How to Go About Optimizing Apps for the App Stores

How to Go About Optimizing Apps for the App Stores

You have a great business app you've worked hard on. Congratulations! Now, how do you get it seen? Learn how optimizing apps works here.

Keyword(s): optimizing apps

As an entrepreneur, you love seeing your visions become realities. And if you’re like any other forward-thinking business owner in 2019, the same is true for your business apps.

Research shows that 40% of online users will have no problem going to competitors if they have negative mobile experiences. In other words, you can't afford to skip having an app for your business.

The question is, once you create your app, how can you get all of your existing and potential customers to find the app with ease? In other words, how can you optimize your apps for app stores?

Here’s a rundown on how to go about optimizing apps so that you can stand out among the competition in the expanding smart-device world.

Let’s get started!

Choose the Right Name for Your App

As you brainstorm for a name for your app, be sure to select features strong keywords. Why? Because an app store’s algorithm places a great deal of weight on keywords.

The stronger your app name keywords are, the more discoverable your app will be.

The ideal app name is one that tells people what your app does or offers. You can use your company’s brand name but only if the masses already know it. If not, simply use a handful of words that explain what the app is all about.

Try to use keywords that are the most relevant to your company, as that means you’ll free up space for other keywords in your app’s subtitle. With Apple, you’ll also save room for other keywords in the Connect Keyword Field on iTunes.

Note that your app name can be no longer than 30 characters.

Choose an Appropriate App Subtitle

Like your app's name, your app subtitle needs to include strong keywords. In fact, Apple's iOS 11 brought with it an extra field for indexing keywords to app metadata. For this reason, it’s wise that you use relevant keywords to explain your app in 30 characters.

Your account with iTunes Connect will allow you to effortlessly update the subtitle for your business’s app. The more specific your subtitle is, the more likely you are to increase impressions and thus conversions.

You may be tempted to repeat keywords in your app name and subtitle, but don’t. Doing this won’t increase the amount of weight that these keywords receive.

Instead, try to add new keywords to your subtitle to capitalize on this field.

Create an Effective App Description

An app store’s algorithm doesn’t place weight on app descriptions. However, you should still include important keywords in your description.

Why?

Because Google ranks and indexes pages on iTunes. This means it’s critical that you optimize your app’s description for search engine optimization, or SEO.

The truth is, crafting a strong description can be difficult and thus time-consuming. Still, it’s critical for enticing users to download your app. To help you out, let’s go over a couple of pointers for creating an effective description.

First, make the description simple to read. You can do this by introducing symbols, bullet points, small paragraphs, short sentences and line breaks to your description.

Second, try to make your app’s first 225 characters outstanding. Your description’s first paragraph must be concise yet catchy, as the user will see it on the app page before they see an “expand” option.

Include Strong Promotional Text

Similarly to your app description, an app store’s algorithm doesn’t index apps’ promotional text. As a result, the keywords included in this area won’t impact your business app’s rankings.

Still, the promotional text field is excellent for convincing people to download your company’s app in a single sentence. It’s a new field that made its debut with iOS 11.

The promotional text you add to your app metadata can be as many as 170 characters. Use this text to reflect the new promotions or features that come with your app. You can also share any news related to your app.

Produce a Compelling App Preview

An app preview is another excellent way to persuade people to choose and download your company’s app. In this video preview, you can explain what the app does and highlight its best features.

Ideally, you should make your video no more than 15 seconds to 30 seconds long. The video will then autoplay in users’ search results.

The whole point of the app preview is to make your app more attractive and thus draw users’ attention to it, thus ultimately increasing conversions.

Keep Your App Updated

If you regularly update your app, this can positively impact your app’s rankings. That’s because an app store is looking to constantly offer its users fresh content. If you keep the app updated, it’ll carry more weight in the store’s algorithm compared with apps that haven’t been updated.

In addition, your users will perceive your app in a more positive way.

As a general rule of thumb, you should update your app every four to six weeks. This will allow you to fix any bugs that have been reported. It’ll also allow you to enhance existing features as well as launch brand-new features.

If your users begin asking whether your app comes with certain features, take note of this feedback. It could spark a brand-new feature you can add to make your app more user-friendly and attractive.

In addition, feel free to update the keywords every so often. This will help to ensure that your app remains competitive long term.

How We Can Help with Optimizing Apps

As a leading mobile and Web app development company, we are passionate about helping our customers with designing, developing and optimizing apps.

In all of the projects we complete for customers, we always aim to help our customers to achieve long-term success.

Get in touch with us to learn more about how our services can help your business to stand out with the right app in the months ahead.