Reviewing Afterpay's App Store Strategy
Posted on November 11th, 2024
Learn how Afterpay can optimize its app store presence with improved metadata and creative assets to capture attention before the holidays.
When it comes to turn based civilization strategy games, nothing quite compares to Sid Meier’s Civilization. That being said, The Battle of Polytopia is definitely a worthy contender, with notable awards and mentions across many reputable gaming communities.
In Midjiwan’s The Battle of Polytopia, you play as the leader of a tribe in a race for world domination. Choose a strategic starting point for your budding civilization, collect resources, research technologies, and battle other tribes as you strive for victory. Come for the adorable low poly graphics and stay for the absolutely addicting playstyle!
The Battle of Polytopia is an interesting and fun game, renowned for its depth and attractiveness, but how does this great game rank in the app stores? Let’s take a look in this App Store Spotlight.
Title, Subtitle & Short Description
“The Battle of Polytopia – A Civilization Strategy Game”
The iOS App Store Title field has no additional explanatory terms after the game’s branded name, leaving those for the Subtitle. On the Play Store, the same tags in the App Store Subtitle are used in the Title field after the name.
The branded title “The Battle of Polytopia” makes it clear that the game features battle elements and following it up with “A Civilization Strategy Game” clues in readers who are fans of turn-based civilization strategy games that this is right up their alley.
Most of these fields are taking advantage of the available character count, with the exception of the iOS App Store Title, which is using only 23 of 30 available characters. Midjiwan could consider adding another keyword here, or even removing the prepending “The” to free up even more space for high-volume keywords.
On the Google Play Store, the Short Description is an 80-character field that provides additional opportunities to describe an app or game while incorporating relevant, high-volume keywords. Including a strong Short Description will not only improve ranking and visibility, but it can also increase conversion rate by capturing a potential player’s attention with attractive features.
The Battle of Polytopia’s Short Description, “Turn based strategy game. Build a civilization and take it into battle!” uses only 71 of the available 80 characters. This is a good start but leaves untapped potential for keyword inclusion. Similar to the iOS App Store Title, the Short Description on the Google Play Store would benefit from including an additional high-volume keyword or two to improve ranking potential while also explaining more about the app to users.
App Descriptions
The Battle of Polytopia does a great job explaining its core features in the descriptions, however it could utilize a more algorithm-friendly structure for keyword indexation. Keyword placement within the descriptions plays a crucial role in indexation on the Google Play Store, and on the iOS App Store it helps determine the terms that are pulled in for Apple Search Ads. Improper structure diminishes the ability to be served in search results.
The Battle of Polytopia starts its descriptions with a brief introduction covering gameplay mechanics and value propositioning, while also highlighting notable accolades. Following the introductory paragraph, a short feature list is included, which is a great way to incorporate relevant high-volume keywords in a structurally effective manner. The Battle of Polytopia is not maximizing this features list’s potential, and it could be restructured in a way that places emphasis on keywords.
Screenshots
The Battle of Polytopia features its adorable low poly characters, armed and ready for battle, set on a colorful background. The composition and colors make everything clear at icon resolution, and convey the core battle feature.
Moving down to the screenshots, The Battle of Polytopia is not following some best practices to maximize conversion. The screenshots provide a great glimpse of the in-game isometric imagery, and they do attempt to give users an idea of the game using text callouts. The callouts, however, use a thin font in a color that gets lost on the banner background- these can be adjusted so the text is more easily instantly visible to a user browsing through apps on their device.
Overall
The Battle of Polytopia is a fun, award-winning turn-based civilization strategy game, with beautiful graphics and considerable depth. While Midjiwan has done a good job conveying core gameplay mechanics, they are missing some opportunities to include high-volume keywords that will improve discoverability.
They would also benefit from updating their screenshot copy to improve the visibility of text callouts by changing the text treatment. After making these adjustments, ranking visibility and conversion rate should be monitored to strategically plan the next phase of their ASO-attack.
Want to learn more about App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube, and we’ll help get your strategy started.
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