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Tasty is an app that offers thousands of recipes, videos and cooking instructions for all sorts of tastes and diets. It’s a very popular app, but is its App Store Optimization sweet enough to get served out by the App Store and Play Store’s algorithms? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we bite into Tasty and see if its ASO is fully-cooked.
Hearthstone is a popular online card game from Blizzard Entertainment, based off the “Warcraft” series. It’s a game that’s easy to learn but challenging to master and has countless players around the world. Is its App Store Optimization as strong as a champion’s deck, or is it a low-tier casual build? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at Hearthstone and see.
This month marks Mickey Mouse's 90th anniversary, so the Disney apps are celebrating. As such, it’s the perfect time to take a look at the App Store Optimization for one of their apps. For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we visit the “Disney Magic Kingdoms” app and see if its ASO has enough magic to fly.
The official “Star Wars” app was not made a long time ago, nor in a galaxy far, far away, but it still captures the energy of the “Star Wars” franchise. The app offers augmented reality functions, video clips, photo stickers and even a virtual reality feature for Google Cardboard users. With all that the app has made available, is the Force with its App Store Optimization, or has it fallen to the dark side of the App Stores?
As Nintendo’s mascot, Mario is everywhere the company sells games, including the App Store and Google Play Store. Mario made his app debut with Super Mario Run, a mobile game where players simply tap to make him jump as the iconic plumber runs through levels. But is its App Store Optimization powered up too, or is ASO success in another castle? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at Super Mario Run.
DC Comics is the studio behind iconic characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. The company has an app that lets users buy and read their comics, including classics and new releases, on a mobile device. While it’s optimized for reading comics, is it optimized for the App Store? In this week’s App Store Spotlight, we shine our bat-signal on the DC Comics app and its ASO.
Slack is a team collaboration app designed to help companies and employees communicate online. Yet while it helps bring coworkers together, does it have an App Store Optimization strategy that can bring users to its app? This week, we shine a spotlight on Slack to see if its ASO is working hard or slacking off.
Tile is an app that works with a phone’s Bluetooth connection and GPS to help keep track of objects. Users can place a tag on keychains, boxes or other things they don’t want to misplace and find them through the app. While it’s useful for helping users find their things, can users find it on the App Store and Google Play, or does its App Store Optimization leave it lost? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at Tile and examine its ASO.
While Pokemon GO may be the Pokemon app that took the world by storm, The Pokemon Company has released other apps and mobile games. One such game is Magikarp Jump, a light game where players raise up a weak little fish Pokemon to jump high into the sky. In this week’s App Store Spotlight, we reel in Magikarp Jump and see if its App Store Optimization is super effective or a flop.
Pandora, the popular music streaming app, has just been purchased by SiriusXM. SiriusXM is no stranger to the app business, and will undoubtedly make good use of Pandora Music, but a solid App Store Optimization strategy can help it succeed even further. Is Pandora fully optimized for the stores it’s available on, or can SiriusXM improve it to increase the app’s already impressive success? 1. iOS On the Apple App Store, Pandora Music is the second-highest rated app in the Music category, only behind Spotify. It’s the 5th-highest app under searches for “music apps,” 9th for “free music” and 11th for “radio.” However, most of the apps it ranks in the #1 spot for are low-volume terms such as “artists songs” or “favorite radio.” While it is a successful app, its keyword rankings do still have room for improvement; it’s ranked in the 30’s for keywords such as “mp3 music player offline” and in the 20’s for “HD radio” and “listen music offline.” Creatives: Pandora’s icon is distinct and easy recognizable – a large P with a mix of red, purple and blue colors. It’s great for building the brand name and identity. Following that, it has five screenshots, each showing off a function of the app while including callout text that talks about the features. These all work well, and quickly inform potential users of what Pandora has to offer, although it does have room to include more. Further screenshots could highlight additional functions from the app, including Premium and Plus features, or even appeal to fans of certain artists by calling out their latest albums. The last time it changed the artists featured in the screenshots was in November 2017, but if it regularly highlighted different artists, it could appeal to a wider range of users. The first three screenshots are the ones users see while browsing the app store, so including popular artists there could help reach their fans. Title & Subtitle: With all the music and streaming apps on the market, apps like Pandora need every edge their metadata can provide. Its title and subtitle, “Pandora Music” and “Play Music and Stream Radio,” respectively, do include important keywords that quickly describe the app’s features. The title does have room for more characters, so it could include another keyword there. Notably, both the title and subtitle have “music” – this double-up is a missed opportunity to target more unique keywords using these metadata fields. Description: The description itself is formatted nicely. Each line is short and to the point, making it easy to read. The features are clearly spelled out, while keywords like “music,” “songs,” and “playlists” are sprinkled throughout. It utilizes bullet lists to describe the additional features from Pandora Premium and Pandora Plus, so potential users can quickly see the benefits of each. Yet it does not have a bulleted section for the free version. While it does describe everything that the app does in the description itself, a bullet list of the features that are available to everyone would be helpful and provide more opportunities to utilize its keywords and build relevancy for Search Ads.
