Category: App Marketing

How to Get Five Star Rating For Your Mobile Apps?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

As the world changes, consumers are getting smarter and more selective. The psychology of first impressions still prevails especially in the landscape of mobile apps. More influential than marketing stunts, app store ratings and reviews given by fellow users are something that drives discovery and conversion for an app.

Reviews are trusted more and ratings help evaluate the app quality and performance. Since users rely on app reviews heavily before downloading, ratings and reviews make your app more discoverable, successful and profitable. This is why it is important to learn how to get five star ratings for you mobile app.

Here are 8 great tips to secure five star ratings for your new or existing mobile app:

1. Integrate an automatic rating prompts

The idea of integrating rating prompts in your mobile app can make or break the customer retention. It has ability to either enhance customer experience or disturb users to the extent of quitting the app.

The right use of prompts can, however, keep the users alive and encourage them to boost your apps ratings.

Make sure:

  • Your prompts do not interrupt users’ ongoing in-app interactions
  • You incorporate their sentiments before soliciting reviews/ratings
  • You segment the customers and ask only those who love your app for reviews
  • Set proper intervals for rating prompt frequency
  • Run a survey to learn the points of improvement
  • Resolve the queries of unsatisfied customers
  • Use third party prompts if you don’t have your own

2. Analyse the pattern of customer behaviour

Using analytics helps you learn more about customers:

  • Behavioural pattern
  • Choices and tastes
  • Motives and intents
  • Age group and demographics
  • Expectations from your app
  • Areas of interest
  • Selling points

You can use the data gathered through analytics to make your in-app communications more personalized and efficacious.

You can use third party analytics or your own. Choose the platform based on the type of data you want to pull from customers.

Based on the data, you can build a strategy to trigger rating prompts for target audience.

3. Choose Proper Time to Deliver Rating Prompts

The key to your app’s five star ratings is also delivering rating prompts at the right moment. If you have mobile experience, you must know how right place, time and person make a huge difference.

Do’s:

  • Think of the precise moment to strike with a prompt
  • Wait until the customer is accustomed to your in-app environment
  • Prompt the request when he/she completes the task
  • Use pre-built standard dialogue for prompt messages OR
  • Use your own creativity to form a unique dialogue

Don’ts:

  • Ask to rate the app immediately after the user opens up the app
  • Prompt the customer while he is playing with your app features
  • Deliver the rating prompt before an action is completed
  • Not waiting for the right mobile moment to send the message

Always remember:

  • The most suitable time to prompt is after your customer has accomplished their task. They are ready to open up and share their experience in app store.
  • Create a unique prompt message to go with the app’s flow to offer intuitive experience.
  • Prefer to wait at least 5 days after your app is installed before sending a prompt to increase your chance of getting high rating and reduce app abandonment.

4. Make a Gentle and Creative Approach

Innovate your style in which you approach and ask your customers to rate your app. You can get a little personal and creative while asking a question. For example, “Do you love the experience in our app?” or, “Do you love what you see in this app?”

In case you want to draw feedback from them, you may try, “how do you find this app?” followed by answer choices such as “Good”, “Excellent”, “Average”, or “Could have been better.”

Such questions:

  • Drive segmentation of your customers
  • Determine who is likely to be your ‘fans’ and who will play ‘critic’
  • Encourage users to take action and respond
  • Trigger interactive conversation

Your app will have both:

Fans: People who love it and are likely to rate you high

Critics: People who are not happy and may seek an opportunity to leave negative feedback.

Always offer ‘thanks’ to customers for answering your question and their time. This gesture shows that your brand appreciates both positive and negative comments.

5. Follow the First Question with Careful Prompts

Now at this stage, you know the personal sentiment of your customers. Now you can guide certain segment of them to an app store for real reviews.

To go closer to 5-star ratings, do these:

  • You can expect customers who responded positively to your first question to leave a positive review. You can prompt them doubtlessly
  • Handle the customers with negative feedback carefully. Those who have responded negatively are prepared to rate you low. Direct them somewhere other than an app store for sharing their harsh feedback
  • To retain the high ratings, use rating prompt to lead unsatisfied customers to less harmful communication channel like the one you might have inside the app
  • Start working on their valuable feedback to improve weak points of your app they have experienced
  • Finally, after they have shared ratings, quickly take them back to where they paused in your app so that they can continue to explore more.

6. Your Communication Matters

Your customers can’t hear your tone as you deliver in-app messages. But they can surely judge the language you use especially while asking for ratings.

Make sure:

  • You are gentle, respectful and friendly
  • Your words are not demanding or intrusive
  • You are not much direct and abrupt
  • To keep it short, readable and sweet
  • You never forget your brand voice in all user engagements

Your communicational ability can influence your app store ratings. This is why it is pivotal to sophisticate your language when you reach out to them.

7. Be Patient and Understand User Psychology

In history, no empire is built overnight. Getting 5-star ratings requires some amount of patience after you start working on your strategy. Ratings build up gradually.

In mobile app store reviews, even a fraction of star counts. In a blog post by Mobincube, they have explained how an increase of just 0.1 (i.e. from 3.9 to 4.0) can make a huge impact on your app reputation and its earning.

