Given the mobile form factor there is 20 icons on the phone vying for users attention, which will be 21st icon on consumers phone? Top things that matter for the success of your App can be summarized into:
- Compelling reason for user to download your app. What is the problem that your app is solving i.e. value proposition of your app, what kind of customers/users are you targeting at – Local/Global?
- What kind of user experience and engagement your app will generate – will user open your app once/twice a day, week, Months etc.?
- If your app is a copy of existing global app then what local innovations or differentiator are you bringing out with it?
- How do you make money, how do you monetize your app? If it is content what type of ads and where you are showing ads, if it’s lead generation then how relevantly its placed and is non-intrusive to users.
Apart from above factors post your app is developed and is shipped on appstore the real test of how your app will perform on Appstore begins. What issues users are facing? You cannot test the app for all the real-world use-cases and given the diverse nature of devices, networks and platforms there will always be some challenges. Hence live usage of your app is real test of the success of your app. It is important to measure the metrics relevant to your app and there is a range of different metrics that can be monitored and tracked. Some are more precise than others, some require the implementation of an SDK. Here I’m focusing on App store optimization (ASO) part which should be incorporated into strong Marketing Strategy and is a long term process. Since almost all users will take the final decision to download the app whilst at the store page, App Store Optimization is likely to be an essential activity, both for conversion (through optimized assets and messaging) and discovery (through careful keyword selection). Expecting to see fantastic results after tweaking a few keywords is absolute nonsense. There are some very important basic metrics that you can measure very easily to evaluate your app success in App store.
- Global and category ranking
- Ranking for specific keywords
- Number of downloads
- Number of reviews and ratings
- Global rating
- Number of in-app purchases
- Revenue generated
It is also highly important to measure and track how your competitors are doing. It can be extremely insightful to see what keywords work for your direct competitors for example. Though you can track above metrics performance yourself, however there are few tools available that can help you measure and track your app performance more conveniently and accurately and you don’t require installation of SDK.
App Annie – The App Annie ASO tool is a discovery tool; it will help you identify high opportunity keywords and track the keywords other apps are ranking for. You can use Keywords Ranks to explore different search terms and see what apps are returned for each term, across different app stores. Keyword/ASO feature lets you see the top 30 keywords for any app. What that means is you can select any app and then see the specific words that the app ranks for in search results on the app store. The free version of App Annie lets you monitor the app ecosystem and your competitors.
- Check hourly or daily top charts as well as ranking history.
- Search keywords and featured placements for millions of apps.
- In the Detailed view (per app), you get a chart with: revenue and downloads during the date range of your choice, breakdown per country (pretty useful to evaluate the need for localization), tables with your app daily ranks, chart for your rank history, reviews written on your app and you can subscribe to receive an email update for your app stats.
MopApp – With Mopapp, users can maximize the market penetration of their mobile applications by gaining real-time intelligence through a unified dashboard and customized reporting. Through a comprehensive dashboard of automated reports, reviews lists and comparison charts, Mopapp enables users to tailor marketing and development strategies to improve downloads, ratings and profitability. If you’re using iAd, AdMob, InMobi or Smaato you can track your earnings directly within Mopapp which can be a nice time saver. Finally, the enterprise version lets you integrate with your flurry account to track in-app usage analytics and compare them with your downloads.
AppFigures – It is a reporting platform for mobile app developers that brings together all of your app store sales, ad data, worldwide reviews, and hourly rank updates into one intuitive and informative reporting solution. The free and paid version of AppFigures won’t let you have more than what AppAnnie has to offer.
Appstatics – Appstatics is acquired by Appsfire and is the simplest and most powerful way to track the performance of iOS & Mac apps in the App Store rankings. The tool is easily downloadable from the Apple store and facilitates effective app analysis and discovery, making it suitable for developers of all levels. Appstatics will track the performance of any app, including competitors, in the appstore rankings to deliver intelligence about mobile marketing and performance tactics.
mishrelic 