Mobile App Growth Insights - ASO News

October 26th, 2022

by Anh Nguyen

COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc

Welcome to Gummicube’s ASO Top Trends – a quick, one-stop shop for the latest developments in App Store Optimization, app store trends, quick tips to improve your ASO strategy, and so much more.

Let’s take a look at the top-grossing apps making headlines this week, ASO 2.0, and some of the economic impact of inflation and app store revenue.

TOP APPS MAKING HEADLINES

WhatsApp Down

On October 26th, WhatsApp made headlines for experiencing a massive outage across multiple countries. Many users found that their servers weren’t able to connect to the popular instant messaging app. Millions of people were affected by this outage, especially those who use WhatsApp as a primary form of communication across their mobile devices.

The issue was resolved after a few hours, however, this didn’t spare many of the businesses that use WhatsApp for secure communications. Additionally, the native Apple app, iMessage also experienced an outage around 7:00 AM PST. Users weren’t able to send their messages across their Apple devices.

For a localized app like WhatsApp outages like this cost upwards of millions of dollars in losses. Whether that be costly switching costs, advertising losses or general sentiment drops like these are bad news for both users and businesses.

DoorDash Takes on(line) Reservations

In the online reservation boom of COVID-19, making reservations to popular hotspots became as normal as QR-coded menus. Not often known for its catering to businesses' in-house operations, DoorDash might be dabbling in the online reservation space in addition to its food delivery services.

Since the introduction of online reservation apps, restaurants have seen more attendance, control, and reliability of popular establishments. This also proves to be a lucrative opportunity to upsell for restaurants as many of these POS app systems require a down payment to submit a digital reservation. Some digital liaisons also use that to scrape off revenues. DoorDash is looking into the digital/online reservation space soon. Making it easier and more convenient for users to book reservations at restaurants in the area.

Competition on the app stores for this feature can be highly competitive as businesses look to all different types of apps to help with business operations. To cut through the competition, DoorDash will have to start putting together its organic app marketing strategy together prior to launching this new feature.

APP MARKETING TRENDS HOT RIGHT NOW

ASO IS NO LONGER ABOUT DISCOVERABILITY

The shift to new, and robust store experiences are shaping the way we look at ASO and paid user acquisition. Before new store introductions, the app stores were primarily an opportunity for discoverability, conversion, and not much else. Once a user has downloaded the app, all interactions within the conversion funnel are essentially halted – screenshots, keywords are all essentially invisible. However, 2022 showed us that the app stores are changing the direction of how users experience, interact and navigate the app stores.

Store experiences are becoming more engaging with users, and the introductions of Custom Product Pages, Product Page Optimization, and new ad placements are just an example of the slow build of this new era of store experiences. Google Play is also now following suit with LiveOps.

Here’s a snippet from our ASO Company regarding the success of more immersive store experiences within the app stores. In this case, LiveOps Beta:

“Developers can submit content to be featured on the Play Store. In the beta stages of LiveOps, developers have seen 5% more daily active users and 4% higher revenue after a LiveOps feature. Comparable to In-app Events and Spotlight on iOS, LiveOps has helped developers highlight deals, special events, and new features to a relevant target audience.”

MARKETPLACE TRENDS – ALL EYES ON THE ECONOMY

With consecutive quarters of red lines, stagnant growth and inflation, it’s no wonder some of the biggest headlines of this month have been on the economy. Every sector and industry appears to be affected by hiring freezes, constricted budgets and other harbingers of change.

How has the app ecosystem been affected? Just this month Apple has seen a dramatic drop in revenue coming from the App Store specifically. It was the largest drop in revenue they’ve seen since 2015. What’s causing this?

In addition to inflation altering people’s cost of living, disposable incomes on behalf of consumers have ultimately contracted across most goods and services. A general shift toward cheaper alternatives seems to be dominating consumer spending. Whether that be buying store generic brands, or forgoing in-app purchases.

Will things look better or will they look worse in the near future? Although it’s difficult to say, some industries seem to be defying most hurdles associated with this round of economic uncertainty. A strong dollar has sent ripples across the global economy and consumers' wallets appear to feel the brunt of that strength.

Want to learn more about App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube and we’ll help get your strategy started.