Mobile Growth

Tips to Increase Your App Store Conversion Rate

Buse Kanal

18 July 2022

The conversion rate of your mobile app in the App Store is among the most important indicators of success. Every app marketer aims to increase their conversion rate as much as possible.

Image Source: Unsplash

However, achieving a higher conversion rate isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of factors that come into play. Without the right expertise, experience, and tools, you might see your conversion rate staying stagnant or worse, it gets lower.

Thankfully, in this post, we will share with you some of the most effective ways for you to dramatically increase your App Store conversion rate.

What is the App Store conversion rate?

In its simplest definition, the conversion rate of the App Store is how many of the people who come across your app you were able to convert into users.

Image Source: Vecteezy

To calculate the conversion rate, you would need to know the number of people who saw your app (impressions) and how many downloaded their app.

In essence, the formula would look like this:

App conversion rate = (installs / impressions) x 100

So, let’s say, you have 100 people who saw your app. Out of these 100 people, 10 of them installed your app. We have 10 divided by 100. We, then, multiply the dividend by 100. This gives us a 10% conversion rate.

Why is it important to measure conversion rate?

As explained above, the conversion rate immediately gives you an idea of how many people were able to see your app and install it.

By knowing your app’s conversion rate, you’re able to measure the effectiveness of your app page listing. In short, the conversion rate can indicate the success or failure of your overall marketing effort.

Limitations of a conversion rate

Conversion rate is no doubt a good metric to tell you how your app is doing. However, there are times when it might not reflect an accurate state of your app.

For example, your app might get higher than usual impressions. There are more and more people who get to see your app. Along with the increased number of impressions come the increased number of people who might not be interested in downloading your app.

So, there will be an increased impression and fewer installs. This would lead to a lower conversion rate. However, an increased impression rate is also a good indicator of app growth.

Thus, you can have a lower conversion rate, but your app is still experiencing growth, especially in terms of impressions.

On the other hand, you can also have a very high conversion rate simply because you have low impressions and a greater percentage of them are installing your app. This tells you that you can have a high conversion rate, but only a few people are actually downloading your app.

With this in mind, you need to take into consideration the context of your conversion rate. Know the relationship between your impressions and installs to get a more accurate picture of your app performance.

How to increase your conversion rate?

Now that you know what conversion rate is and why it is important, let’s now get into the gist of our discussion today. We have gathered the best tips that massively increase your App Store conversion rate.

Read on to learn more.

1. Create a compelling first impression

You need to grab people’s attention immediately. The moment their eyes land on your App Store listing, they should know what your app is all about, what it does, and how it can solve their problems or meet their needs.

All these should be done within 5 seconds. That’s right — people have a short attention span and you only have a small window of opportunity to make a lasting impression.

2. Choose the right app name

Unless you have a popular brand name, you should keep your app name simple, short, and easy to remember. Ideally, people should quickly know what your app is all about by just looking at your app name.

Image source: Apple App Store

3. Create a catchy icon

Aside from the app name, your app icon is one of the first things people see on your app listing and even in search results. Thus, your app icon should quickly create a strong impression on your potential users.

Image source: Apple App Store

Look for qualified and skilled graphic designers to help you create the best image. It’s worth investing money in your app icon. The right app icon could massively increase your app conversion rate.

4. Write a descriptive subtitle

The subtitle is a great element to explain what your app is all about in just a few words. So, it serves as a supporting phrase that works together with your app name, icon, and subtitle.

5. Add creative app previews

To give users a better feel of your app, you can add app previews. This app store element tries to summarize all your app’s features in a short video, which can be up to 30 seconds in length.

Since app previews are videos, they can easily demonstrate what your app is all about and convince users to download your app. This is an important part of your marketing effort.

Image source: Apple App Store

As mentioned above, app previews can potentially increase your conversion rate by a great deal. According to studies, videos are more than 10 times more effective in grabbing people’s attention. They don’t even just grab attention, but videos keep their attention for a longer time.

Thus, you can’t ignore your app preview if you want to have a better conversion rate.

How do you make sure that your app preview will convert people to users? Here are some tips to remember:

Make sure your app preview gives a quick walk-through of the app experience for your users.
Remember that app previews play automatically on the App Store. Make sure you give your preview a great introduction since most people would simply take three seconds to decide whether to continue watching your video fully or not.
To better increase your app’s conversion rate, the app preview should include a cohesive, logical, and exciting flow of the story.
Create videos according to Apple’s terms and conditions. You don’t want to create something that Apple would reject later. Ensure that your app preview is free of objectionable content, adult themes, violence, and profanity.

As you can see, app previews will give your app air of increased professionalism. People tend to think your app is better than competitors simply because you have an app preview and others don’t.

6. Choose screenshots

Aside from a video, you can add screenshots that visually communicate how your app works. You can add a maximum of 10 screenshots. Be sure that you carefully choose the first three screenshots since these are the screenshots that appear in search results.

