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Uno App Store Spotlight

May 7th, 2019

Uno App Store Spotlight
David Bell

by David Bell

CEO at Gummicube, Inc.

Uno is a popular card game played around the world. Its app allows players to enjoy the game on the go with friends or solo, with a variety of rules options and tournaments. Is the app optimized to be the top draw on the App Store and Play Store, or is it shuffled to the bottom of the search results? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we take a look at Uno and see.

iOS

On the Apple App Store, Uno is the second-highest app in the Card category. In addition to being the top-ranked app for its own name, it also takes the top spot in searches for “card game” and “free board games.” It’s in the top five search results for “card games with friends,” “card party” and “classic board games,” and holds high rankings for competing games like “phase 10,” “Monopoly board game free” and “Scrabble.”

There are still a few keywords and phrases where its ranking could stand to improve, such as “offline card games” (#14), “games for family” (#23) and “card app” (#26). Overall, it takes high spots in many key searches for its brand and genre.

Creatives: Uno’s App Store page uses five screenshots and one video, all of which are formatted in a landscape style. As a result of their formatting, only one creative will show up under the app in search results – in this case, it’s a video.

The video itself is fast-paced and brightly lit, utilizing the color schemes and tones from each of the cards. iOS videos can only show in-app footage, so it shows the game in action to demonstrate the animations as the cards are played. The occasional text breaks introduce new features, such as multiplayer and custom rules modes, so it properly communicates the mobile game’s appeal.

The app’s five screenshots call out several features of the app, such as the leaderboard, multiplayer and tournaments. They’re laid out in such a way that it shows the cards popping out of the screen, while details move from one image to another and create a sense of consistency between the screenshots. The callout text atop the images uses the same font and color scheme as the “Uno” logo, so the branding carries across.

There is still room for five more screenshots, so while the ones it uses do a good job engaging with the user and providing key information, there is room for more. Additional screenshots could showcase features like the animations and avatars, certain custom rules or the ease of use. Utilizing every possible screenshot helps an app appeal to users and showcase all that it has to offer, so Uno could improve its app page by adding five more.

Title & Subtitle: The app’s title is “UNO!™” This uses five of the 30 characters the App Store provides, so there’s 25 characters for integrating keywords and showing users what the app is. In fact, its subtitle, “The World’s #1 Card Game,” uses 24 characters, so it could conceivably make its title “UNO!™ The World’s #1 Card Game” and use all 30 characters. This would free up its subtitle space for additional keywords and information.

Description: Uno’s description is not entirely optimized for the Apple App Store. While it utilizes a short introduction and feature sets, they are not formatted in a way that is easy for users to read while browsing on their phones.

The introduction properly provides engaging information about the app, but as it’s a dense paragraph, it’s easy to lose the key details within the text. By simply splitting the one paragraph of three sentences into two lines of 1-2 sentences, it would be easier to read at a glance.

The feature set lists information about the app, such as the Rules Mode, voice chat and real-time matches. This information is also presented in large paragraphs, so readers will glance over them without fully digesting everything. If the description were to turn them into bullet lists, it would be easier to read and take in at a glance.

Google Play

On the Google Play Store, Uno is the top app in the Card category. It’s the first app in searches for its name and variations like “Uno online” and “Uno multiplayer,” as well as “pass and play” and “play with friends.” The app is in the top three for “card games for kids,” “competitive games” and “games with friends,” as well as the top ten for “online card games,” “1 player games” and “card game.”

The app has a little more difficulty ranking for competitor terms, coming in at #9 for “Phase 10 free,” #11 for “Poker Night 2” and #15 for “Skip bo.” It also ranks #23 for “cards games” and “games for two players,” so there are still terms relevant to its features and gameplay where it can improve.

Creatives: The creative set is identical on iOS and Google Play. As with iOS, it begins with an engaging video, followed by five screenshots that show various features from the game. Google Play allows up to eight screenshots, so it could fit three more and showcase additional features.

The screenshots it does have are visually active and engaging, utilizing in-app imagery and bright colors to catch the user’s eye. The callout text is on-brand and large enough to get noticed, while providing short and succinct summaries of the app. It simply could use more.

Description & Metadata: Uno’s description for Google Play is not designed with the Play Store’s algorithm in mind. It uses the same description as on iOS, which provides relevant information but is not formatted for the store. In this case, the description is not utilizing keywords so as to index for them.

The description includes headers like “Rule Your Room,” which helps it rank as #195 for “Room,” and “Buddy Up,” which helps it rank #13 for “Holdem Buddy.” These are not relevant terms for the app. Instead it could focus on using terms like “Custom Card Game Rules” and “2v2 Games” to improve its indexation for them. Although it ranks well for several important keywords, it can still improve the rankings it does have and index for more terms by focusing on writing an optimized description.

As with iOS, the feature sets provide valuable information, but they could be formatted into bullet lists. These are easier to read quickly and help the app index for the terms they target.

Overall

Uno’s popularity as a card game has translated well into its popularity as an app. The app itself is well-built and offers a number of unique features, like optional rules and gameplay modes. With that said, it can still improve its rankings and conversions by adding more screenshots and adjusting its descriptions for each store. Writing one copy of the app’s description for the App Store and another for the Google Play Store will help it attract more users on each store, through formatting that’s easy to engage users and utilizes keywords.

Uno, like the name suggests, is #1 for many valuable keywords, but it doesn’t have the full deck yet. Even the best apps can still improve their rankings with App Store Optimization.

Want more information regarding App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube and we’ll help get your strategy started.

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