How can you stand out in an app store?

On average, a user's phone has about 20 apps installed, although they only end up using half of them, and these can vary because, depending on the user's interest, they may end up deleting them and returning to the app store to acquire others, newer ones or those that arouse more interest.

The competition within the app store is quite fierce, with an average of 4,000 new apps being added daily, making it difficult to stand out and succeed.

It's important to consider ASO factors, those that have a direct impact on an app's visibility in app stores. The ASO factors that appear on each app's listing are of two types:

• On-Metadata: These depend directly on the developers or advertisers and are able to edit: app title or name, description, keywords, promotional text, category, developer history, icon, screenshots, videos and links, etc.
• Off-Metadata: These are metrics that developers cannot control and that depend on market response and the marketing budget allocated to our app. They are based on the volume of installations, installation speed, average user rating, number of comments, mentions on websites, etc.

The 2017 ASO Manual recommends establishing 3 steps for the optimization of any application for its promotion in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store:

1.- Search: A process that serves to define keywords and find applications that may be our competition and that are better positioned.

2. Optimization. After keyword analysis and competitor research, it's time to apply what we've learned to optimize our app's listing. This is when we can begin designing the visual and textual elements.

3. Monitoring. This is used to check if everything is working correctly, if the work we have done previously is producing results.

How to apply ASO factors?

You can apply them through many elements such as:

• The app's name; in which you should enter keywords to improve search results.
• App subtitle or description; use this brief space to explain the product, in order to convince the user to install it.
• Multimedia files; Images and videos will be one of the app's biggest attractions, so we must carefully select the icon image, video format, etc.
• Having many dissemination resources
• Provide accurate and clear information about the app

With these tips you can attract users' attention, so they take a look, even if just a quick one, at your app.