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Huckleberry: Baby and Child iOS App Store Spotlight

October 11th, 2024

Huckleberry: Baby and Child iOS App Store Spotlight
David Quinn

by David Quinn

VP of Strategy & Partnerships at Gummicube, Inc.

As a new parent, balancing daily life and keeping track of your baby's ever-changing needs can feel overwhelming. Between keeping track of feeding schedules, monitoring sleep patterns, managing health metrics like temperature and medication, and juggling diaper changes, it’s easy to feel like you're drowning in endless to-dos. The sheer volume of information to remember and organize can be stressful, especially when all you want is to focus on bonding with your little one and adjusting to your new routine.

This is where baby tracking apps, like Huckleberry: Baby and Child, become an amazing tool. They take the guesswork out of tracking your baby’s essential activities, offering structured and comprehensive logs for feedings, sleep, growth, and even milestones. Not only do they simplify your daily routine, but they also provide peace of mind by ensuring that nothing important slips through the cracks.

But what makes Huckleberry stand out in a crowded market of baby trackers? Beyond basic tracking, it goes a step further by providing personalized insights and tools, such as its popular “SweetSpot” sleep prediction feature, which helps parents establish sleep routines based on expert recommendations. The app is designed to support healthy habits, helping parents feel more in control and confident about their baby’s needs.

In this review, we’ll dive deep into Huckleberry’s key features, assess how it performs in the app store from a user’s perspective, and compare it with its top competitors. From usability and design to the effectiveness of their App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy, we’ll explore what makes Huckleberry an app worth considering for new parents—and where it might have room to improve.

Let’s get started!

KEY FEATURES OF HUCKLEBERRY

Tracking Essentials: Huckleberry allows you to track all the critical aspects of your baby’s daily life, including:

  • Feedings (bottles, nursing, pumping)
  • Sleep patterns
  • Diaper changes
  • Growth metrics
  • Medications and health indicators (like temperature)

What sets Huckleberry apart is its commitment to helping parents manage their child’s sleep routine with its unique "SweetSpot" nap predictions—a feature designed to optimize nap times based on your baby's age, wake times, and desired bedtime.

Subscription Plans: Huckleberry offers two subscription tiers:

  1. Huckleberry+: Provides general tracking features with sleep recommendations.
  2. Huckleberry Premium: Includes personalized sleep consultations, tailored for parents who want in-depth advice on improving their baby’s sleep habits.

APP STORE OPTIMIZATION (ASO) INSIGHTS

In the crowded baby tracking app market, standing out requires more than just offering excellent features—it demands strategic App Store Optimization (ASO). With thousands of apps available, making sure your app is both visible and appealing to potential users is essential for success. ASO includes optimizing various elements such as the title, subtitle, description, and visuals, all of which play a crucial role in attracting users.

Let’s break down how Huckleberry: Baby and Child performs in this area, focusing on key ASO components like the title, subtitle, and overall presentation.

TITLE AND SUBTITLE:

  • Title: "Huckleberry: Baby and Child" (25/30 characters)
  • Subtitle: "Baby Tracker & Sleep Experts" (28/30 characters)

Huckleberry uses 25 out of the 30 characters allowed for its title, which is an efficient use of space, but there’s room for improvement in terms of clarity. The word “Huckleberry” by itself is quite unique and memorable, but it doesn’t immediately communicate what the app does or who it’s for. A new parent quickly scanning through the app store might not immediately associate "Huckleberry" with baby tracking or sleep support just by the name alone. However, by adding “Baby and Child” after the colon, the app gives users a clearer indication that it’s designed for tracking babies and children, making it more accessible to its target audience.

The subtitle, on the other hand, does a fantastic job of zeroing in on the app’s unique selling proposition. With 28 out of 30 characters used, the subtitle—“Baby Tracker & Sleep Experts”—clearly defines the app’s core strengths. The inclusion of “Sleep Experts” sets Huckleberry apart from many other baby-tracking apps that don’t offer this level of expertise. This simple but powerful phrase appeals directly to the needs of parents who are seeking more than just a basic tracker—they’re looking for informed advice and guidance on establishing healthier sleep patterns for their baby.

This strong, focused subtitle is key to drawing in parents who are specifically interested in optimizing their baby’s sleep. The clarity and precision in the subtitle work well to position Huckleberry as an authoritative app for sleep-related tracking, helping it stand out in a highly competitive space.

WHY THIS MATTERS:

In the app store, you often only have a matter of seconds to grab someone’s attention. Potential users may be scrolling through a sea of baby apps, so it's crucial that both the title and subtitle are clear and immediately convey what the app offers. 

A concise, relevant title paired with an effective, attention-grabbing subtitle helps make Huckleberry more searchable and relevant in the app store. This is especially important for apps like Huckleberry, where specific keyword searches in the app store are vital for reaching their target audience—new and expectant parents.

