2. First Lesson of ASO
By the time you read through these slides, the
rules of ASO will have changed
Lesson #1 ASO keeps changing, always test,
rinse, repeat…

3. Importance of Search on iOS
“For the average app, search actually makes up the vast majority of installs.”
– Ankit Jain, Head of Search & Discovery, Google Play
40% of users
from search

4. Importance of Search on Google Play
80% from search
Even bigger!

5. What Impacts Search Algorithms?
• There are many parameters that Apple &
Google’s search algorithms factor in, that are not
in a developers control e.g. installs, momentum
of installs (number of installs/hour for n hours)
• Lets focus on the those in a developers control:
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App Title
Description (Android only)
Keywords (iOS only)
Ratings
Reviews
Page Rank (Android only)

6. What Impacts User Conversion (1/2)?
1. Title
2. Icon
3. Ratings
4. Screenshots

7. What Impacts User Conversion (2/2)?
7. Reviews
5. Description
6. What’s
New

8. App Title
• An app's title is the single most important
factor for rank in ASO. Each word in the title is
parsed and used as a keyword
• But the title is also important conversion tool
for potential users. Be sure to include the
keywords, but don't be spammy. Make sure it
makes sense and represents the brand

9. App Description (1/2)
• Good things to include here are:
– Rave reviews from press
– Stats e.g. 7 million downloads, 60 million
documents created
– Benefits of your app to potential users
– Mention pro features but at the bottom
• Localize description for large markets e.g. FR
and DE

10. App Description (2/2)
• Only 5 lines are visible (without clicking display more) on the ipad and 3 shorter
lines are visible on the iPhone. It is critical to get the most impactful copy at the
top. Optimize every letter and space here
• Additionally, on the Google Play store, app description is even more important as
Google parses the description and selects the most referenced words as
keywords, so repeat the important words as many times as possible for the Play
store

11. App Icon
• This represents your brand and your product first
and foremost so make sure it represents it well
• You want this to stand out in the app store versus
the other apps, you also want this to stand out on
the ‘desktop’ of your device once it is installed
• You can a/b test different app icons using
mechanical turk (incent bias) or ad campaigns
• Smaller point, but the Google App store team
strongly dislikes using an Apple style app icon
(flat design, rounded corners). Create separate
versions for each platform

12. Screenshots (1/3)
• Place screenshots in the order of what the user cares about. The first
screen shot is the most important as that’s the one users see when
searching for apps
• Have different screenshots for iPhones vs iPads as one is looked at in
portrait and one in landscape. You'll need:
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Screenshots for 3.5-inch iPhone and iPod touch: 960x640 pixels.
Screenshots for 4-inch iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th gen): 1136x640 pixels.
Screenshots for iPad: 1536x2048 pixels.
Save all screenshots at 72 DPI, use the RGB color space (not CMYK) and save
them as PNG's.
Ok
BAD!
BAD!

13. Screenshots (2/3)
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•
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Display benefits/explanations so that people who don’t know anything about your
app get it instantly (see examples below) – note: not everyone will read it
Show images of your app as large as possible
All 3 are good but I prefer the first, showing the iPhone frame is wasted space

14. Screenshots (3/3) – less important
• Localize for top markets. Arguments can be
made for both sides on apps that function in
English but the app store text is localized
• Add video for the Google Play Store

15. Keywords (1/2)
• This is the second most important factor for
search results so test the shit out of this
• Apple allows you to populate up to 100
characters, so fill it out and don’t leave it empty
• Do not put spaces between words, only commas,
spaces are wastes and apple parses words with
commas
• Do not use both plurals and singular of the same
word e.g. notes and note

16. Keywords (2/2)
• First, think from the perspective of your user, what
should they be searching for to get to you?
• Do not use your category name as that is already a
keyword
• Use services like searchman, mobiledevhq,
sensortower to see what keywords will drive higher
volume and which have lower competition
• Look at what keywords what your competitors use
• Only way to get this right is to test and see what works.
Once you get good results, don’t stop, what works will
keep changing

17. Ratings
• The rating score is a big determinant for users and less so
the number of ratings
• Best way to get this right is build a great product 
• One way to increase ratings and number of ratings is by
asking users to rate the app. This is supported by Apple and
there is nothing wrong with doing this smartly
• Not smart: Apps ask users to rate their app in the first
session. Users should understand and like your app before
you ask them to rate it
• Surface dialog boxes to rate your app but target a portion
of users who are heavily engaged with your app and like it
and thus would most likely rate 5 stars. We can do this in
house or leverage APIs like Apptentive

18. Reviews
• Like with ratings, reviews are important decision
points for potential users. Study reviews and
solve those issues in your product
• See what words keep coming up in reviews and
evaluate using them as keywords
• Additionally, on android, developers can
comment on reviews and engage with the user
base and get users to change their ratings
• Tools will sensor tower can parse your reviews
and analyze top mentioned words

19. Other Points
• Bundle size – keep bundle size under 25 MB if possible as
that is a limit on many carriers beyond which users are
required to connect to WiFi. This will lead to fewer installs.
This problem manifests itself even more outside the US
• Get the ‘Designed for tablet’ label on the Google Play store
as that directly impacts search results on Google tablets
• Page rank works drives up search on the Google play store
as it does for Google search. Point as many links to your
Google play store as possible e.g. on the company website,
company blog
• For Android Kitkat devices, you can deep link Google search
results to your app in the appstore

20. Thanks
• CloudOn: http://www.cloudon.com/
• My Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/haris.ikram