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Fall Seasonality for ASO
October 26th, 2019
by Anh Nguyen
COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc
As the seasons change, so do user interests and searches. Certain terms will grow or wane in popularity, presenting new opportunities for app developers to improve their App Store Optimization. Now that Halloween is almost over, it’s time for developers to think about the next steps for including seasonality in their ASO strategies.
Seasonal Updates
There are several benefits to seasonality. For starters, seasonality helps apps stay up to date with changing user demands or interests. During holiday time periods, both Google and Apple look for apps to feature in custom lists, such as “Our Favorite Fall Apps” or “Thanksgiving Helpers.” Apps with seasonal features can improve their chances of being included in such lists by updating their pages to highlight seasonality.
The kind of seasonal updates an app needs will vary significantly depending on what kind of app it is. Different apps will want to focus on different aspects of Fall, or even begin preparing for Winter events in advance.
Fall Weather & Nature
The season provides a number of changes in nature, from falling leaves to the cold and wind. Apps focused on these should update accordingly.
For instance, apps focused on trees and plants should update their creatives to show appropriate seasonal imagery. Including trees with leaves changing colors can signal to users that it’s updated for Fall. Crisp fallen leaves and growing pumpkins set the seasonal mood and show users that it’s still relevant this time of year.
Weather apps can update to show their weather alerts and information relevant to Fall. They can mention tracking strong Fall winds and rain, flood alerts and more. Focusing on each season’s changes and the natural dangers that are more of a threat for that season will help the app appear for users searching for those terms.
Thanksgiving
After Halloween, the next major holiday is Thanksgiving. There are several apps that can focus on the holiday.
Cooking and recipe apps are the most obvious. With Thanksgiving approaching, users will be interested in recipes for the holiday, such as turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Recipe apps that include similar meals can focus on indexing for Thanksgiving keywords by integrating them into the metadata and using creative sets built around Thanksgiving dinners.
The Thanksgiving Recipes app is built around the keyword and includes screenshots of several Thanksgiving recipes.
There’s more to Thanksgiving than just food. A number of apps can update for Thanksgiving, such as storybook apps that include Thanksgiving-themed tales, emoji apps, picture apps with Thanksgiving photo frames and so forth. The holiday is a month away, so it’s important to start targeting those terms now to stay ahead of the competition.
Black Friday & Cyber Monday
The busiest shopping season of the year starts as soon as Thanksgiving ends. Shopping apps of all sizes are preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where users will shop for the best holiday deals they can find. Apps with deals for those days will want to target the terms to appear near the top of the search results for searches like “Black Friday shopping” and “Cyber Monday deals” in order to get as many sales and downloads as possible.
In order to do this, they need to target the keywords and emphasize them in the description and creatives. Calling out the savings, the variety of things users can buy, the ease of use and any other unique benefits can help convert users before Black Friday begins and during their shopping sprees.
For examples of how apps optimized for Black Friday last year, look no further than Gummicube’s report on Black Friday 2018 winners and how they optimized. This year, developers should keep in mind changing trends, such as how Dark Mode can impact their creative sets.
Fall Fashion
Shopping apps can focus on more than just Black Friday, especially those focused on clothing and fashion. Users looking for new seasonal styles will search for terms like “Fall Fashion.” Developers that want to target those users should focus on those terms and demonstrate their relevance.
FashionNova’s screenshots use Fall-focused colors and showcase warm clothing for the season in its screenshots.
Overall
There are a wide number of reasons why an app would want to update its creative sets for the season beyond various holidays. Whether it’s for shopping, recipes, styles or more, incorporating seasonality into an app’s ASO can help it reach more users and get featured on the stores.
While the Winter holidays are still a few months off, many app developers are already thinking about their ASO for them. There is still a need for seasonal updates between the holidays - there’s more to the season than just one holiday after another. Updating for seasonality can help an app remain relevant any time of the year.
Want more information regarding App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube and we’ll help get your strategy started.
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