Fate/Grand Order is a mobile game based off the popular franchise by TYPE-MOON. It’s a financial success, earning billions in worldwide revenue, but is its achievement based off of the brand alone, or does it have an App Store Optimization strategy that helps increase its downloads and conversions? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we’ll take a look at Fate/Grand Order and see if its ASO is grand as well.
GasBuddy is an app designed for people trying to find affordable gasoline. It provides searches for gas stations with a wide range of filters and options, making it a popular app for anyone who drives. However, is it optimized for the App Stores it’s available on? iOS GasBuddy is not utilizing the full 30 character iOS Title space to target additional keywords, opting to only use its branded name. The subtitle, “for the perfect pit stop,” could utilize more advantageous keywords as well- while “pit stop” is a high-volume term, most of the top results for the search term are games. On the Apple App Store, GasBuddy’s description starts off strong. The description itself immediately lets users know the value of the app as it tells them that they can save time and money on gas. The introduction is three short lines, and while it could be split into two smaller paragraphs of 1-2 lines, it’s still short enough to be read easily on mobile devices. The description’s features list is succinct and utilizes bullet lists under headers. It calls out the two most appealing benefits – finding gas and saving money – then elaborates on them in the bullets and describes the app’s various features. The third part is just used for “Other Features,” which could stand to utilize more keywords, but maintains proper formatting. While the description does include a good range of keywords, there are sections where it doesn’t seem to include any. Utilizing keywords throughout the description can help build relevance the for the keywords targeted in the Title, Subtitle and Keyword fields, while also helping index the app for impressions on keywords targeted in Apple Search Ads. After the main description, the bottom section includes praise and positive reviews from news outlets, showing users that the app is acclaimed by users and third parties. However, it could still benefit from a call-to-action at the end, encouraging users to download the app once they’re done reading. GasBuddy’s creatives are effective, utilizing screenshots that showcase different features of the app. It shows how users can find and compare gas prices, showcases savings and so on, each accompanied by callout text that describes its benefits. The light colors it uses are easy on the eyes, and the rolling city background at the bottom of each one provides a sense of continuity from screenshot to screenshot. They are also utilizing 8 screenshots, allowing users to see multiple features of the apps and problems it can help users address. That being said, the callout text used on the screenshots could be more concise and keyword-driven to allow users to more immediately connect their search term to the app’s features and functionality. With a few exceptions, GasBuddy’s Apple App Store page is well-optimized. As a result, it ranks as the top search result for valuable keywords like “cheapest gas,” “fuel prices” and “gas finder.” Google Play The Google Play Store page listing for GasBuddy is nearly identical to its Apple App Store page. It uses the same screenshots, just in a slightly different order, although the screenshots themselves are still very effective. Unlike Apple, Google allows developers to upload a video that shows off more than a screen-capture of the app in action- GasBuddy could potentially benefit from including a video showcasing people using the app to find cheap gas, although it would have to test the video to ensure effectiveness; a bad video can be just as detrimental to an app store listing’s effectiveness as a good one can be beneficial. The description is the same on both App Stores, and while the feature list and bullet points works well for both, the description on Google Play needs to be formatted differently than the Apple App Store listing to get the most out organic visibility of its metadata. Since Google’s algorithm crawls the app listing to find relevant keywords near the start of each line, GasBuddy’s Google Play description could rank for irrelevant phrases such as “earn achievements.” It does still rank well for relevant keywords, including “cheapest gas” and “gas money,” but its Google Play rankings drop quickly after those. The remaining keywords it ranks well for are not high-volume or relevant and includes terms like “help find,” “playing for cheaps” and “fundango.” While the description may be formatted well for readability, and the bulleted lists are great for quickly calling out the app’s features and benefits, it needs to be reworded in such a way to make better use of its description for organic indexation potential.