ASO — 2 Jul 2024
Best ASO Practices & Strategies for 2024-2025
Gabriel Kuriata 
ASO is the cornerstone of mobile app marketing. In 2024, virtually all user acquisition channels will lead to an app’s page on one of the two marketplaces: the App Store or Google Play. There are legislative efforts to allow alternative app distribution methods, like the Digital Markets Act in the EU, and more app marketplaces are out there. But the big two are convenient, easy to navigate, and really do care about user experience – with curated content sections and loads of initiatives to engage their users and connect with more apps.
The effects of app store optimization (ASO) will continue to influence all user acquisition channels. ASO activities are within reach of every app developer, provided they stick to several key principles. In this article, we review them and direct you to further materials to help you expand your knowledge.
App store optimization (ASO) is a never-ending process of properly configuring & adjusting the contents of an app’s page on any app marketplace, following their technical requirements and data on user preferences and trends in the industry/app category.
The endgame of ASO is visibility, organic traffic, and a high conversion rate that leads to many downloads. Make your app visible on the App Store and Google Play and have all visitors from all channels download it—it’s as simple as that.
All roads lead to Rome, but many journeys start right there. The App Store and Google Play are places where most app discovery journeys begin, with their search features, editorials, and internal ads. In the case of the App Store, over 65% of all downloads come after a search. The home page of the App Store is visited by half a billion users every week. What’s more, for many people, firing up the App Store or Google Play is the primary, if not only, means of finding new apps.
Increasing an app’s visibility means optimizing its page to the requirements and workings of a marketplace’s search algorithm. Like SEO, visibility-centric ASO activities are mostly about data-driven keyword optimization.
Optimizing the conversion rate means convincing the user in front of the smartphone screen that your app is the one they’ve been looking for. The conversion-centric part of ASO is about presentation, visuals, and taking care of all elements on an app’s page that could influence a decision to download the app.
Consequently, ASO is concerned with every element of an app’s product page, both keywords and visual assets. The scope of work is pretty wide, with both hard, data-driven, and soft (although still hopefully driven by measurable insights) optimization:
Yes, it is. On a technical level, they offer different metadata sets to configure and optimize. Their search algorithms react to different signals. Additionally, you may experience different performances of the same creatives due to differences in demographics and other factors.
You must know the technical requirements of both the App Store and Google Play, and you’d be best off testing visual assets for each separately. Check out this streamlined comparison between technical ASO for the App Store vs Google Play.
ASO is sometimes compared to SEO, as both deal with keyword optimization… but that’s where similarities end. There’s no link building (even though technically, we can position an app’s product page in external browsers), and we have no control over the technical parameters of an app’s product page, as ASO works within the framework of each marketplace. Don’t treat ASO as SEO; you’ll only limit yourself.
Some practices are gold and really haven’t changed much throughout the years; some are more important in 2024 than before and will be in 2025.
Best ASO practices in a nutshell:
1. Continuous keyword discovery, monitoring & optimization
2. Prioritize user intent and implement keywords properly
3. Test your visual assets and ground design in user feedback
4. Localize your product page for each target market
5. Manage reviews & monitor ratings
6. Always include paid user acquisition in your strategy
You aim to select the most popular and relevant keywords for your app’s product page metadata to make your app appear for search queries that will drive traffic and downloads. The basic principles are as follows:
First, concentrate on creating an expansive keyword pool. You can use many sources, but in 2024, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone without a specialized ASO platform (like App Radar) to give as many recommendations as possible, with all the key metrics for search popularity and estimated difficulty to rank for a selected keyword.
Second, keywords with insufficient search popularity and relevance should be eliminated. Search popularity is a metric in Apple Search Ads that estimates how popular a search query is. SplitMetrics Acquire includes an extended, more granular version of it.
Professional ASO platforms offer many additional metrics. For example, SplitMetrics Acquire includes Relevance Score, an ML-based metric for determining how relevant a keyword is to your app. App Radar shows Keyword Difficulty, which estimates how difficult it would be to rank for a specific keyword organically.
