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Discord App Store Spotlight
July 12th, 2018
by David Quinn
VP of Strategy & Partnerships at Gummicube, Inc.
While the app ecosystem is a competitive one, there are many apps that manage to thrive and become hit successes. However, just because an app ranks well doesn’t there’s no room to improve, as even the most successful of apps can still benefit from ASO. In our App Store Spotlight series, we’ll look at hit apps and see where their App Store Optimization strategy succeeds or fails. Gamers that are into chatting and social networking have probably heard of an app called Discord, which they can use to easily communicate among their friends. While its primary audience is gamers, it is seeing use beyond gaming alone and is used as a communication tool for all sorts of needs. While it is seeing success with multiple audiences, is its ASO strategy optimized? iOS On the Apple App Store, Discord ranks as the #11 app in Social Networking. With over 232,000 ratings at 4.8 stars out of 5, it has achieved remarkable success. However, it can still stand to improve its ASO in a few areas. The screenshots it features do a good job at demonstrating the app’s features and highlighting them with callout text that includes relevant keywords. While the dark colors used throughout the screenshots match, they do tend to make the in-app images difficult to comprehend, although the white text does stand out. 
Additionally, Discord opts not to include a preview video. This is a missed opportunity, as videos are key for showing off an app’s features while it’s in action. A well-made preview video can increase an app’s conversion rate up to 25%, although a poorly-made video can be equally detrimental. A preview video can demonstrate a chat in action as players coordinate on their games or show how Discord supports gifs and videos. Without one, it’s missing out on converting more users and highlighting its app’s core features. The description, furthermore, is flawed from an ASO standpoint. The introduction is a single paragraph of multiple lines, creating a large block of text for anyone viewing it on their mobile devices. The list of features is properly bulleted, but it’s all put into a single lengthy list, where it could instead call out its features and their benefits individually. 
With that said, it does include important keywords and features throughout its description, so the content is solid even though the formatting needs improvement.
Google Play
On the Google Play Store, Discord boasts similar rankings and downloads. The creatives here stand out a bit more, utilizing the blue and white color scheme of its icon for the background with a dark handset image against it, drawing more attention to the center of the screen. As with the iOS version, the Google Play page lacks a preview video. Once more, this is an oversight, as it fails to provide a demonstration of the app’s capabilities and benefits. 
The description, however, is nearly identical to the iOS version. There are several sections where keywords are not properly placed and utilized, and as with iOS, the features are all clumped together, rather than focusing on each one. If Discord were to properly optimize its description, it would see higher rankings for each of the keywords it’s focused on. With that said, the keywords it does include are good choices that are relevant to the app and its audience. “Voice chat” is a big one that Discord ranks well for, and “real-time messaging” is also a popular term, although users typically don’t search for “Push notifications” quite so much. Even the short description is not fully optimized. While “Free voice and text chat for gamers” is accurate and properly touches on its purpose and a few keywords, it isn’t even using half of the allowed character space.
Can Discord Benefit from ASO?
Clearly Discord is doing well, given its high download numbers and reviews, but that doesn’t mean its ASO isn’t in need of improvement. If they were to add a preview video, they could boost their conversion and bring in more users. Additionally, Discord could improve their keyword ranking by leveraging ASO. Even the best of apps can still have room to improve, and Discord is no exception.
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