Matthäus Krzykowski, Xyo Co-Founder Casual Connect Hamburg, February 13th

www.slideshare.net/xyologic

Beyond Top Charts: How To Benefit From App Search User Behavior And Current App Store Optimisation (ASO) Techniques

Why is app search important?

App Discovery Channels for developers

... but none of these work effectively

Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete

"It's brutal, it sucks. [...] I ask my 9-year-old 'How are you picking these games?' and he says 'Dad, I don't know, it's in the top 25.' That's a shitty reason. Really? That's the best you can do?”

- Rob Dyer, Head of Partner Publishing, Zynga

Why most channels don’t work well enough (anymore)

apps

0.1% 50%downloads

get

Implication: The discovery problem

About Us, Our Take On App Search And What You Can Get Out Of This Presentation

Matthäus Krzykowski - @matthausk

- Co-Founder Xyo, heading growth

- Multiple PM & business unit leader roles in mobile & digital since 2006

- In “mobile growth” since 2007 where I was a PM at Admob’s largest publisher of that time

- Since then we saw 3 waves of user acquisition: 1) “Open Mobile Web” Advertising 2) Display Advertising (Admob/Quattro/Mobclix) 3) Installs (Tapjoy/Flurry) source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/21/apples-app-discovery-lead-on-google-is-shrinking-but-mobile-publishers-shouldnt-be-too-worried/

- Xyo, invested in by Rick Thompson’s Signia Venture Partners & Gameforge’s Klaas Kersting, is a tech play that aims to influence the 4th wave

“22% Install Click Rate Across 14 Languages”

“75% of apps get 90% of downloads”

We Enable The Long Tail Of App Search

Promoted by:

www.techcrunch.com/2012/12/06/xyo-nokia/

Xyo’s search algorithm identifies over 700 app and 100 game interests

Xyo: If you give users better descriptions of what games and apps are about, they download them

apps

0.1% 50%downloads

get

Back to the discovery problem

Where the mobile game gold rush is atTop 5 Mobile Consumer Game Interests, USA, iPhone

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!3.0!!!!

!4.0!!!!

!5.0!!!!

!6.0!!!!

!7.0!!!!

%!of!Ac1ves!in!Category!

%!of!Apps!in!Category!

% of Actives in Total Gaming, iPhone % of Apps in Total Gaming, iPhone

Build & Manage SimsRacing GamesClassic ArcadeJump & RunRole-Playing Games

!"!!!!!!

!1.0!!!!

!2.0!!!!

!3.0!!!!

!4.0!!!!

!5.0!!!!

!6.0!!!!

!7.0!!!!

%!of!Ac1ves!in!Category!

%!of!Apps!in!Category!

% of Actives in Total Gaming, iPhone % of Apps in Total Gaming, iPhone

Learning Games for KidsSpace & AliensQuiz TriviaBlock GamesBoard Games

Where you currently don’t want to beTop 5 Game Interests with the highest discovery problem, USA, iPhone

What to do about it?

One solution: ASO.

App Store Optimization

GoalIncrease Traffic

Increase Conversion

“These are the super early days of ASO.”Tomasz Kolinko, Appcod.es

"For developers without access to a giant ad budget to boost-market their App into the Top Apple Charts, App Store SEO might be the best bet to improve discoverability inside the over-crowded App Store." Niren Hiro, Searchman

Every store is different, but they have a lot in common:

- Title, description

- Downloads

- Ratings & reviews

- Icon & screenshots

- Backlinks & social signals

- Browsing & search

ASO: “A set of techniques to improve ranking for specific user queries in the app store”

The Super Early Days Of ASO - StatusA Simple Model To Compare SEO & ASO, February 2013

*Since the Chomp update last autumn trials around popularity of queries

** Early trials with external signals (appstore.com vanity urls etc)

***External signals (web links, Google+ ratings) "will" become more important

SEO ASOASOASO

Web Apple App Store Google Play Windows Phone Store

Keywords Advanced Simple + Trials* Simple Simple

Popularity Backlinks Ratings + Trials** Rating + Trials*** Ratings

Conversion Optimization

Title,  Descrip-on,  rel=author,  markups  

like  ra-ngs...

Title, Icon, Description, Screenshots, Ratings, Reviews

Title, Icon, Description, Screenshots, Videos,

Ratings, Reviews

Title, Icon, Description, Screenshots, Ratings, Reviews

Apply Changes easy

hard  -­‐  if  you  change  anything  you  need  to  submit  a  new  version  of  the  app  and  go  through  the  approval  

process,  this  makes  changes  and  a/b  tes-ng  hard

medium hard

Bidding yes

App Title

- Title is important

- Use keywords: “Lyrics”, “Bike Race Free”

For consumers the iOS 6 App Store update has significantly shortened the title space they can view.

For App Search

For Consumers

App Description

- Explain what the game does; first 2-3 lines key

- Use bullet points / keep it simple

- Important for conversion

Dos

Don’ts - Don’t brag about how consumers love your games;

you are wasting the 2-3 first lines

“For descriptions, we've advocated exactly what you have on there, but we also advocate including authoritative reviews in the description (certainly not in the top part of the description though -- we agree that's just a waste of text). For Google Play, it's even better if you can include reviews that include targeted keywords.” 

Patrick Haig, MobiledevHQ

Ratings & Reviews

- Getting more and more important (see above)

Ratings Are A Minimum Requirement

Internal and external reviews

- Happy about that 4 star average rating? The average rating on the App Store is 3.8

New users don’t understand if your game is any good as only the most positive ratings are a meaningful signal to users

- “Prompt users for feedback so users can convey problem before they post a negative review” (Appnique)

- Ask for reviews

“We have an article here from InsideMobileApps that illuminates how important ratings are, segmented by each store (Google Play and iTunes). Also, it's becoming even more important for publishers to improve upon their current version rating, as that's the only rating seen by a searcher in-device (i.e., searching on their iPhone or iPad). Users have to dig in order to see the All Versions rating, which just doesn't happen.” 

Patrick Haig, MobiledevHQ

App Icon

- Do not use words

- Do not use standard gloss

- Keep it simple and clean

- Consistent with the app

Source: http://www.pixelresort.com/blog/iphone-app-icon-design-best-practises/

Screenshots

Jai Jaisimha, Appnique

“Moment of truth: iOS6 design increases importance of the screenshot because that is mostly what they see in the App Store client on the phone”  “Definitely agree with where you're headed here. Screenshots need to be more than just screenshots. Advertising copy can be really helpful. Treating screenshots like a stop-motion commercial can be powerful.” Patrick Haig, MobiledevHQ

Holy Grail: The perfect keyword

-High search volume-Low competition-High relevance

“Developers can take steps to get the No. 1 rank under each of their “long tail” keywords. That is, developers can optimize their rankings for keywords that will give them better results on the App Store when users go searching for certain kinds of apps.” Niren Hiro, Searchman

“ If you assume that some of the user behavior we see on the web will transfer to mobile, then when it gets cumbersome for users to browse results, they will enter more descriptive phrases to get relevant results fast. Longer phrases are 70 percent of search volume on the web (indicator), they’re less competitive, and probably see higher post-click conversion (download) rates because the user explicitly searched for “free video poker game.”

Will history repeats itself?

Niren Hiro, Searchman

XYO Insights: Types of search queries

0 %

25 %

50 %

75 %

100 %

5 % Brand

5 % Function

10 % Inspiration

80 % Interestwww.xyo.net/blog/into-the-unknown-of-mobile-app-search-the-4-types-of-mobile-app-search-users/

“What might also be interesting here would be something about conversion. We follow a similar strategy in our consulting where we approach it from the bottom-up. Meaning, we go from low(er)-volume, high-conversion keywords (such as "golf coaching"), all the way to what we call secondary and tertiary market keywords, like "coaching" or "sports." Conversion for branded and function searches are likely to have higher conversion rates than inspiration or interest searches -- and interest searches may have even better conversion rates than inspiration searches. “

Patrick Haig, Mobiledevhq

Brand Queries: „Is there a new angry birds game?“

Sample Keywords: „angry birds, fifa, office, weight watchers“

Functional Queries: „I need to crop an image!“

Sample Keywords: „crop photos, block calls, view movie“

Inspirational Queries: „Which are the best games!“

Sample Keywords: „best games, free apps, fun games“

Interest Queries: „golf apps“

Sample Keywords: „golf, diabetes, job interview, racing games“

Explain in your description why your game is fun.

Research the right keywords

- Dedicated Tools

- appcod.es

- appnique.com

- mobiledevhq.com

- searchman.com

Thanks to: Tomasz (Appcod.es), Niren (Searchman, Jai (Appnique), Patrick (Mobiledevhq) for feedback and to Sebastian (Fluidmobile) for large chunks of the deck.

Takeaways

- Discovery continues to get more difficult

- ASO can improve your downloads

- Find the right keywords

Thank you.

Meet metwitter.com/matthauskmatthaus@xyo.net

Meet us

twitter.com/xyologicwww.xyo.net

Resources

http://makeappmag.com/how-choose-keywords-apple-app-store-seo/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/24/the-google-of-the-app-search-era-just-might-be-google/