This is the psychology of app users in modern times. Apps rated 4.1 are more downloaded than apps with 4.0 ratings. Hence, even a slight difference of score can increase or decrease the number of your app’s fans.

8. Manage a private channel for negative reviews

One clever way to keep your rating up is to, gather negative feedback and manage them privately. You will not get happy users all the time. But critical reviews can also help improve your app and offer you new ideas.

It is a good practice to have a separate in-app support channel for having private communication with users who have unpleasant complaints about your app.

This solution keeps their frustration away from the app store, leaving good reviews unaffected. You can think of Uservoice. If customers are happy with their support experience, they can bestow on you bright ratings.

Final note:

Ratings and reviews are the key to increase app visibility and for acquiring new customers. To many users, they are the best way to evaluate the quality of the app and some find it more credible than word of mouth recommendations. To draw more stars for your app, always practice offering pleasant user experience. Hopefully these tips will help bring you five stars and put you on top of the charts.

How to Launch an App?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Do you feel that every business should have an app? Certainly not necessary. But if you already have an app, do you need to bring it in front of your potential customers? Certainly a YES. With millions of apps launching and competing every day in the market, a good app strategy will help you get to your destination.

Since a good app strategy is a topic that someone can write a book on, we are here to describe some interesting tips and tricks for launching your next app. This blog is drawn from the best practices seen in the development and launch of apps in the real world and gathered from the web.

We will divide the blog into 2 sections for launching of an app:

  • Tech/Developer Preparations
  • Marketing Preparations

Let us see them in details:-

Tech/Developer Preparations

A successful strategy of launching your app starts even before you actually launch it. Your developing team should keep in mind the following points just before they submit their app for launch.

a) Controlling Source/Version code: 

If you aren’t using the source control of your app, start using it right away. This allows the developers to control and manage any future versions and changes made to the app so you need not build a new app every time your business expands.

b) Using the Latest Technologies: 

iOS and Google are busy researching and bringing out new and latest features every another day. Make sure your app is built on the latest features offered by these operating systems to avoid getting outdated.

c) SEO/Link building for Different Users: 

Every user has a peculiar preference for searching his app on the app/play store. Make a thorough keyword research and customize your app according to various user requirements. Also, linking the app creates a great user experience.

d) Push Notifications: 

Incorporate push notifications for your app. They are one of the most effective and loved tool for your customers. This can prove a good strategy for re-engagement of your audience. But make sure you do not use this plan to annoy ad irritate your user.

Marketing Plan

There are 5 simple steps you need to follow for achieving your marketing target. Before you go through the points, it’s important you study the basics of about marketing techniques.

a) Researching Competitors: 

A recent study shows that almost 50,000 apps are launched every month. Before you launch you app, ask yourself, “Are you offering something unique and new to your customers?” Research and document all the things your competitors offer and what makes them stand out to the audience.

b) App Marketing And Discovery Platform: 

Platforms like ‘Preapps’ and ‘appnext’ offers sharing of your app ideas and experience to a community of similar interest before your app hits the market. This helps you to make creative and strategic enhancement to your ideas and leverage your network.

c) Optimizing app store listing: 

Similar to optimizing your website through SEO/SEM activities, a mobile app also needs optimization on play/app store. There are many tools like Sensor tower and Mobile action that can help you optimize your listing. You can also google other tips for app store listing tips.

d) Setup social platform accounts: 

An optimized mobile app is incomplete without its presence on social media. When a user searches for your service, it’s important they recognise your brand and connect with you instantly. Make sure you have an active social presence to connect with your audience in no time.

e) Beta test: 

Are you sure your application is free of bugs and serves it purpose? Before you release it to your actual users, release a beta test of the app for a selected group of people so that you know your app behaves the right way it should. Ask them to review your app while using it so that you are able to make any necessary changes and bug fixes.

Conclusion:

The above tips are just a few ways you can make your app stand out of the rest. There are numerous other things you can do, but without these key steps those aren’t fruitful. Since now your strategy is upgraded, you are ready to rock!

Keep in mind that every business is different, each has its own culture, brand and approach. Customize your brand strategy in such a way that your users feel the need to be connected with you whenever they need. Make sure you get back to us.

How to Increase App User Engagement?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

You might consider user acquisition as the most integral part of mobile app success. But, how can your app thrive without users actively engaging with your app? High number of downloads is not a perfect measure of your app being all the rage in the market. User Engagement and retention are key drivers of a successful mobile app.

While app user engagement mainly reflects user interactions with a mobile app, app retention fairly means a number of customers who return to your app after abandonment.

Poor app engagement and user experience can lead to high user abandonment rate. Hence, you must increase engagement and retention to get more loyal users.

Here are the best practices for improving engagement for your app users:

1.  User On-boarding Made Fast & Simple

User onboarding experience is perhaps the first conversation you will spark off with your app users. The main purpose of user onboarding is to get users to take a walk into your app and prepare them for more interesting elements within your app.

Don’t:

  • Make on-boarding experience a tutorial or serious app education
  • Make it look like an attempt to increase users’ familiarity with the app
  • Bore users by introducing fancy screen shots of interface and features
  • Overwhelm users with too many information fields
  • Prolong their sign up steps

Do’s:

  • Educate users about main app benefits
  • Present them the unique value your app brings
  • Minimize the number of steps for sign up process
  • Eliminate confusing factors that result in app abandonment
  • Offer flexible registration options

User on-boarding is all about making the first impression last. Seamless, intuitive on-boarding experience means letting your users settle in your app comfortably. Avoid as many troubles as you can for them especially when they sign up.