However, continuous performance monitoring is the most crucial aspect of keyword optimization. Search algorithms on the App Store and Google Play rely on many variables for ranking. Keyword popularity changes seasonally, and ranking difficulty fluctuates, too, based on what your competition does.
Take this example: “football game” can, in theory, be a valid keyword for both a sports betting app and a mobile game. Who is more likely to use this search query? Football enthusiasts looking for bets & live scores, or gamers? AI-driven insights can be immensely helpful, but you also need real-life data.
The same keyword may perform differently on the App Store and Google Play. More things can happen: “summer workout” can fall off the radar completely for a Health & Fitness app, and a rising rock star can drive more “guitar lessons” than “violin lessons.” The point is – app marketplaces are living ecosystems, and keywords reflect that.
Keyword expansion should always involve comprehensive ASO competitive research, careful semantic analysis of your app, and examination of search queries actually entered in any app marketplace’s search feature.
The next step is implementing your selected keywords on an app’s page. On the App Store, the key to success is the proper distribution of keywords between the title (app’s name), subtitle (short description right under it), and the keyword field (not displayed on the App Store, but significant for the algorithm).
On Google Play, keywords land in the name, as well as short and long descriptions. Keywords from user reviews also count, but these are beyond our control. Name & short description are close equivalents of title & subtitle on the App Store, so let’s focus on the long description.
The golden rule #1 is to prioritize relevance and user intent. Don’t try to be sneaky and stuff keywords that don’t really apply to your app.
The golden rule #2 is to monitor your organic ranking regularly and update all keyword-based metadata accordingly. In many cases, it may be more viable to invest in paid user acquisition (for holiday campaigns) periodically so as not to lose traffic from evergreen keywords.
Remember that the right keyword approach is decided within an app’s category or subcategory. For example, the Social Networking apps category comprises some powerful brands, leading to a fairly limited pool of generic keywords new apps could rely on to establish themselves. Branded keywords can be included in the keyword field, but they may be too difficult to rank for. Games are the opposite, with genre-specific, generic keywords being relevant and ever-growing.
Recommended reading:
Apple Search Ads Keywords in 2024: Basics, Expansion & Best Practices
Text metadata helps users find your app. Visual assets attract their attention and motivate them to install it (although the title, name, subtitle, and short description can play a significant role too).
The icon is the first visual asset users see. It’s visible in both search results and on the product page. Second only to screenshots, icons can tremendously impact conversion rates.
Screenshots are the key information carriers in the App Store and Google Play. There are some evergreen, universal rules for them: they should always include a call-to-action, key information about the app, and any proof you can get (ranks in categories, reviews, awards, and so on). However, many choices will depend on your app’s category and unique functionality.
Find many icon and screenshot optimization case studies on SplitMetrics website.
Golden rule: design choices for your icons and screenshots should be influenced by two sources:
Competitive ASO research will also be immensely helpful, as the end effect you see in any app marketplace is frequently a result of long-term optimization and many trials and errors. Studying your competitors is a way of learning from their mistakes.
However, it’s also important to stand out, as not all choices may apply to your fundamentally unique app, and many questions can be answered only by testing, like which character to use for promotion and so on.
The best practice is to stay in the loop. Study benchmark reports, like our ASO Benchmarks, read blogs on ASO, and grab any case studies you can; you’ll understand each app category on a more granular level. We highly recommend our Market Intelligence features, like App Radar’s Metadata Benchmarks.
[Metadata benchmarks official screenshot from its article]
Videos are a tough cookie because, in theory, they may serve as a fantastic display of your app’s capabilities; they simply don’t always work. Based on the data from App Radar’s Metadata Benchmarks feature, video is featured heavily by Games (60% of them on average) and Education apps (74%) but usually in the 15-24% range for many other categories. Not all apps need videos because they can efficiently communicate their value with screenshots.
