Written by Technical Team | Last updated 30.09.2025 | 13 minute read
If your team ships brilliant features but your app still struggles to be discovered, you don’t have a product problem so much as a distribution one. App Store Optimisation (ASO) is how a mobile app development company turns store presence into a repeatable growth channel. It blends keyword strategy, creative optimisation, reputation management and experimentation so that the right users find you, trust you and install with confidence. This playbook distils the practice into practical moves you can run in-house, whether you build consumer apps, B2B utilities or games.
ASO operates at the intersection of visibility and conversion. Visibility is the likelihood that your listing appears when people search or browse. Conversion is the likelihood those impressions turn into installs. The two are tightly coupled: rankings increase exposure, but strong creative and social proof turn that exposure into installs, and those installs feed back into the algorithms as positive signals. Treat ASO as an ongoing system rather than a one-off metadata tweak.
Both major stores reward relevance and quality, but they calculate those notions differently. Apple’s App Store indexes your app name, subtitle and a dedicated keywords field, while Google Play leans heavily on the app title, short description and long description. Apple’s model tends to be more exact-match and index-led; Google’s is more semantic, looking at language patterns and topic relevance within your description as well as behavioural signals. For a development company, this difference matters because the same brand positioning will need two versions of metadata and two different testing plans.
Traffic sources vary and should be measured separately. Search brings users who already have intent and tends to yield the most durable growth when you rank for the right terms. Browse and Explore (for example, category charts, editorial features and recommendation modules) bring discovery traffic that is sensitive to recent performance, rating velocity and seasonal trends. Paid traffic can also affect how your listing looks and performs, especially if you use custom product pages or ad-driven store experiments. Think in funnels: impressions → product page views → installs → retained users. Each stage has its own levers.
ASO is not just text. Icons, screenshots and preview videos dominate how users scan your value proposition in milliseconds. A beautiful icon improves tap-through rates from search results; a clear first screenshot raises conversion on the product page. On Google Play, a sharp feature graphic (where shown) and coherent, scannable long description can lift conversion for search and browse alike. On the App Store, hover states, badges and short captions over screenshots can make the benefits legible at a glance. Every creative choice is a hypothesis you can test.
Finally, ASO pays off most when paired with shipping discipline. Release notes aren’t only for developers; they influence update conversion and can frame new features for returning users. Crash rate, permission prompts and cold-start performance all bleed into ratings and retention, which in turn feed your ranking and conversion loops. ASO is a team sport: product, design, QA, marketing and support must cooperate to sustain it.
Effective keyword research starts from user intent, not from stuffing fields with the most popular words. Intent splits roughly into branded queries (users looking for you), category queries (e.g., “budget tracker”), feature-led queries (e.g., “scan receipts”) and problem statements (e.g., “stop notifications at night”). Mapping your market means understanding the relative volume, competitiveness and commercial fit of each of these intent types in your target locales. A development company should also distinguish between queries that signal ready-to-install behaviour versus those earlier in the journey; design your metadata so you can rank credibly for both.
A pragmatic workflow begins with a seed list: the terms you’d use to explain your app to a stranger. Expand this by mining competitor titles and subtitles, reading competitor reviews to see the words customers actually use and scanning your own support tickets for recurring pain points. Add variants and synonyms, particularly British spellings where relevant, and include compound phrases that mirror how people search on mobile. Don’t ignore “underserved” language — the long-tail phrases with modest volume but very high relevance — as these often yield faster wins and collectively make a large share of search traffic.
When you assess candidates, think like a ranking algorithm and like a human. Algorithms look for relevance, anchored by exact or near-exact matches in high-weight fields; they also infer topical authority from surrounding text. Humans look for clarity and trust. If a term helps you rank but makes your title or subtitle sound awkward or spammy, it will lose you clicks and installs. The best terms meet both tests. Prioritise a small set of anchor terms you aim to rank for decisively, then support them with clusters of related long-tail phrases spread across your subtitle/short description and, for Google Play, naturally within your long description.
A common pitfall is chasing only the highest-volume terms. Big head terms like “photo editor” are brutally competitive and sometimes poorly aligned with your specific proposition. It’s often smarter to pair one or two of these with niche qualifiers that match your differentiators, such as “RAW photo editor” or “portrait retouching”. That way the algorithm can place you in the right topical cluster, while users instantly see why your app fits their job-to-be-done. Rank depth matters; being top three on a smaller, high-intent query can outperform a mid-page rank on a broad term.
Your app name is prime real estate. Lead with your brand and follow with a short, descriptive cue that reflects the core job your app performs. The descriptive part should ideally be an anchor keyword or very close to it, but never at the cost of readability. Keep it simple, pronounceable and consistent across your product, website and ads. Avoid overusing separators, emojis or claims that might trigger rejections during review. For apps with a strong brand, resist the temptation to cram in multiple generic terms; a single sharp descriptor that signals category fit often converts better and protects brand equity.
The subtitle on iOS and the short description on Android carry disproportionate weight because users skim them from search results and above the fold on the product page. Use this space to surface your sharpest value proposition in natural language. If your product has one killer feature, say so; if it solves a painful problem, say that instead. Blend one or two secondary keywords seamlessly, but write for humans first. Specificity beats slogans: “Split bills, track IOUs and settle up automatically” paints a vivid picture, while “The best way to manage money” reads like fluff and squanders relevance.
Google Play’s long description is both a ranking signal and a sales page. Structure it with short paragraphs, scannable subheadings and a narrative that moves from core value to feature detail to proof. Keep keyword usage natural and varied, echoing the main phrases without forcing repetition. Replace empty adjectives with evidence: mention measurable outcomes, typical use cases or integrations users care about. Include accessibility and privacy assurances where they matter, but avoid jargon that normal users will gloss over. Because this text is long-lived, make it modular; you can update sections seasonally or to reflect new features without rewriting the whole thing.
Visual assets are your conversion engine. The icon must be distinctive and legible at small sizes; favour simple shapes, strong contrast and a single focal element. Icons that collapse to monochrome or rely on tiny detail fare poorly in search grids. Screenshots should tell a story in the first three frames: what the app does, what it looks like and why it’s better. Use device frames sparingly, overlay short, high-contrast captions and avoid walls of text. Consider sequencing to match the way new users experience the product — onboarding, first success, expanded value — so the narrative clicks. If your app is content-led (news, video, recipes), keep the first screenshot clean and illustrative; clutter kills scanning speed.
Preview videos can lift or hurt conversion depending on execution and category norms. If you use video, capture real in-app footage, front-load the first five seconds with the strongest moment and ensure captions explain what’s happening without sound. Aim for clarity over cinematics. Keep platform norms in mind: some users expect to swipe through static screenshots; others welcome a brisk video. Test with and without to see which your audience prefers. In every asset, think local. Currency formats, cultural cues and even the faces in your imagery influence trust. If you localise for the UK first, plan how those assets adapt for other core markets rather than designing only for one region.
Creative optimisation is never “done”. Establish a library of variants for icons, headline screenshots and captions, track performance by traffic source and refresh on a predictable cadence. Tie creative updates to major releases where possible to ride the publicity boost, but don’t wait for code ships to improve store performance. Train your designers on store constraints — safe zones, file sizes, aspect ratios — so experimentation is fast and compliant. As your company grows, invest in a style system for store assets just as you would for in-product UI; consistency reduces decision fatigue and speeds iteration.
Ratings and reviews are the social proof that either unlock conversion or tank it. A high average rating is helpful, but distribution and recency matter even more. A cluster of recent five-star reviews signals momentum; a recent run of one-star reviews can crush conversion even if your lifetime average is strong. Responding to reviews, particularly the critical ones, demonstrates that there’s a team behind the product. Users scan the latest reviews before installing; show them you listen and act. Most importantly, treat reviews as a product feedback channel. If multiple users mention the same crash or confusing flow, prioritise that fix — you’ll improve both the app and your ASO.
Quality signals beyond reviews also influence performance. Stability and performance metrics, permission prompts that respect context and a transparent privacy posture contribute to trust and keep uninstall rates down. Update cadence matters too. Frequent, meaningful updates — paired with concise, user-facing release notes — remind users that the app is alive and supported. For a development company with multiple clients or products, create a release calendar that balances ASO needs with engineering realities. When you anticipate a dramatic redesign or a feature that changes positioning, prepare your metadata and creative assets in parallel so the story lands on day one.
Localisation is more than translating text. It is positioning your app within a culture. Keyword research must be done per locale, as terms that dominate in one country might be niche in another. The same is true for creative. Colours, imagery and even humour vary in effect across markets. If you target English-speaking markets beyond the UK, localise spelling and references — “favourites”, “labour”, “petrol” — and adapt measurements and time formats. For right-to-left languages, mirror graphic compositions and test whether your captions still carry meaning when directionality flips. Localisation also affects your roadmap: integrate regional payment methods or mapping providers if they influence your value proposition.
Some categories rely heavily on trust before install. Finance, health and productivity apps benefit from visible certifications, plain-English privacy statements and screenshots that show credible institutions or methods. Games often hinge more on trailers and first-three-screenshot spectacle. Adjust your asset strategy to the trust gap your category faces. In every case, think of off-metadata signals as multipliers: they raise or lower the ceiling of how far your metadata and creative can take you.
What you don’t measure you can’t improve — and what you measure badly you’ll optimise in the wrong direction. Build a simple but robust analytics framework that tracks, at minimum, impressions, store page views and installs by traffic source, plus conversion rates between each stage. Layer in rating velocity, average rating, uninstall rate in early days, and retention cohorts to understand whether conversion gains are bringing in the right users. Segment performance by locale, by new versus returning users and by device class where possible. Your aim is to stop arguing about opinions and start iterating on evidence.
Experimentation is how you turn that evidence into durable gains. On iOS, use product page optimisation for headline tests and custom product pages to match creatives to specific audiences or campaigns. On Android, run store listing experiments to compare icons, screenshots and copy. Treat experiments like you would A/B tests in product: define a hypothesis, ensure enough traffic to reach confidence, avoid overlapping tests that contaminate results and declare a winner only when it replicates. Record every test in an accessible log with the variant assets, audience, dates and outcome. Over time, this becomes the institutional memory that prevents “rediscovering” old losers.
ASO scales when you treat it like a product discipline. Assign clear ownership, typically a growth-minded product manager partnered with design and supported by engineering and data. Create a quarterly ASO roadmap with themes — e.g., “UK conversion uplift”, “Android feature launch”, “Localisation expansion” — and a monthly operating rhythm that covers keyword refresh, creative review, experiment planning and reputation checks. Automate what you can: scheduled audits for broken links or outdated screenshots, alerting for ratings dips, and templates for release notes. The goal is to reduce the cognitive load so your team can focus on insight and craft.
A development company that builds for clients can package ASO as an ongoing service. Offer a baseline audit with prioritised fixes, followed by a retained cadence of experiments and reporting. Educate clients that ASO is not an alternative to product quality or paid acquisition but a force multiplier for both. Show the business impact in outcomes that executives understand: organic install growth, reduced customer acquisition costs for paid campaigns, improved retention because the right users are coming in. When the practice is habitual, ASO stops being a scramble before each release and becomes a calm, compounding engine of growth.
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