How to Stand Out in a Crowded App Store

If your app doesn't convince a user to download within 7 seconds, they're downloading your competitor.

“Users today have access to over 123 times more apps than they did at the end of 2008,” (Source). 

With millions of apps competing for attention and new ones being added constantly, the struggle app marketers face is how to stand out from the crowd. You have to make your first impression count.

Creatives Are Key

Your key selling point needs to be in your first screenshot. How much information can you absorb in 7 seconds? Your key selling point is the unique quality or benefit your app offers to users - in other words, how will you solve their problem? Don't expect users to scroll past the first screenshot; they need to be sold immediately.

Here are some examples of good first screenshots:

Each of these use a minimal amount of text to portray the KSP, making it easy to read and quick to digest. In addition, all of them clearly portray the app's main purpose immediately in their screenshot set.

Don't Forget About Retention

Sure, you can get users to download your app by skewing your assets and keywords to fit what's trending, but if that user deletes your app quickly, then your metrics will suffer. Consider when creating your store assets what users will be expecting when they download.

This is particularly true with keywords. For example, if "calorie counter" keywords are trending and a recipe app adds these keywords to their subtitle or adds them in their screenshots, users searching for an app to track calories might be misled to install this app. When these users delete the recipe app due to being misled, this will signal to the stores that your app is not relevant for these keywords, and any applicable gained rankings will be lost.

If your app is not relevant for these keywords anyway, this might not seem like a big deal; however, there are a couple of additional factors to consider. Bad retention rates are never good, whether they are from irrelevant keywords or otherwise. The stores lean on retention rates to know which apps are functioning well and which are not. Apps with bad retention rates are more likely to be penalized and/or miss out on featuring opportunities. In addition, by adding irrelevant keywords to your metadata, you are not optimizing your limited character allowance. This will allow you less space to target keywords that are actually relevant to your app. It is common practice to monitor trending keywords, but if they're not relevant, keep them out of your metadata fields and your screenshots.

Review Management Is Essential

Social proof can make or break a download decision. If a decision is being made between you and a competitor and their ratings are higher than yours, you're probably not gaining that download. Another factor users strongly consider is if you're responding to reviews.

Respond to all reviews, even the bad ones. A user's first glance into your customer support is your reviews and ratings. Many app marketers and customer support teams ignore, or send generic responses, to negative reviews. This sends a signal to potential users that you don't care about user feedback and most likely don't resolve issues. Your goal should be to change 1-star reviews to 5-star reviews.

Pro Tip: Sentiments from reviews are like a magnifying glass into what users think when they're using your app. Reviewers are essentially running free quality analysis on your app by complaining about bugs and bad UX or UI, while positive reviews give ideas on what to promote or do more of for your app.

You don't have to do everything at once, but start by doing the right things better - or you could let Lowtide do it for you.

Learn more about how Lowtide can support your App Store Optimization (ASO) efforts.