While researching user behavior on the App Store and Google Play, we found some interesting things, like the latter watching them for longer. However, an average user still doesn’t stay on an app’s page for over 20 seconds. A captivating video should be short & informative. Trim all the fat you can and show as much of the app as possible.
Recommended reading:
SplitMetrics A/B Testing & Validation Framework to Win on the App Store
Localization, even a basic one like translating the title, subtitle, name, textual descriptions, and screenshots, can have a two-digit impact on your conversion rate in the target market. Going beyond the minimum can boost that KPI even further. We highly recommend the full scope of localization:
Regarding design choices, some markets require more customization than others (Japan comes to mind). However, don’t throw any of them into the same basket (Europe comes to mind), as there may be considerable differences between user preferences.
Again, competitive ASO research will contribute greatly to your localization efforts. We highly recommend using App Radar’s Localizations tool to see how your competitors localize their apps:
However, to understand the full scope of varying user preferences in foreign markets, we recommend using our CPP Intelligence feature, which will show how top apps appeal to foreign audiences.
According to data published by App Radar, app ratings and reviews are essential in the app evaluation process for 90% of users, and 80% look at them before downloading. Data from our experiments show that up to 25% of iOS and 19% of Android users will scroll down to the review widget, which might help to understand why a shift from a 3.0 rating range to one above 4 can have a triple-digit conversion uplift.
Reviews are important on two levels: they considerably impact conversion rates and provide useful feedback that will help you improve your app… or expand your keyword pool with search phrases your users actually use. On Google Play, reviews have a direct impact on organic rankings.
Search algorithms want to show users the best apps available, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that bad ratings can pull your app to the bottom of search results.
You don’t have direct control over user feedback. However, maintaining swift & open communication can improve your ratings and reviews in the long run. Merely being responsive and helpful will improve how you’re perceived.
Be quick to react and reply to all negative comments. Avoid practices such as rewarding good reviews, as they may lead to de-platforming.
Aim to have more reviews on your app’s page. Ask your users for reviews, but do it the right way. Set proper conditions to trigger a prompt asking for a rating and review makes the most sense.
We highly recommend reading Beginner’s guide to Apple App Store ratings & reviews on App Radar’s blog.
Organic can constitute a significant percentage of all traffic to your app’s product page, but getting there may take time… and money. User engagement, ratings, reviews, and download velocity are important ranking factors. Initially, your app has none of those, and without a boost from paid user acquisition, your ASO may miss the spark to ignite and set things into motion. The importance of engagement and how dynamically it’s expressed is logical, as it’s probably the best indicator of the app actually being good and worth recommending.
More importantly, app category-specific factors can influence the viability of your ASO, which is geared towards growing that organic traffic. Take the example of the Social Networking category. The presence of big brands, with great awareness among users, contributes to the significant percentage of branded search queries in their overall pool, making organic ranking for newcomers more challenging. Entertainment is also such a case.
The interrelationship between Apple Search Ads and ASO can help you amplify your organic rankings efficiently. Take the example of Locals, a social networking app, challenged by the category’s prominence of branded keywords and tough competition for generic, relevant ones. Bidding on them helped the app rank for them organically. Read the full case study: Locals: How to Sync ASO & Apple Search Ads for Higher Organic Ranking.
The role of paid traffic in augmenting your organic ranking goes beyond providing momentum and dynamics in downloads and engagement. Apple Search Ads search results campaigns have a direct, confirmed interrelation with organic rankings that you can use to your advantage.
How can paid user acquisition and the interrelation between Apple Search Ads and ASO help a new app take off? Read the case study of Livintis: How to Streamline ASO Efforts with Apple Search Ads Pre-Order Campaigns.
Traffic from any paid user acquisition source will boost your downloads and engagement and send a strong signal to the algorithm. Apple Search Ads will also boost your rankings for specific keywords.
