Mobile apps have quickly become a necessity for all brands across different industries. The amount of time an average mobile user spends browsing different apps has also gone up significantly higher. Today creating an app is part and parcel of a company’s online business development plan. It not only helps in reaching out to a bigger audience but also create an online presence for the brand and its image in the virtual world.
Many independent developers are also coming up with new and innovative apps that help grow their online presence. But creating a good app that is glitch free is only half of the process. To make your business grow and let people know about your app, you will have to be prominent in the rankings. As long as your app does not have a considerable amount of downloads and reviews, you are nowhere near the goal you set out to achieve. To get more downloads and ratings here are a few simple steps that you can undertake.
App Description and Keywords
Adding relevant keywords to the title can help your prospects find your app with great ease, but that’s not the only place where keywords can help your app. While writing the app description as well, make sure that you include the right keywords.
The first few lines of the app description are of great importance, because this is what the people browsing the app store would see. The full description is only visible once they click to expand it. The idea is that you pack up the description with keywords, but the first couple of lines should be engaging enough to win over the right kind of customers for your app.
With Apple App Store, you can include promotional text of about 170 characters. This, unlike, the app description can be changed without releasing a new update allowing you to test out a variety of keywords in order to maximize the conversion rate.
In-App Purchases
In-app purchases are factored in as a part of ASO for both, the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. It is important that you clearly convey the nature of in-app purchases you implement in your app, because there is more than one way to do so.
Consumable purchases indicate buying articles that the users might need at any point in the app like buying extra coins in a gaming app, or buying a physical product from within the app.
Non-consumable purchases essentially are the ones that enhance the user experience of the app, like removing ads. Such kind of purchases are associated with the Apple ID, which means that they can be transferred between devices. The consumable purchases, however, may be lost when the devices are changed.
Non-renewing subscriptions are those that can only be bought for a fixed time period like a pass for a particular season.
Auto-renewing subscriptions bill the customers on a monthly or annual basis automatically quite like a magazine or streaming channel subscription.
Exemplary Screenshots
Users are visual by nature, hence when they are simply browsing through the application stores, it is only natural that they should be attracted to high quality screenshots in the app.
It is therefore important that you create some great screenshots which not only look great but also cover the maximum number of features thus offering some measure of value to the users. Another important thing to remember here is that not all the screenshots would be visible in one go and not many would scroll past the first two or three. This means that your first two or three screenshots should be really the best ones and convey as much of information about your app as possible.
User Ratings and Review
The easiest and most effective way to get more ratings is by asking users to rate your app. This can be done by sending a periodic push notification or pop up within the app to rate it. It is natural that some of the reviews or ratings you receive would be far from flattering. However, if a large number of ratings or reviews mention the same problem, it is time you took a look into it and make necessary improvements to the app. These ratings and reviews are very important for prospective customers who are contemplating whether or not to download your app.
Add an App Demo Video
A little more complicated than putting up a screenshot but exponentially more effective in terms of the interaction and the results that they may bring to you. In fact, adding a video can in fact improve your download rates by as much as 25%. To top it off, the customers who watch the video are three times more likely to download the app.
The video you make should be short & crisp and add only as many features as can be easily consumed by the consumers. Also, make sure that you do not rely only on the audio, because quite a few of the customers would watch the video on mute. End the video with a clear call-to-action, encouraging the viewer to download the app.