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DanMachi - Memoria Freese App Store Spotlight

January 15th, 2019

DanMachi - Memoria Freese App Store Spotlight
David Quinn

by David Quinn

VP of Strategy & Partnerships at Gummicube, Inc.

It is common for popular franchises and shows to be adapted into mobile games, whether as a quick tie-in to earn money or as a dedicated project to pay tribute to the story. One such game is “DanMachi – Memoria Freese,” a mobile game based off the fantasy comedy series “Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon.” In this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at Memoria Freese’s App Store Optimization and see if it needs to level up.

1. iOS

On the Apple App Store, Memoria Freese is the top-ranking app for “Crunchyroll Games,” as well as for each word of its own name. While these terms all have high search volume, there are only 21 competitors for “DanMachi” or “Memoria Freese” and only four competitors for “crunchyroll games.” With fewer competing apps, it’s easier to appear higher in the search results; this is especially important for high-volume keywords.

Memoria Freese is also the fourth-highest app for the “Crunchyroll” keyword – a term with very high search volume – and is the 7th app under searches for “anime games.” It does not rank in the top ten for many keywords overall, so there is room to grow and improve its rankings for a wider range of terms and phrases.

Its rankings get lower outside of terms related to its name or parent company. The app ranks moderately low for anime or game-focused searches, such as “anime RPG” and “anime MMO,” where it comes in at #29 and #42. Although it is a “gacha game,” the only “gacha” term it ranks for is “anime gacha,” where it’s the 116th app in searches.

Creatives: “Memoria Freese” utilizes landscape-style screenshots, so users only see one image when it shows up in search results. As the game itself is played with the phone in landscape mode, this provides a proper impression of what it looks like, although it does mean users will see fewer images at once.

The first screenshot also shows the artwork used in the startup screen. It’s artwork from the show, so it does at least appeal to fans of the series. It uses six screenshots, each one showcasing a different aspect of the game, such as the battles, interacting with characters or the cutscenes.

The screenshots feature callout text highlighting each aspect, but the text does not stand out from its font or its placement at the bottom of each screenshot.

There’s room for four more screenshots, which could be used to highlight further features, such as the special attacks characters can use or the special arenas. The game currently features a limited time event tying in to the show’s upcoming movie, but none of the creatives call it out or feature it.

Memoria Freese could benefit from a promotional video to showcase the game in action. The game features multiple characters, levels and attack animations, which could be demonstrated in a 30-second video to appeal to users. A video would also take the place of the first screenshot in search results, which would show more of the app in action directly from the search.

Title & Subtitle: Memoria Freese’s title presents an interesting case. The app is based off a fantasy comedy anime called “Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?” but the name alone uses more characters than the app store allows. Instead, the app uses the shortened version of its Japanese title, “DanMachi,” along with the game’s title. That takes up 25 of the 30 characters for the app store, so the app must rely on its name recognition for the title to appeal to users.

This could be improved with the use of a subtitle, but the app does not use one. The subtitle field is visible to users right beneath the title, so it could provide more information about the app at a glance, such as “Dungeon Crawler Gacha Game.” It also adds to the keywords the app uses, so including a subtitle provides an extra 30 characters of words and phrases to index for. Without a subtitle, the app is missing out on both a valuable source of information for users and keywords for itself.

Description: Memoria Freese’s description is formatted well for iOS, utilizing short lines and a bullet list of features. It integrates several keywords throughout, such as “mobile RPG” and “anime,” although it could be more aggressive with them to improve its relevancy for Search Ads.

The bullet list of features is just a single set, listing everything at once. It could be expanded into multiple sets delving more into each feature to provide more information at a glance. As it is currently, information about its “PVP Battles” is just sitting in the middle of the features, between the unlockable costumes and the original voice actors. If the app description were reworked to provide more information about the features, it could better highlight the relevant keywords and tell users more about what the game has to offer.

2. Google Play

On Google Play, Memoria Freese does not rank in the top 10 for any keywords outside of its own name. Its best ranking keywords are “crunchyroll” and misspellings thereof, where it ranks #11. It then comes in at #13 for “collect characters,” while its rankings for valuable keywords such as “anime RPG” and “anime game” come in at #29 and #83.

Creatives: Memoria Freese does feature a video on Google Play, which cuts between clips from the game and the anime it’s based off of. This does a fine job at connecting the game’s story and gameplay to the series as well as demonstrating certain mechanics such as the special attacks. It does not show many different features of the game, instead focusing on the combat, so it does not show the full scope of the game.

While this video works on Google Play, its use of anime cutscenes may result in metadata rejection if submitted to the iOS App Store. The clips it shows do not appear in the app itself, as the cutscenes there are made of screenshots from the anime, so using the video would go against Apple’s video guidelines.

Following the video, it uses the same screenshots as iOS, with the exception of a different loading screen image. As that screenshot doesn’t showcase specific mechanics of the app, it could work better as a featured image used as the video’s still frame.

As with iOS, the screenshots do show the different mechanics of the game, but the callout text does not stand out as much as it could.

Description & Metadata: The description is identical on iOS and Google Play, but while it’s formatted well for iOS, it is not designed for Google’s algorithm. As Google crawls description metadata for keywords, the description needs to place its keywords front and center to index for them.

What Memoria Freese currently has does not emphasize the keywords nearly enough. It does not call out key aspects such as “gacha” or “dungeon RPG,” resulting in its low rankings for those terms (#120 and #107).

This could be resolved by reformatting the description with Google’s algorithm in mind. When the description talks about “an unparalleled mobile game adaptation,” it could instead say “Anime RPG based off the hit series” to improve its indexation for “anime RPG.” The features list could also be reworked into multiple feature sets, each one calling out the features such as “Gacha Game” and “Dungeon RPG” to utilize those high-volume keywords.

If Memoria Freese wants to improve its keyword rankings on Google Play, a reworking of its description will be essential.

3. Overall

While Memoria Freese ranks moderately well on iOS, it could focus on targeting more relevant keywords to improve its rankings in search results to reach more users. Utilizing a subtitle could help improve its conversion rate by providing more information about the app while helping it target more keywords. Similarly, its screenshots can use improved callout text to emphasize the app’s features, while more screenshots can call out events and more aspects of the app.

On Google Play, Memoria Freese struggles to rank well for any keywords. While having a promotional video does help, its screenshots have the same issues as on iOS. Using an identical description on iOS and Google Play is also ineffective for Memoria Freese, as its formatting lacks any focus on keywords and prevents it from ranking well for any of them.

The game is based off a popular series and is published by one of today’s biggest names in anime. It could reach a much wider audience if it focused on its App Store Optimization to improve its keyword rankings and conversion. Without ASO, Memoria Freese is a low-level adventurer in the competitive dungeon that is the App Store.

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