By being mindful of best ASO practices, Huckleberry ranks #5 for including a high volume term like “Baby Tracker” throughout their title, subtitle, and description. 

VISUAL APPEAL: SCREENSHOTS

There are likely a few reasons why Huckleberry ranks #5 for “baby tracker” and not #1.

One of the first things users assess when they discover an app for the first time in the search results is the screenshots. 

Let’s take a look at the other four apps ranked ahead of Huckleberry:

top baby tracker apps

From left to right, the top four apps ranking for “baby” tracker all have distinct commonalities that may be working for them:

  1. Larger copy making it easier to read at a glance
  2. Shorter copy which allows for each app to immediately get to the point
  3. Clear and visible UI which allows the user to get a better understanding of how the app functions before they download.

When we take a look at Huckleberry:

huckleberry ios search result

Huckleberry’s screenshots are attractive and modern, but miss a few key points:

  1. The text is small, and too long. When you’re on a small screen like a phone, larger amounts of text (which is shrunken to fit onto the screen) is difficult to read. While they do include “baby tracker” as part of the copy, the majority of users likely can’t read the benefits too quickly.
  2. Small UI. One of the key things users are looking to understand is overall usability. Will this app be easy to use? Does this app have the features I need? They’ll look at the actual UI of the app to  understand exactly that. While the overall design is modern, the tilting phones can potentially make things harder to see as a user scrolls.

What works well:

  • Bold text is used strategically to direct attention to critical features.
  • Consistent branding across screenshots keeps the visuals clean and professional.
  • The "badge" claiming how many users trust the app boosts credibility, adding social proof early in the user's browsing experience.

The importance of screenshots in ASO can’t be overstated. They need to be informative, aesthetically pleasing, and highlight key features quickly. For more on effective screenshot design, check out this helpful [screenshot optimization guide].

Huckleberry has tons of opportunity to A/B test their creative to increase their overall conversion rates, but to ultimately increase their rankings across higher volume terms being searched with by their immediate audience.

COMPETITOR COMPARISON: GLOW BABY TRACKER & GROWTH APP

Now, let’s take a closer look at how Huckleberry: Baby and Child compares to its competitor, the Glow Baby Tracker & Growth App. Both apps offer similar tracking capabilities, but there are key differences that may influence download decisions.

METADATA

Glow Baby uses the full character count for both its title and subtitle. The subtitle, “Milestone, Pumping, and Baby Sleep,” provides a clear overview of what the app offers, but this broad focus can feel scattered. It’s appealing to parents seeking an all-in-one tracker, though it lacks specialization in any one area.

In contrast, Huckleberry emphasizes sleep expertise with its subtitle, “Baby Tracker & Sleep Experts,” which conveys its unique strength—sleep tracking. This narrower focus is more likely to attract parents who are specifically struggling with their child’s sleep patterns.

However, while Glow Baby’s subtitle may be broad, it actually targets more keywords with significant volume than Huckleberry. Huckleberry’s only high volume term is “baby tracker”, which may be limiting their overall visibility.

Glow Baby’s overall keyword rankings exceed that of Huckleberry’s too, indicating a better structured title, subtitle and keyword bank allowing them to expand their reach and rank in the top 15 for more high volume keywords  in the iOS App Store.

DESCRIPTION

Both apps utilize the full character limit in their descriptions, but their presentation of the information differs.

  • Glow Baby:
    • Uses longer paragraphs under each bullet point, but focuses on adding additional content to support the main subject.
      • Each section begins with a high volume phrase, which is then supported with additional copy
    • Keywords are better emphasized within Glow’s description. Should they be running Apple Search Ads, their description would be much better suited for better performance.
    • Their description is organized, with each paragraph dedicated to specific functions.
  • Huckleberry:
    • The description breaks up information into concise bullet points but it isn’t necessarily clear in terms of how each function benefits the parent.
    • The features don’t flow from one feature to the next, which may feel disjointed for some users and could potentially hurt conversion.
    • The key accolades are at the very end of the description. To build credibility, important selling points would need to be moved to the beginning where more users are more likely to read.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

While Huckleberry ranks relatively well for important keywords, there’s always room to improve. We would recommend: :

  • Updating metadata, to ensure that Huckleberry is targeting the right terms used by all parents, potentially branching out into terms that have similar demographics. 
  • Cleaning up creative so that Huckleberry’s key functionality can be seen more prominently in the search results. Over time, through A/B testing, their keyword rankings can increase above their top competitors.
  • Reassessing the description, to ensure that a firm structure is there to support keyword targeting, and overall readability..

CONCLUSION

Why Huckleberry wins: 

In a competitive market, Huckleberry: Baby and Child sets itself apart through its user-friendly design, effective ASO strategy, and specialized sleep-tracking expertise. With a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars based on over 32,000 reviews, it’s evident that parents appreciate the value Huckleberry brings. However, with a refined ASO strategy to cover both metadata and creative, its performance can grow as quickly as a newborn.

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