Recommended reading:
TechTalks | Monetize to Maximize: ASO Strategies for App Growth
All these best ASO practices are firmly rooted in our practical experience with our clients’ daily work or in-house experiments run by the tireless SplitMetrics Agency team. Check out these real-life stories that help shape insights for successful campaigns of other apps:
Outside of Livintis and Locals cases we’ve shared above, here are three more that we’d like to turn your attention to:
We have so many visual asset optimization cases that we have an entire section of case studies dedicated to them. Here’s some examples, but we’d encourage you to visit the cases section on our website for more.
We have plenty of cases to share, and the joining of App Radar to the SplitMetrics family has boosted that number even more. Here’s a bunch of cool cases on localization:
App marketplaces are dynamic, constantly changing environments. Sure, they don’t change overnight, and UX redesigns are usually gradual, but they do happen. Technology evolves, and new types of devices appear. The popularity of entire genres of games or types of apps wanes as new ones emerge. ASO immediately reflects this. Here are some trends that we think will be significant in 2024 and 2025.
Tablets, wearable devices, and TVs are now joined by Apple Vision Pro, goggles that blend digital and real content in an expanded reality. Offering an experience that goes beyond what a common device can do, the visionOS App Store is its own entity, a gateway to entirely new experience, requiring a dedicated approach. Devices outside of smartphones and tablets will continue to grow, and more ASO specialists will find that taking care of them will be reflected in ROI.
Recommended reading:
The Ultimate App Store Optimization Guide for the visionOS App Store
In-app engagement is a strong ranking signal, and we predict it will become even more important. The increasing capabilities of iOS Smartphones mean that many installed apps aren’t actually opened and interacted with. Logically, apps that are actually opened and interacted with can be considered more recommendation-worthy than others.
There’s some good news here. Many apps are only opened once, forgotten about, but not deleted. This is both a boon and an opportunity. There’s work to be done, but something can be done, from push notifications to creative in-app events to ad campaigns.
It makes sense for app marketplaces to promote them for the benefit of their users. Think ahead and consider in-app engagement as an investment not only in ROI but also as a means of improving your standing on the App Store and Google Play. A well-thought-out monetization strategy that encourages in-app downloads or subscriptions may benefit you beyond generating revenue.
Google Play and the App Store give app developers access to the global market. Even newcomers on a tight budget can consider expanding worldwide right from the start because of how accessible these markets may be.
Let’s use some of our data for Apple Search Ads campaigns to illustrate this. According to our latest SplitMetrics’ Apple Search Ads Search Results Benchmarks Report 2024, the average CPA was $2.11 for the top 15 most popular markets and $0.99 for all the others. You may assume that behind high average CPA lies potentially substantial LTV per user, but don’t discredit other markets and the downloads and revenue they can contribute (you wouldn’t get rid of those long-tail keywords from your campaign pool, right?). To summarize, expanding into multiple markets immediately from the start may be a good idea.
Besides, a positive presence in one market can positively affect others. Being featured in one region increases your odds of being featured somewhere else. All markets contribute to your downloads and in-app engagement, and it wouldn’t be wise not to consider their impact on organic rankings from a wider perspective. Similarly, it’s better to assume that an unattended, poorly rated & reviewed app on one market signals potential troubles.
Either way, whether you’re a powerhouse looking for new opportunities to grow or a newcomer yet to establish a presence – localization should be a key element of ASO. Markets grow, audiences mature, and apps have to keep up the pace to stay in touch with them. Again, Apple Search Ads campaign data released by SplitMetrics shows something interesting here – in 2023, LATAM markets were among the most dynamic in terms of average conversion rates and tap-through rates, with Mexico topping the ranking with 13.61% TTR and 72.39% CR, signifying an engaged audience.
In consequence, what would have been considered a passable localization some time ago won’t necessarily fly in 2024 and 2025. App developers will need to put more effort into their localizations and go beyond merely translating their metadata and screenshots. Incorporating culturally significant elements into their design and communication will be necessary to establish a meaningful connection with foreign audiences.
Here’s a quick recap of the article:
