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Line Webtoon App Store Spotlight
March 29th, 2019
by Anh Nguyen
COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc
LINE WEBTOON is an app where webcomic artists can upload their comics for readers to find and enjoy. It hosts a number of hit online comics, designed for easy reading on mobile devices. The app makes it easy to find a new comic to enjoy, but is it an easy app to find on the App Store and Play Store? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at LINE WEBTOON’s App Store Optimization.
iOS
On the Apple App Store, LINE WEBTOON is ranked #27 in the Entertainment category. It’s the top-ranked app under searches for “webtoon,” “line manga,” and similar terms, as well as the second-highest app for terms like “webcomic,” “daily comics” and “newspaper comics.” It also ranks in the top ten for competing comic apps, such as “comixology” and “marvel comics app” at #5. Its rankings get a bit lower for “manga” at #16, “marvel” at #23 and “line app” at #29.
Creatives: LINE WEBTOON chooses a strong image to start with. While it doesn’t have a video, the first screenshot on iOS highlights some of its most popular webcomics by placing the characters from it around a phone. This instantly signals to users that the app contains all these characters and the comics they’re in.
The following screenshots are more basic, highlighting the various features of the app. The callout text mentions features such as the personalized experience, daily webcomics and variety of genres, but all three just show a scrolling menu, so it does little to engage the users. The callout text is basic as well, with little to make it pop and catch users’ eyes, although it does use green font to highlight certain keywords.
As the app only uses five screenshots, it has room to improve by adding more to highlight additional aspects of the app. For instance, one unique trait of Webtoons is how the webcomics in it are designed to be read while scrolling down on the phone, rather than a traditional left-to-right style. It could include a screenshot showing a webcomic to demonstrate the style.
It also touches on the “upload comics and get discovered” aspect in the final screenshot but does not have any others to go more depth into that. If the app wants to appeal to webcomic creators as well as readers, it could include more screenshots demonstrating the ease of uploading webcomics and how it can help reach new readers.
Title & Subtitle: The full title is “LINE WEBTOON – Daily Comics.” This is an effective title, utilizing 26 out of the 30 characters Apple allows while utilizing valuable branding terms and keywords.
However, it does not have a subtitle. It could provide more information about the app while increasing its keyword bank by including a subtitle like “Read free webcomics online.” This would illustrate its purpose at a glance while utilizing the 30 extra characters of keyword space.
Descriptions: The description for LINE WEBTOON starts off with proper formatting, as it uses short lines that quickly get the point across. These are easy to read at a glance on a mobile device. It only uses two lines before reaching the feature set, so it doesn’t provide much information outside of the very basic overview.
After the feature set, it includes a lengthier paragraph that provides more information. This could be split into smaller lines and added to the introduction, which would give users more of an overview of the app before getting into the specific features.
The feature set is just one list, covering every aspect. If the description were to break it into smaller feature sets, covering different aspects such as the variety of webcomics, ease of use, and benefits for webcomic creators, it would provide more information in a visually engaging style.
As it is, the existing description provides very little information about the app, so it could be expanded to give more of a full look at all the features it provides.
Google Play
On Google Play, LINE Webtoon ranks well for comic-based terms. It’s the top app under searches for “read comics” and “free comics,” the second-highest for “webcomics” and third-highest for “comics.” Outside of that, however, its rankings begin to fall; it comes in at #36 for “manga,” #24 for “line” and at #246 for “marvel.”
Creatives: The app uses the same screenshots on Google Play as it does on iOS. Like with iOS, it starts off with a very engaging image, that shows off some of its most well-regarded comics. After that, the remaining screenshots are less engaging.
A set of screenshots that shows off more of the app could improve its conversion rate. The creative sets engage with users and provide a look into the app, so this is a chance to show off the art, styles and appeal of the webcomics it has. While its first image does that very well, the remaining screenshots don’t catch quite as much attention.
Description & Metadata: The app’s description is identical on iOS and Google Play. While it’s still easy to read, it could be reformatted to provide more information about the app both in its introduction and its feature sets.
Keyword placement is very important in Google Play. A line that begins with “Mobile optimized scrolling” will have more difficulty ranking for important keywords than a line that starts with “Read comics online with a mobile optimized screen.” Simply rephrasing each line to begin with a keyword can do wonders for an app’s indexation.
If the app were to adjust its feature list into multiple feature sets, it could improve its indexation for keywords by using headers like “Read Free Comics” and “Webcomic Reader.” Utilizing the feature lists could also help it index for the names of popular comics it hosts, if any of them contain useful keywords.
Overall
LINE WEBTOONS provides hundreds of engaging webcomics and helps new creators reach a wider audience. In order to reach a bigger App Store audience, it could focus on improving its ASO.
Most of the screenshots could be redesigned to be more visually engaging, which is particularly important for a visual medium like comics. It has several good selling points it could highlight with the screenshots if it used more of the space it has available.
The descriptions can also be reformatted to provide more information upfront, organize the features and utilize more keywords. This could help improve its conversions by showing users what they can gain from it, while the keyword usage could help its indexation on Google Play and improve its relevancy for Search Ads on the Apple App Store.
With a little optimization, LINE WEBTOONS could improve its rankings for multiple keywords and reach a wider audience. While it has done well with its current rankings, imagine all the new readers and creators it could reach with a fully optimized store listing.
Want more information regarding App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube and we’ll help get your strategy started.
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