Let them learn more about your app features when they actually begin to explore more in detail. This will help reduce abandonment rate.

2. Push Notifications

Push notification is often seen as a fair practice for increasing user retention rate. Statistics confirm that users that choose to receive push notifications tend to engage with 88% higher than those who haven’t.

The concept of sending push notifications to users has evolved a lot. These messages are much more tailored, meaningful and quite customizable, and appear relevant.

Push notifications are crucial in fulfilling several purposes for your app. It acts as a reminder to users that they have downloaded and are using your app, which in turn helps beat the competition through psychological effect.

Push messaging, if done consciously and based on users’ preferences, can capture massive attention of the app audience. Such messages can convince users of reasons to continue to use app that has very specific functions.

This is the idea championed by Single Grain’s Guide to Mobile App Advertising that suggests how push messages can persuade users to run straight to your app for specific actions.

3. Personalization of App Interactions

Mobile personalization has a lot to do with improved user experience and user engagement. Mobile app users seek the kind of experience that incorporates their personal needs, likes and preferences.

This is why mobile app developers are compelled to build apps that use user’s data to display relevant, customized content in the app. Customized content means personalization of app interactions that delivers additional value to app users.

Localytics suggests that push messages that are tailored to user interests have a 54% conversion rate. However, send personalized messages carefully as any irrelevant messages may make users abandon your app.

Useful Tip: If you have known user behaviour, use it to segment your app audience. Divide users into multiple segments and align their preferences with customized user experience. Send each of them relevant messages through different channels of communication like social network, in-app messaging, push notifications and measure its effect.

 4. Incentivized User Engagement

Everybody loves rewards and your mobile app users are no exception. Giving users certain incentives to encourage them to use your app can help drive user engagement and retention for your app.

Create special content that users would like to access. Or treat them with reward points, coupons, promotions, freebies or other thinkable gimmicks that will increase their interaction with your app.

Tip: While implementing incentives, try to make it look natural and interesting. In-app s with special discounts work well for some apps while others can opt for usage-based encouragement. Suitability of incentivized engagement ultimately depends on the nature of your app.

5. Speed Up Your App Performance

Now that our world is processing data at fastest speed to save time and efforts, people are growing more demanding than before. E-commerce retailers make the same-day delivery while international travels are booked in a matter of a few seconds.

Why not apps fulfil the same requirement? App users want to experience significant speed as they jump from one page to another or open a feature or app itself. App lovers want their app to run, load and process information in countable seconds. This is only possible if the back-end of the app is working efficiently.

If your app has core features that deliver fast performance, you are most likely to observe more users depending on and interacting with your app.

6. Mistake Correction & Feedback Management

It is quite understandable that your app might not come out perfect in the first shot. There will always be certain a scope for betterment and improvement, which is clear when you receive honest feedback from app users.

It is important to listen to what your customers are saying about all the wrongs with your app. However, most unhappy app users refuse to show their dissatisfaction and leave. Hence, it is important to pro-actively ask them about their experience and anticipate their exact needs.

Tips:

  • You must learn, adapt and implement. Apple, for instance, is a proactive player known for making innovative products long before consumers voice their needs. You can also solicit feedback from your app users and incorporate their requirements in your next update.

  • You can integrate SaaS CRM in your customer relation management system to monitor individual customer choices and behavioural pattern. Now that such CRMs are evolved, even SMBs can afford using it.

7. Deep Linking works for app engagement

We already saw how precise, relevant and customized push messages can increase user engagement for any mobile app. Deep linking goes one step ahead and helps strengthen the power of push notifications or SMS.

Deep linking can be effectively implemented with the idea of inviting new users to your app. In mobile app terms, it is a URL for a mobile app that sends users directly to a specific page inside an app when opened for the first time.

Big names like Google and Apple are also the believers of deep linking power and encourage the adaptation of this practice for enhanced user engagement and retention.

The practice enhances user experience, saves time spent on navigation and engages users.

8. Update the Product to Attract and Retain Users

After a certain period of using the same app with old features and content, users tend to get slightly indifferent with your app and want to experience different material. This is why one needs to regularly update their apps and enter new exciting features and contents to keep surprising users.

Even if your app is quite polished, functional and trendier than competitors, you will have to realize the potential of delighting users with more personalized contents. This is also an effective way to capture users’ interest and retain them for longer period.

Take for example how Facebook reads their users’ taste and preferences and continues to introduce fascinating updates to their app to keep users delighted and stuck to their mobile app.

Core benefits of regular app iterations:

  • Refined user experience and in-app journey
  • Satisfied and excited customers
  • Significant improvement in user engagement
  • Better customer retention
  • Increase in customer LTV (lifetime value)
  • Minimal chance of app abandonment

Tip: Make use of app analytics to monitor users’ behaviour so that you can process the statistics to update their experience inside the app with valuable iterations.

Conclusion:

These are just a few of greatly impactful user engagement and retention tactics you can consider for your app to gain loyal, delighted brand app users. However, there is no magic formula for making your app rise in the market. You may try adopting one or two of these methods at times along with the recommended tips to see how it works with your app. It will take some time before you find out which ones have better impact on your business. You can then optimize your strategy accordingly.

How to Promote an App Online?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

2017 is finally a mobile year with 4.77 billion users worldwide. In a recent study, 2 out of 5 visitors to your website are mobile users. As a business baron, it is surely a challenge to promote your app to the right audience, at the right place and at the right time. This predicts that you certainly keep in mind your mobile application for 2/5th of the population that look for the businesses like you.

This blog will take you on a journey which will teach you everything you need to do to promote your app to ensure that you are easily accessible through the app/play stores.

1.App Store Optimization (ASO)

Just as in website optimization and SEO, app store optimization includes activities to optimize you app store listing deciding your apps’ rank on the stores. This is considered as an important aspect of pre-launch strategy. Not following these steps can do no good to your business.

App store optimization includes the following basic tasks:

  • Understanding your competitors : Research and analyse what your competitors describe their app, what keywords are they using, who are they targeting etc.
  • Choose the perfect name for your app by researching on relevant keywords
  • Create a grappling description which will serve as a call to customers
  • Design a unique and captivating icon following proper guidelines and details
  • Release a beta-test app to know your customers preference and likes.

2.Promote app on Social Media

Not promoting your app will tend to lose your potential customers. Nobody will visit unless you follow a proper promotional strategy of your business app. Writing engaging reviews and attractive content to draw the attention of user that are looking out for services like yours is more important than any other tasks.

Other ways include creation of campaigns with discounts and cashback making them getting connected with you without a second thought. The whole idea is to get customers know you and build their trust with the valuable content. App developers and marketers can make of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

3.Reaching out to Publications and Influencers

There are many publications and influencers related to your niche who has a huge fan following. Ask them to publish your blogs and share your ideas through their platform. Make sure you target the right audience that are engaging.

Many influencers ask for monetary needs to share your materials. If you have sufficient budget, it would simply be a clever idea.

4.Local Ads

Connect with your local customers by listing your business on the radio/newspaper channels. This has proven beneficial where your customers will learn a lot more before stepping up on your app.

Run an ad campaign with your local radio station, tv channel. Give away promotions like 10% off on your first order through the radio/newspaper channel.

5.Mailing Lists

Still ranking high, email marketing has a great potential in reaching and converting your audience to buy your services. Follow a few steps to create an email campaign at least once in a month and convince your buyers that you are always set to serve them high.

Tools like mail chimp can help you get started with your first mail campaign and encourage people to visit and signup for your services.

6.Affiliated Marketing

Affiliated marketing has been an age old tradition of promoting your brand and this hold true even today in the online world. It’s a process where a person/medium sells your product and they receive a commission for it.

You can simply sign-up for a marketplace and get your products tracked whenever someone advertises it. If anyone buys your services, they earn a part of your earnings.

7.Reviews and Rating

Allow testimonial to be displayed on your website and market it as much as possible. People tend to believe others who have already used your service and are satisfied with it.

It also allows you to know what your goodwill is among your customer base. Knowing your client is satisfied and is reacting well is all you need for staying motivated.

Conclusion

Each website you browse to know the various ways to market your app will have different ways to explain. It depends on every business vertical and what they are looking for. Following the above steps will certainly help you take the first step into the marketing world. You can also opt for working with an agency that will do these things on your part.

10 Important Do’s and Don’ts for App Store Optimization

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Mobile apps are dominating app store Optimization with the volume of as much as over 4M apps. With these many number of apps ruling the app stores, one must think how fierce the competition must be. This scenario suggests that there is a huge challenge for both developers and marketers to survive the crowd and enhance their apps’ overall visibility. To overcome the challenges, it is therefore important to optimize your app to rank top in any app store.

Believing that the mobile app development itself means your app will be downloaded rapidly by millions of interested users is a mistake. After developing the app, another journey of making your app quite visible begins. There are certain steps and benchmarks in the area of app store optimization (aka ASO) that ensure it performs exceedingly best in the saturated app market. Here are 10 important Do’s and Don’ts for effective ASO:

10 Important Do’s

1.Title:

  • Title is the first priority in app store optimization strategy. Make your approach creative while you decide to keep a unique app title. You have built a brilliant app and you don’t want to ruin your hard work just by being shallow about the title.
  • Usually, the app should be named in such a way that it represents both the content of the app and its purpose. Make it look uncommon, specific and appealing. Emphasize on the relevance of the name or it may confuse app store algorithm and users.
  • Try to limit the title to as long as 25 characters for Google play store and 40 for iOS as it works optimally. You can include keywords in the title to help its ranking, but only if suits and looks organic.
  • Some unprecedented titles like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Temple Run, Landlord, Candy Crush are eminent examples of the most successful mobile apps.

2.Keywords :

Mobile app development specialists cannot alone shoulder the success of your app. Keywords are also the decider of how your app ranks and what position it will end up with. Just like SEO, mobile app requires keywords that are highly researched and preferred by app users. Therefore, it necessary to conduct a thorough research to identify the list of most preferred keywords for your app context.

3.App Description:

Be careful as you utter or think anything about describing your mobile app. People are not naturally fond of reading app description, so you may not grab much attention through it. But still, it is a vital post mobile app development step. Here is what you need to consider:

  • App store ranking algorithms process and churn all the keywords used in app description, which means including primary keywords will help achieve the target. With that being said, you must not overstuff the description with too many of them.
  • Make the first lines of the description attractive, catchy and rich since app store visitors are going to determine the quality of your apps just from those few words. Compose the most compelling description that defines your app most and interests many users.
  • Explain in brief all the functionality and purpose of the app and how it will add value to users’ life. Make it persuasive and convincing enough through the details of its benefits and features.
  • You can also increase the credibility of your app by writing about the recognition of your app or previous app success. A little bit of bragging can be done in this description with sensible freedom. It will boost the download numbers in a way.

4.App Icon:

Well-designed, bold and unique app icon does the job of a vibrant painting and impels viewers to take more interest. Make it original, simple yet eye-catching while avoiding the scope of unwanted clutter. By inserting the purpose of the app in its icon, you can make it speak for itself. The popularity of any app icon can be measured through A/B testing. Experiment with a few of them and see which one goes well.

5.Screenshots magic :

Screenshot can work miracle for your app and it serves as a visual guide to its essential internal features that you think will make difference to its users. Introduce the audience to its inner architecture and tease them with its unique traits.

Screenshots have magical qualities and are as important as mobile app development strategy. It is especially for those who are not much of a reader and like to judge mobile apps through app store screenshots. Make sure you integrate the following points in your screenshots:

  • The screenshots that people can view on their screen in first shot without swiping are the ones that have power to grab most of their attention. So make sure they look impressive, expressive and influential. It must be good enough to supply the users a great hint of what your app actually is all about
  • Your app screen shots should be optimized to tablet viewing if your app also targets tablet users.
  • Publish as many shots as the store allows, and try to emphasize on using default orientation for the screen shot – which is Portrait
  • If possible, have an approach of showing at least one feature with each screen shot.

6.Video :

Like screenshots, make a video that gives a vivid illustration of what your mobile app can do. Make a preview video highlighting all the remarkable hallmarks of your app, its amazing key features and its ultimate benefits. Add video somewhere near app description and screenshots. The video is more effective than words. It will help to a great extent in case the app your have published contains several complicated features. Make is as long as maximum 90 seconds which appears optimal.

7.Reviews and Rating :

And how about gaining more leverage from Reviews and ratings? Even A/B testing practiced during mobile app development is a part of review system where certain feedbacks are implemented to make the app still better.

Reviews and ratings are a part of social activities which drive app store ranking algorithm. This means reviews play no less than a hero for app store optimization. It also suggests that your app is alive and seen by users and is not latent.

8.Recognize your Target audience and Competitors :

There could be almost no mobile app development strategy without a well-meditated ASO strategy, and there is no app optimization if you fail to incorporate your target audience and competitors in your strategy.

You can start by asking a few important questions like:

  • What does your app do for its users? What goal you want to touch with the mobile app?
  • How does it drive your next mobile app marketing plan?
  • How will the audience understand and perceive the app?
  • Can language be the barrier/saviour for the target audience?
  • Why should they download and fall for only your app among many?
  • How are your competitors doing in the similar market?
  • Does your app offer a fruitful competitive advantage?

Before you start on your ASO strategy, you must take a walk in users’ shoes and think from their perspective. Make your deep research to find out the facts about consumers and know about their trendy approach for mobile apps. Sneak in the land of your competitors and scoop up something viable. Discover those precious keywords that can pull in plethora of traffic. Study some of the effective moves of your competitors and how their reviews, social media exposure and other vitals work for them.

9.Localize Your App :

Localization is important for mobile app development and marketing plan. While developing an app, developers and strategist think of mobile apps in global perspective. However, when you look around you will realize the world is not populated with English speakers. You will have a great chance of increasing downloads by considerable extent by localizing your mobile app.

When you analyze your target audience, you will have a brighter picture of their language, cultures and general interests. You can focus your ASO on each discovery about your target audience – especially their language.

Perceive localizing the app as a tool to gain more responses and downloads. Communicate all features and your brand in the language they love.

10.Frequent Updates :

The mindsets of mobile users tend to evolve rapidly, which requires your mobile app to present them with charming updates added frequently. Constant improvements made considering customer feedback in the app are highly embraced by customers.

Not only that, but apps that are regularly updated by mobile app development veterans are given more preference and value by app store and users, resulting in better reviews and much positive response as each version is launched. Remember the following strategic points:

  • Lure your customers towards a note or an update link at login area with a prominent message urging them to download new updates. Push notification also works intrusively within an app telling them about fresh, exciting improvements
  • Try to preserve all the positive reviews and ratings of the latest version, especially those highlighted as five stars. Customers often select the app with good ratings.
  • Alternatively, you can also update the description field in app store and outline new bits with a noticeable call-to-action.
  • Make sure the normal average app update frequency is 30-50 days which is a general preference of top highly popular mobile apps.

10 important Don’ts

1.Doing mistakes in visual elements

Thousands of apps are released and published every year, but not every app ends up in users’ screen or stays there for a long while. Even the exemplary mobile app development methods can’t save the app that is built from shallow angles. This is why certain mistakes should be completely avoided or they will eventually drown your app in the app store. Some of them are:

Name:

Using clichéd, overused app words will not make your app much visible to searchers. Hence, avoid keeping frequently used names/words for your app.

Description:

Don’t make it overwhelming to read the app description. Nor make it too long, tedious and unnecessarily florid. Instead, stick to the main points: purpose, interesting elements, core features, unique approach and its benefits.

Icon design:

Icon can either make or break the app game. So don’t overdo it or make it complex. Users do not appreciate the idea of downloading apps with obscure or illegible icon designs. Even too much of bright, distasteful colours or ridiculous shapes can spoil the hard work done by mobile app development gems.

 2.Imitating your Competitors blindly

You can’t really turn the blind eye to the fact that more original your app looks, greater the chance you have of making it to top ranked position. So don’t just blindly follow all the tricks and implementations done by your competitors. In order to stand out and get good reviews from customers, it is important to be different. Choose slightly differing keywords compared to what others have tried.

3.Believing that localization means language translation

A big no to this thinking, because localizing your app does not clearly mean merely translating your app content into local language. It is deeper than that, and more thoughtful. When you localize your app, you convert all the assets and architecture of your app into the form that is most acceptable in specific locality. By localization, you adapt all the app essentials – date formats, time zone, currency, calendar, and other systems – to match the specific country code. This implies that language translation is just a small part of mobile app localization process.

4.Fostering Misconception that: ASP = SEO

Over years, due to similar looking common word (Optimization) present in both practices, people who are not much familiar with App Store Optimization often confuse it with SEO. Despite having slight similarity, ASO is still not SEO. Even many mobile app development companies cannot tell it apart if asked.

SEO strategy helps improve visibility of websites in Google search results by optimizing content. ASO, on the other hand, is actually the process of optimize a mobile app for store-listing to increase its inside-the-app store discoverability. ASO is done also to enhance the conversion rate of an app and boosts the number of downloads.

Some parts of SEO can be used for listing the apps and optimizing its supporting content. But still ASO does not mean SEO. Paid campaigns often work in ASO unlike what is experienced in SEO.

5.Ignoring the frequent changes in app store algorithm

This mistake is as common as confusion between ASO and SEO. Both Google Playstore and Apple App Store are updated time to time and adopt new functioning standards of app store algorithm.

One way to stay informed of these changes is to keep in touch with the community of professionals who have expert knowledge of ASO and app store algorithm changes.

When Apple altered its algorithm last year and reduced the app name characters to 50, the rankings of many apps got affected.

Being unaware of app store algorithm changes means you won’t be able to refresh your own ASO strategy to meet the fresh requirements of updated algorithm. This will not help you while beating the competitors in the market.

6.Incomplete knowledge of effective ASO tools

Without tracking the performance and the effect of your strategic actions, how can you measure the success? That is why you need right ASO tools for thorough measurement of ASO effect.

It is been a while since there are several ASO tools that can help track and monitor several aspects of your mobile app’s performance such as its visibility, keywords ranking, top charts, reviews, competition, etc. Many mobile app development start-ups and brands fail to consider this vital analytical aid.

With ASO tools, it becomes easy to measure ASO KPI score – which gives you the detailed picture of how well your app performs in the app store and whether or not you need to improve your current ASO strategy.

Some of the helpful ASO tools you can consider are: Mobile Action, Searchman, ASOdesk, Apptentive, AppFollow, Applyzer, App Annie, Apptopia, Splitmetrics.

7.Black Hat SEO short-cuts

Some mobile app developers and firms believe that black hat SEO – which is cleverly controlled by Google’s SEO algorithm – can be a great shortcut to achieve the purpose of ASO. Clearly, it is not. However, in Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App store this tragedy is still there.

People encourage fake installations of apps, spurious reviews, robotic installs and several other sleazy tricks. These shortcuts may work for now, but it will stop once next app store optimization algorithm is introduced just like Google did for its search engine refinement.

It is advisable to stay away from such unscrupulous optimization practices to achieve organic, long-lasting results.

8.Misunderstanding: ASO is a one-time investment

To the glorious mobile app development industry that is still not properly receptive about optimization approach, we can say that ASO is more like digital marketing endeavours. This means that it is a collective effort rather than just a one-time investment. ASO is a long-term continuous process that involves constant updates and regular changes in trends.

ASO contains all fancy, technical terms such as keywords rankings, Top charts rankings, user reviews, A/B testing, progress tracking, conversion rates, algorithm rules innovations and competitive advantage. All these factors are time-dependent and demands much observation and cognitive insight.

As keywords change over time, your app store listing turns accordingly. All you need is a permanent wisdom and open eye towards recurrent updates that redefine app store algorithm. Competitors along with their new techniques to get to the top for the same keywords also inspires the fact that ASO is definitely not just a one big shot but a series of long-term sensible implementations.

 9.Belief that Visual Graphics don’t help with conversion

There prevails a great misconception among developers and marketers that ASO is all about pulling in scores of people. Getting traffic to your app store listing helps, but in the end it will be valued only when you get more installations and users.