Image source: Apple App Store

7. Description

If your app name, subtitle, preview, and screenshots are good enough, people may then proceed to read about your app’s full description.

This is your chance to engage your users by highlighting the useful functionalities and features of your app. Make your description as informative as possible but at the same time, you keep it concise, and easy to read and understand.

8. A/B test your App Store elements

A/B testing is the process of comparing two or more versions of your App Store listing and identifying which of them gives you the best result.

The Apple App Store offers its A/B testing feature called Product Page Optimization (PPO). Through the PPO, you can test your app page versions or, as Apple calls it, “treatments” and know which one would produce the best conversion rate.

To start your tests, simply go to the Apple Store Connect where you can “Create Test.” From there, you set things up and run your tests. Depending on your needs, tests can last for around 90 days.

How to increase your app store conversion with PPO?

A/B tests will tell you which version of your app preview, screenshots, app icon, and other elements of your page works best. With PPO, you can clearly see which of your app page elements are doing well or not.

You can remove or change elements that don’t perform well while keeping the elements that give you the best results. Because of this, you can make data-driven decisions that would surely improve your conversion rate.

9. Take advantage of localization

Every geographic location has its unique language and culture. Thus, it is a must that you design your App Store listing that meets the specific preference of each of these locations.

For example, app conversion rates can dramatically increase when you use the local language of your target audience. If you want to promote your app in China, you’ll have a better chance of getting more users if you use Chinese.

Image source: Apple App Store

English may not work well not just in China, but also in Japan, France, Russia, and other countries. So, you need to personalize your marketing message based on location. To make things even more effective, you can also study their culture and base your marketing strategy on that.

10. Take note of seasonality

Some events and trends happen every year. You can use that as a great opportunity to drive more installs. Since these events happen on a yearly basis, you’ll be able to predict when you should run special marketing campaigns to attract more users.

11. Add updates regularly

Creating an app isn’t a one-time event. Thus, people will more likely download your app when they see regular updates.

Image source: Apple App Store

On the Apple App Store, you’ll find a “What’s New” section. This is where potential and existing users can see your updates.

12. Aim to get positive reviews

A lot of people download an app after reading positive reviews and high ratings. Having an impressive “Ratings and Reviews” section on your App Store listing could tremendously increase your app’s conversion rate. People tend to choose apps with better ratings compared to those apps with poor ratings.

Image source: Apple App Store

Of course, for you to ensure you get positive reviews is to keep your app in its top shape. The more positive the experience of people using your app, the higher the chance you get good ratings and reviews.

13. Reward your users

One of the best ways for people to download your app is to incentivize them. This means that you give them rewards when they install your app.

There are different ways to do this. In your marketing campaign, your message can focus on what people will receive when they download your app. An example would be delivery service apps. They provide coupons to first-time users.

A lot of people love free stuff. So, if you want to convince them further, give them bonuses. It can be in the form of credits, coupons, real money, gifts, or electronic awards.

14. Measure app performance

While the main focus of this article is conversion rate, you also need to take note of other metrics that measure the performance of your app.

The reason behind this is that every metric affects your conversion rate. It’s like an ecosystem where what happens to one part affects the whole.

Image source: Apple Developer

Thus, if you want to improve your conversion rate, you need to be familiar with various metrics. Thankfully, there are different sources that you can use within the App Store Connect.

Some of these include:

App Analytics
Payments and Financial Reports
Sales and Trends

You need to pay close attention to your app downloads, campaign performance, retention rate, and user engagement metrics.

When you know how your app is doing through the data you gathered, you can better make effective decisions that will contribute to the improvement of your conversion rate.

15. Focus on improving your app

Perhaps, this is the best tip on our list. After all, it’s way more difficult to convince people to use a crappy and useless app than a well-designed one.

Even the most successful apps in the App Store are constantly improved. They don’t simply stay the same. It should also be true with your app.

Get rid of bugs. Improve user experience. Remove unnecessary steps, features, and functionalities. Leverage the strength of your app. Address weaknesses. Update regularly.

Give users a lot of reasons to choose your app. Listen to them. Read reviews. See what they are saying on social media and forums.

Know what problems they may have that you can solve. Identify what they need that you can provide.

When you have the best app that you can ever be, users will follow. Combined with effective app search optimization, users will naturally flock together and download your app.

All these combined positive changes would eventually increase your conversion rate.

Increase further your conversion rate

These are just some of the most important tips on how you can improve your conversion rate. There’s no doubt, you would need to do a lot of work. However, all these would finally pay off when you start seeing positive numbers in your metrics.

Making the right decision based on data plays a major role in increasing your conversion rate. This can be easier said than done because of the many factors that come into play.

Thankfully, ShyftUp is here for you. With ShyftUp, you get the right user acquisition tools and professional help to convert undecided users to loyal customers.

Get in touch with them today!

What is CVR?

CVR is the abbreviation commonly used to refer to conversion rate. Generally speaking, conversion rate measures the number of people reached by your marketing and the percentage of how many of them took action.