Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's talk
about how to find your ASO failure points.
Alright, so today, let's talk a little bit more about ASO or App Store Optimization. Particularly, let's talk about the different
points of failure along the ASO route. Earlier this week I got an email from somebody who
- I think he was releasing his first app and he asked me to have a look at it. So, I did.
I said, "Yeah, looks good." And he said, "In fact, after a couple of months, I don't get
very many downloads. Is it because the app is bad or is it because my ASO was bad?" Y'know,
I said, "That really depends, right? You have to look where - at the numbers and where you
think it starts to fail." And I started to think about how we all think about ASO and
App Store Optimization. For a lot of people, it's this magic bullet. So many people, like
ASO consultants and everything out there - it's become a thing. So, what I thought I would
do today is talk a bit more of my ASO strategies and also looking at the failure points along
the way. Because ASO is not a magic bullet for everything. You can't have like a really
bad app and a really good ASO and then do really well. But, I do think that if you do
have a mediocre app with really good ASO, so you're better off than the person with
the perfect app and nobody know about it. I just think that's the case. And what I think
- the way I like to think about ASO is that it's like - it's like a flow. You, basically,
you have this pipeline, in fact, a traditional sales pipeline where, you know, we got the
big crowds, and you're trying to get down to the paying customers. It's a lot like that.
And we have all the tools to look at it that way. So, to give an analogy, let's say your
best friend decides to open up a restaurant and it's gonna be this new thing, right? But
then after a couple of months, he comes to you and says, "You know what, nobody's - I'm
not making any money from this restaurant. What should I do?' You can't say, "Well, you
should probably fire your chef." because you don't know where things are failing, right?
In order for somebody to spend money in a restaurant, lots of things have to happen
before that. They have to - they have to know the restaurant exists, they have to want the
food that's in the restaurant, they have to walk in the front door, they have to like
something on the menu, they have to order something and hopefully they'll leave a review
for other people to go to the same journey and then it starts to snowball. And apps are
very much the same way. We all have different points that we need people to hit. First of
all, we need to make sure that they know that the app exists. If they don't know the app
exists, it could be the best app in the world, but it doesn't matter because they don't know
it exists, right? They need to find it in the search. If they
can't find it, then it might as well not even exist. They have to - when they see the icon
they have to actually go and look at the page, have to walk through the front door, to decide
whether not to download it, they have to - once they're in the application, whether or not
they'll make an in-app purchase or if they gonna see any ads they like, anything like
that. Anyone of those stages there can be a blockage. The wonderful thing about ASO,
which in ASO, it's not a magic thing. It's just optimizing for the app stores. You have
to make sure that your stuff can be found. You have to make sure - the same way that
the restaurant has to make sure the sign is visible from the street, or he has to make
sure it has yellow pages, you have to make sure what people is looking for and are able
to find it. That's kind of a way we have to do it. Now, the great thing about both iTunes
and Google Play is that they've given us the tools. And this is just lofe fairly recent.
It's kinda like a year or two. When I started out, we didn't have these kinds of things
but they have the tools to find out whether or not this kind of stuff works. So, when
the guys asked me, whether or not he would be having an ASO problem or app problem, it
all depends on the numbers. Let's just walk through the stages. We're gonna do - I'm gonna
talk about the same app. I'm gonna talk about my biggest app, which is called Ear Spy on
the App Store and it's called Ear Agent on Google Play because we had to change it for
policy reasons. And let's look at the different stages using the tools. These are not paid
tools. It's just tools within the Google Play. So - or iTunes and Google Play. First, have
a look at my screen here and uh, so here's my - the app page on the iTunes Connect for
Ear Spy, and if you up here on the upper right-hand corner you got App Analytics, and if you go
from the main page, you could just see the App Analytics - the analytics for all of your
apps at one time, but it's easier for me just to go into this. If I go ahead and click on
this, at this point I could see every single stage along the way. And ASO deals a lot of
different things. A lot of different optimization points but knowing where your ASO is failing
depends on what kind of results that you're getting. Here you go, we got the top row here.
The top rows are the only one that I'm really ever pay much attention. Though all of the
bottom rows, I'm sure it provides value, especially the crashes. So, you can see here that over
the last 30 days, this application had just over half a million impressions, which means
that people were searching and it shows up. Or could've been a feature or could've been
whatever, but for whatever reasons, they saw it on the list. It's becoming aware to people.
But all those half a million people, only 55,000 actually clicked on it and looked at
the product page. So whatever. This is a problem on the ASO scale, this is a failure of, well
not really a failure because we don't expect a hundred percent conversion, But people have
- they've seen the icon, they've seen the title, they've seen them - and everything
like that, but they weren't compelled enough to actually click on it and view more details.
And then we got the Product Page here. So, at this point, it's the work of the screenshots,
the app video, the description, and the more the app video and the screenshots than the
other stuff. People don't read the description as much as they used to and a really good
video is really good. And this is - I was really - especially on the Apple side, I hate
doing Apple videos. It' so difficult to do. On Google Play, just to a YouTube video, upload
it, it's fine. But on the Apple side, it's a bit more difficult. So here, of the 55,000
people who saw it, I can see that only 20 thousand have actually downloaded it. It's
actually pretty good. So, they read it, they looked at the page, they saw the screenshots
and at that point, they made a decision. So, we the have two different jumps there. First,
they don't even know it exists, then they walk through the front door, then they liked
the sign, all that kind of stuff. Once they're in the application, only a whopping 270 people
actually made a purchase. Whoa! (sighs) That's depressing! A lot of my revenues comes from
advertisements too, but you know, at this point, you see, when they are in the application,
do they even know the in-app purchases exist? Are they compelling enough for them? All that
kind of stuff. In the traditional sales funnel will be like going down and you have that
pit at the bottom, and if there's a blockage anywhere in there, then you have to widen
that part. This is why ASO focuses a lot on the icon design, on keywords - so like at
the impression sides here, in order to have an impression, the keywords have to be right.
The title has to be right. People have to be searching for it. It has to - we have to
optimize things in a certain way before they even see the icon, before they even see the
screenshots. In order for them to actually get in to the product page, at this point
is the icon and the title. When they see that big list of apps there, they have to say.
"This one looks interesting." And then they go and find more. And then they go in there
to actually make a decision to purchase, so this will be the result of the screenshots,
the reviews, of the descriptions, the videos, all that kind of stuff. So, ASO is not magic.
There's no special skills there. It's just thinking things in a logical way. How are
people finding it. For a lot of us, the problem is way over here before we even get to the
impressions because are keywords are wrong, or it's too crowded, or you know, theres no
way we can even compete with these keywords. So, we have the same thing over here on Google
Play, So if I go over here to the app download page for Ear Spy or Ear Agent rather, oh it's
over here under the User Acquisition. So, if I just go in here the user acquisition
reports, we got the same kind of stuffs. what we don't have is - is we don't have the impressions.
We start a little bit later on the flow here. So, over the last 7 days, 51,000 people have
have viewed this - the page for my application, and of those 51 thousand people - so, at this
point, I know that my keywords are right, at least for that group of people, my icon
looks pretty good, all that kinds of stuff. But it could be better. This is the thing.
You're always experimenting because we could always grow that number. Well, the most I
could ever get in terms of download in this point in time is 51 thousand. And of those
51 thousand, 13 thousand actually downloaded the application so it would be 26% conversion
rate which makes me think how can I improve my screenshots, how can I make it a bit more
compelling? Are the bad reviews putting people off? Are the good reviews not good enough?
All that kind of stuff. And then, all those people, of those 13 thousand people only 17
buyers! That's the reality of the app market. At least it is for me. But you know, I know
other people do much better. And 4 people, repeat buyers. So, for me, it's always thinking,
how can I improve different stages along that route. So, if somebody says to me, is my app
bad? Or do I have an ASO problem? It kinda depends. If nobody - if you're not getting
any impressions and nobody knows your app exists, you have an ASO problem. If people
are downloading your app and they're uninstalling it right away, then maybe you have an app
problem. So, it's always thinking about the different ways on the chain. Let me show you
one here that's doing really, really bad. Just to give you an idea. This one is Agent
X it's got hardly any downloads. The keywords are really bad and all that kind of stuff.
So here you can see over the last 7 days, I've had 82 store listing visitors. If I had
a bus, I can fit them all in the bus. This is how bad this is. 10 of them installs with
a very low conversion rate, which means my keywords are bad - the fact that I have 82
visitors means that the market is too crowded, my keywords are probably too broad or too
generic. My keywords that I'm doing for this one are like learn algebra, algebra, and math
and that's just way too crowded. So it's neither showing up nor high enough in the listings.
And then the installers and the blah, blah, blah... The nice thing about Google Play is
you have, if you go to under the store presence there, you have the store listing experiments
so you could try out different things. And with Google Play, you usually got a lot better
feedback on that. I really want to go through this once again talking about the basics of
ASO because there's a lot of information out there, and there's
a lot of stuff that almost borders on mystique like, you know, what time of day you upload
the app and all this kind of stuff, but really is looking at these different key points in
the pipeline and where can you optimize them and where can you make these points bigger.
Anyway, I hope this has been a little bit helpful today than other days. Anyway, that's
it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, on Monday!