This is where the first impression comes in handy. The whole set of visual assets (Name, Icon, screenshots, feature videos) in app store helps explain visitors that your app is truly amazing and downloadable. So work on the design aspects of the app and not just be satisfied with what mobile app development experts have done.

Your app is most likely to leave big impact on users if its design is marvellous. If people who browse through the app store falls for its graphics, its conversion rate and Top chart rankings will go up. It must be remembered that human brain captures Visual effects more than anything and is influenced by its attractiveness.

10.Neglecting the presence of competitors

Tracking only your app’s doings will swoop as a curse to your ASO dream. In the era of internet, everything has become open and visible, and you can make the most of it if you want to.

You must check how your competitors are doing well in the app store: how they catapult to top spot in the app store, how they maintain their app listing in the store with the keywords you are most interested in, and why they reap the best of genuine responses from users.

The magic of profound mobile app development can only be seen by including your close competitors in your ASO strategy. If you neglect their presence in the app store, it will be an enormous mistake.

How is App Store Optimization Different For Android and iOS Apps?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Which is the best: Android or iOS?

Well, the attempt to find the answer for this question has been going for years. However, no one has been able to reach to a conclusion yet. But, when it comes to App Store Optimization (ASO), an Android App store obviously stands ahead in helping apps reach the top ranks compared to an iOS app store.

What’s App Store Optimization?

It is the process of creating content so that an app’s rank is higher for a particular key word. App Store Optimization is an important but underrated app marketing technique. It helps to improve the visibility of your app in the app store.

App Store Optimization For iOS and Android

Now, how does App Store Optimization differ for Android and iOS apps? Let’s find out:

App title

The app title for iOS apps must be short and it should say about your app. Also, the maximum title text mustn’t cross 25 characters. The devices that use iOS apps may differ in screen size and therefore, it is apt to keep the app title short so that it’s easy for those who search for it to see them.

It’s almost the same for Android apps except that the maximum title text is limited to 30 words.

App description

There is no app description word limit for iOS apps. However, it is always better to keep the content precise and specific, and to include the title and keywords in it. For Android apps, the app description doesn’t really have a role in ASO. But, it helps for SEO. The word count of description for Android apps must not exceed 4000 characters.

Keywords

The developers can create a list of essential keywords known as Keywords Field for iOS apps.
In the case of Android apps, the algorithm chooses the keywords from the app description to determine the ranking of the app. Therefore, it is always important to use strong and relevant keywords for Android apps. However, key word stuffing is not allowed. The same key word cannot be repeated more than 5 times in the description.

Screenshots

Screenshots give a clearer view of the apps to the users and tend to grab their attention compared to the app description. In the app store for iOS apps, maximum 5 screen shots can be uploaded for an app. However, you can’t use deceptive images as your app will be taken off the app store.

One can upload maximum 8 screenshots in the app store for Android apps. Again, misleading images are not allowed.

Videos

Just like screenshots, preview videos can also be used to promote the apps in the app store. For iOS apps, the videos should be 15-30 seconds long. Meanwhile, Android app store allows 30 seconds-2 minute videos.

The App Store Optimization Android and iOS Apps  are somewhat similar. The big difference comes when the criteria changes with the app store.

What is Geo-Conquesting and How Does it Help Mobile Advertising?

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Geo-Conquesting that falls in the category of location-based marketing is becoming the main focus of digital advertising. This mainly targets on sending messages to target audience based on their current location.

As consumers tend to move from traditional browsing methods to mobile phone ads, advertisers concentrate more on mobile marketing techniques to reach out the audience. The success of this method depends upon the speed of your marketing efforts and the ability to keep up with on-the-go consumers.

How does Geo-Conquesting help Mobile Advertising?

Geo-Conquesting is a variation of Geo-fencing or Geo-targeting. Here, digital ads are restricted as they are only shown on the basis of location of a customer’s IP address.

Today, location-based services have become a necessary element in our daily life. Most of us depend on the GPS to check-in to restaurants, cafe, other shops, etc. via Facebook or even share location with family/friends on WhatsApp. Therefore, the practice has shown to grow in the past few years.

Here are a few ways in which Geo-conquesting is evolving mobile space and the opportunity this strategy provides for extending the reach and success to users through ads:

• It creates a boundary around a defined area, such as a few miles around the targeted store. Ads are only sent to people who moves across this boundary

• Ads are shown to people in a specific city, state or within a particular pin-code that you target. This is to ensure that ads focus on people who would want to visit your store

• Allows advertisers to intercept customers. Price cuts and other offers are given to entice users away from competitors

• Many digital ad agencies use a combination of both Geo-conquesting and Geo-fencing to influence users

• This advertising technique is generally popular among restaurants & hotels, retail stores, or any other businesses or industries, financial services, insurance, telecommunication sectors, etc.

• As Geo-conquesting leverage users’ current location, time, state of mind etc. you can create a highly effective and applicable advertisement to achieve significant user engagement level to drive competitors’ customers to yours

• Costs for mobile ads are relatively low when compared to other traditional advertising methods

• As competition is increasing in the field of advertising, hyper-local mobile ads is the best choice to offer value added services.

• This strategy of advertising mainly focuses on marketing your business, products and services to the right consumers at the right time

• For some consumers, it provides customized actions as in the form of search results, banner ads, etc. that promote a unique product with better price offers than the competitor store

• For regular customers, special push notifications are triggered when users enter the targeted location. This can include one-time offers & deals, discounts etc.

