ASO Meetup: Tips to get app featured & A/B Testing Framework

Last month as part of our main core values ‘Learn’ and ‘Play’, the AppTweak team partnered up with Omio and Customlytics for a special edition of ASO strategies in Berlin.

‍ Who were the speakers?

Giacomo Melandri

Senior Mobile Marketing Manager @ Omio

Binh Dang

App Marketing Manager @ Customlytics

Gwenaëlle Kollegger

Business Developer @ AppTweak

⁉️ What was it about? A meetup for ASO professionals with a presentation on an Omio Case Study, explaining how to get your app featured and the impact on category ranking; and a presentation from Customlytics defining the Flawless environment for A/B testing (We also enjoyed some drinks and nice food )

When? 17th September 2019

Where? Omio’s Berlin cool offices

1. How to get your app featured and to measure its impact in category rankings” by Giacomo Melandri, Omio

Getting your app featured is not easy, however, you should take into consideration these factors:

• Insist! reach out plenty of times with different and improved versions. Do not get frustrated if you don’t get featured immediately. (Actually, we’ve seen the case of some customers that do it more than 4 times before they actually get featured)

Fill in a form and tell Apple your unique story

• Work on your story, provide nice and convincing content, and impactful creatives. Apple’s editorial team might change some of the elements once you’ve been chosen, however, they will get inspired on your story.
• Spot local events in advance and show how your app is valuable for the event.

Some examples:

Apple recently featured on the Today tab different apps on the story “7 Days of Apps for Gamers ”, anticipating some major gaming events happening worldwide like Gamescom, E3, FanExpo and Tokyo Game Show. All of the apps featured were chosen to improve the gaming fans’ experience.

As part of the “7 Days of Apps for Gamers”, Omio was featured as “App of the day” on the 20th of August across 30 countries.

Now, once you’ve been featured it’s essential to track and measure the whole effect of the story.

Therefore you should closely examine these elements:

• Keywords on which your story ranks and the ranking history
• Fluctuations on category rankings during the featuring and after it
• Number of impressions during the featuring and after it
• Conversion rate during the featuring and after it

Remember: On Apptweak, you can check all of this information!

For example:

You can check the keywords for which you were featured per country/day and the ranking position in the Search Results.

Because of the Featuring, your app can be featured in a Story on certain keywords that have a high volume, on which you don’t usually rank.

Expert tip: Identify rapidly those keywords and strengthen your brand before another one decides to bid on it and, reduces the visibility and impact of your brand during the featuring. Protect your brand with a clear Apple Search Ads strategy.

Also, do not forget to check your category rankings to see the effect of the featuring per country. Getting your app featured represents an opportunity to increase your Ranking History in markets where you might be strong or not!

2. “How to create a flawless environment to run app store experiments” by Binh Dang Customlytics

Disclaimer: Copyright from Customlytics- “A strategic management framework for app store experiments”

check out more about their framework here

Friendly reminder: An experiment in ASO is what helps you find the best conversion rate optimization (CRO) by using experimental research.

During an ASO experiment, you split your elements into a constant or control variant, and a test variant.

These elements are:

• Metadata elements: title, subtitle, short description, long description, promotional text, etc
• Or creatives elements such as the icon, videos, screenshots, featured graphics, among others

Pro tip: measure the conversion rate from a test sample and not from reality, and remember it is essential to have a safe and clean environment.

Also, check out more about the Average App Conversion Rate per category

❌ A bad environment will make you test the wrong things:

1. If you test too many things at the same time you won’t be able to learn properly, so be very careful.
2. Pay close attention to the platform and method that you choose for the A/B test, otherwise, the results will lead you nowhere. Anticipate and know what you are doing by picking the right one and right method, pick wisely your values and test.

For example, it’s impossible to test your app’s product page within Apple Search Ads Creative Sets, therefore you won’t be able to experiment with your Product Page elements as an app icon, name, promo text, etc.

Also, remember that seasonalities matter, so you should test at the right time. For example, don’t test something about the summer during Christmas break.

Learn more about how seasonalities and trends influence performance in the app stores

Inform yourself about your user!

Validate your ideas and learn from them with a systematic approach. Test to validate your hypothesis.

How to test?

You need a strategic vision and management. Before testing, you should also identify your different sources of traffic from all your user acquisition channels and have a clear sense of priority on what to test.

Remember, not all hypotheses are born equal. Some are more urgent, urgent, strategic or generic than others. Consequently, you need to map all of them in a defined roadmap.

Accordingly, you should define a consistent and aligned story among your short description, screenshots and featured graphics, among others.

We know this can be challenging so here is a brief introduction on how to get started:

Preparation Phrase

Preparation precedes execution. Without it, you will always fail. Respectively, you will need data, because the more you know the better so you should:

• You need to run some background research into your own brand. Identify your app’s brand and the broad topics that build your brand’s identify
• Analysis what the core features of your app that set it apart from competitors:
  • Highlight the key value propositions
  • Understand your competitor’s landscape
• Identify who is your core user, who you are trying to communicate with, and who you are trying to test with

After you’ve gathered enough date formulate a strong hypothesis for each experiment. Which you will need to confirm or reject your hypothesis.

Pro tip: A very strong consists of one that is:

• Quantifiable: yes/no, 1/0 based on rationality, true/false, or validated/invalidated
• Very well structured: the result due to a specific reason for the result (if X, then Y)

Once you elaborate the hypothesis, you can test it right away.

Create a concept behind the storytelling to give your creative artists a direction to materialize your idea, make it tangible so that the creative artist can work on that

Execution Phrase

• Produce the test variants, storyboard, design
• Turn it into something beautiful
• Start the experiments. Test with different screenshots, move screenshots or test one screen only
• Come up with a result and measure the conversion rate and differences between one experiment and the other
• Follow certain protocols so that everybody in the team is aligned
• Scale it into different languages, assets, and channels

Congratulations you are ready to go! Just one final lesson: learn from every test and iterate as much as needed!

P.D: We organize regular ASO meetups in the United States and all over Europe where ASO professionals can get together and learn from each other while also sharing knowledge and drinks!