• Geo-conquesting strategy of advertising is generally used in coffee shops/restaurants to generate more traffic and higher revenue. Local shops/café use such banner ads, push notifications, etc. to attract customers with promises of limited time offerings, unique flavours and faster services

Advertisers are grabbing the latest targeting technologies to drive consumers to their locations and create loyalists. Smart phones give mobile marketers the ability to analyse a consumer’s current and future location behaviours for shaping the relevant mobile ad content to achieve higher user engagement levels.

To achieve the target audience, you need to have a valid reason that why consumers need to leave the other store and come to yours. So be creative enough and offer something, that is, relevant to an individual’s intentions in a particular moment of choice.

How Can Sport Apps Increase User Engagement

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Sport apps can increase user engagement in different ways as they serve a variety of user needs such as checking scores, game schedules, latest updates etc.

People spend a lot of time in watching, discussing and considering professional sports like cricket, football, tennis, basketball and much more. Sport is like a religion for many people. This results in the development of different sports apps.

Sports apps provide all necessary features and information about games, leagues and players.

Now, let us see how sports apps can increase user engagement.

•  Offer relevant push notifications

Push notifications contains some sort of media files that can be a GIF, picture, video, audio or any text updates.

Depending on user interest, they can select type of push notifications they want. Therefore, app delivers relevant notifications and real time information. Users can get latest scores, stories, and big moments of their favourite sport in real time through such notifications.

This can drive more traffic and attract user attention to use the app again and again.

•  Location based mobile service

In this service, GPS or RFID is used to track the location of the user’s mobile in specific area. When a user enters certain geographic areas like stadiums or sports events they get notified about inside activities like autograph signing, personal interviews of players, weather report for the day, game statistics and many more. This helps users to know every ongoing activity in the event with its location. Fans get assured of not missing anything they like.

•  Connect users with real-time content 24×7

Sports app allow fans to share information, comment and also interact with other users. Through apps, they stay updated, informed and connected with news and blogs about their favourite sport and players. Partnerships of apps with broadcasting networks are helping in providing real-time content at every stage of the game to improve the fan experience. Scores, video highlights and expert analysis can be provided to increase user engagement towards sport apps.

•  E-sports gaming

E-Sports is electronic sports an organized competitive gaming played by high level professionals for spectators. E-Sports players around the world play online games with each other same as football or cricket. Such gaming apps have become very popular over the past few years as people are interested in watching professionals play online games. Many apps are present to give up to date information of matches and news regarding e-sports. These apps engage people or fans in their favourite e-sport and provide a platform for interaction.

•  Offer mobile ticketing to fans

Depending on location and previous searching history of users, app suggests related events or games taking place. Apps have started collaborating online ticketing feature, where fans can book tickets even at the last minute. These are called digital tickets, which are sent online to mobiles. So fans stay in touch with apps to get information about games, events and tickets.

•  Customized news

Some sport apps offer all sports news from different sites without downloading an app each for all sites. Users can search what they want to follow and get all the related content in one go. People who like to gather information on different sports are more likely to engage in these kind of apps.

•  Using virtual reality

Virtual reality is a three dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted. Even if you are watching matches at home, you get the feel of being in the stadium.
Fans can feel the real action and get a better view of the game in high definition from all angles.
This kind of experience encourages fans to engage more in sport apps.

If you are a sports/gaming app owner, these are a few ideas to increase the engagement rate of your app. Feel free to share any more ideas you might have.

A Guide to Mobile App Marketing [Infographic]

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

Getting your app discovered and making it reach the top is one of the main challenges that app marketers face. Since, there are a number of apps coming up in app store of iOS, Android, Windows Phone etc. building a great product isn’t just enough but you need to improve the discoverability of the app after initial release.

The real mark of an app success is the user engagement, as it tells you how much your app is helping users to solve their problems. To create a well-defined and sustainable app, you need to incorporate marketing strategies to make your app reach the users. Focusing on the right marketing strategies along with product development, can create an app which makes life better for your users and it can also help earn you profit from your start-up.

guide of mobile app marketing

Mobile App Spending Topped $500M over the Christmas Holiday

Posted on by Super Admin Testreveal

According to the mobile research firm Sensor Tower, people spent half a billion dollars on mobile apps over the Christmas holiday.

Spending on Android and iOS mobile apps increased up 52 percent from $330 million to $500 million worldwide from 24 to 26 December.

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Gaming apps led by more than 87 percent of gross revenue for apps worldwide on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store totaling approximately $439.5 million.

App and game developers see a big boost in revenue and downloads during the holidays, since mobile devices are a popular gift for the season.

The top five earning apps over the Christmas holiday were games like Supercell’s Clash Royale, Mixi’s Monster Strike, Supercell’s Clash of Clans, Niantic’s Pokemon GO, and Sony’s Fate/Grand Order.

The top five non-gaming apps were LINE(messaging and calling app), Netflix(video streaming service), Tinder(dating site), HBO NOW and Pandora.

During the holidays, the use of streaming videos and music apps see increased downloads.Mobile App Spending Topped $500M over the Christmas Holiday