Lior Eldan | 20.11.19

So, why do you need to write an app description like a pro? Pretty simple, your copywriting can make or break your marketing efforts.

If you think writing articles for SEO is complicated because you need to keep a keyword in mind, write a minimum number of words and use specific HTML tags, just wait for when you’ll be writing an app description.

Not trying to scare you here in any way. Yet, showcasing the same idea in 700 words instead of 3.000 words is way, way harder.

So, why is writing an app store description so hard?

The answer is pretty simple, you’re forced to:

Respect the app store description character limit
Send your message in the first lines of your description
Follow the app store description guidelines
Write content without the help of formating (headers, bolds and so on)

We’ll talk about everything in this article and help you out on your task of writing a killer app description.

App Store Description Guidelines

As mentioned before, you need to fully respect the App Store Description Guidelines in order to rank your app on the app store and increase app downloads.

Just to push the importance of a relevant app store description, less than 2% of users read the entire description. Meaning that, if you don’t write the relevant information in 5 lines or less, you won’t convince anyone to download your app.

App store descriptions are limited to a maximum of 4.000 characters and can be disapproved by Moderators if they find out you stuffed it with app store keywords.

Make sure that you eliminate all errors in your copy, keep it as natural as possible and don’t falsify any information or testimonials.

Start with the main app keyword in mind

The best app store description works with the keyword in mind. You should write the copy in a way that:

Converts users
Increases your rank

We’ve done App store optimization guides in the past, talking about the benefits of doing proper keyword research and optimizing your app.

If you still don’t know what ASO is, it is the process of optimizing an app for the app store. Pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?

You start by doing keyword research and continue with analyzing your competitors.

This allows you to better understand what keywords users are using to find apps similar to yours and what keywords you need to integrate inside your copy.

It’s also a good exercise and task to read what your competitors wrote and better understand what worked for them.

If you’ve already done your research for your main keywords, don’t forget about ASO!

ASO can help you increase your app store ranking. The more people see your app page, the more people will download.

Because of this, also take care of the following:

App title.

Your app should have the main keyword integrated into the title. This will help it rank better and get more organic views on the homepage.

App Store Keyword Field

The Apple App Store has a keyword field where you can integrate the main keywords you want to rank your app for. Make sure you fill everything in order to increase your app ranking.

What are the app store description best practices?

Besides the standard guidelines, we’ve also created a list of the app store description best practices. After looking over the market, reading studies and based on our experience, we created the following lists.

Use an Emoji in your app store description

Before anyone starts ramping up in the comment section. Yes, we do know there have been cases in the past where the use of Emojis had detrimental effects on app developers.

Yet, the problem wasn’t related to the use of emojis in the app store description. It was related to the use of emojis in the artwork or design of the app.

Apple has the right to block apps that use its copyrighted emoji design. And they should. More info in this article submitted by Techcrunch.

Conclusion: You can use Emojis in the app store description, do not use it in screenshots, logos, videos or inside of your app as part of the UI!

Test, test and re-test your app store description preview!

As mentioned before, all apps have a small preview that each user sees when opening the app page. (see example below)

Shazam app store preview description — Source: Google Play Store, Shazam App

For Shazam, we can only see 6 lines of text, then it starts fading and you can only read more if you press the “Read more” button. (sorry, couldn’t find a better wordplay for this)

Also, only 2% of users actually try to read more. Because of this, most of the time, the app store description is more relevant to the app store, than the user.

As a result, we advise that you start creating a sales-oriented copy with a limit of around 250 characters. Do your best to convince the user to download.

You can always A/B test this. Keep it for a couple of weeks, change it, compare the results. (mostly the conversion rate)

Use Social Proof in your app description.

If you’ve won rewards or done some amazing projects in the past for which the users may know you for, it’s best to state that in the app store description.

Talk about your millions of downloads in a couple of weeks, about your amazing awards or even something smaller like being featured in the top 5 of your app’s category on the app store.

This will increase the user’s trust in you and the chance of converting. (especially in more serious niches)

Social Proof App Description for Angry Birds — Angry Birds talks about its millions of players in the description.

Create a description for your images

Being limited with your app store description formating, you need to start being creative with your creative.

Bad pun, we know. But follow through here.

You can use your app store screenshots to describe your app features and functionalities, in order to increase the conversion rate.

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Unknown author

App description with app store screenshots Revolut — Revolut showcases the information about Analytics and fast account opening

App description with app store screenshots Netflix — Netflix talks about the option of downloading movies to watch later

Really important, as we mentioned before, you are allowed to include emojis in your text description, you are not allowed to use them in your creative. Most of them are copyrighted!

This is what happened with Apple emojis when they pulled out hundreds of apps from their app store.

Add some text inside your mobile app preview videos!

In the same way, you can add information in your app store screenshots, you can also add texts inside your app preview video.

Don’t forget about app localization and app internationalization

Localizing your app can increase the number of app downloads by up to 767%. That’s over 75% of the content users read on the internet is in their own language.

If you aren’t pushing your app in Spanish, for a Spanish market, you will be missing out!

App store localization is also one of the main ASO activities. It can help you rank on words that do not exist in your main language, rank you higher in specific countries and boost your downloads and conversions.

Uber did an amazing job with their localization in Japan. They managed to localize their descriptions in both text and screenshots.

Not only that, but they also used maps with locations from Japan to better reflect the experience of the users!

Use Call to Actions in your app description!

You only have a couple of lines in your app description preview. Because of this, you need to make it count and convince the user to download your app.

Lines like:

Download the app and start saving money!
Install the game and join the millions of players worldwide.
Install our app and start watching all of your favorite movies.

… will surely help you boost your conversion.

Integrate promotional text in your app description

If you’re integration a new promotion, reducing your prices for a particular event or just integrating some new features, it’s worth showcasing that in your app description.

If your app is blocked by a paid subscription, this approach can help you increase the number of customers. App promotions are a great incentive for users that want to purchase at a discount.

Update your app often.

Updating your app often will help you rank higher, as the algorithm tries to always push relevant and new content inside the app store.

Related to your app store description, make sure that you update it and state what you’ve improved in your app.

This will make users trust your app more, knowing that you are continuously working on improving it.

It will also help you bring back users that churned in the past. If they left because your app missed a feature and you managed to integrate it, you have a high chance of converting them back into paying customers.

Don’t forget about app rating and reviews

If you’ve managed to obtain good app ratings and reviews from reputable sources, make sure to integrate that inside your app description.

If Forbes, TechCrunch or a National News Network rated your app, state that information inside your App description. It will surely boost your credibility.

Final Thoughts

We hope we managed to provide some value regarding app store descriptions. Why they are important and how to improve them.

For questions or help, feel free to either contact us or leave a comment in the section bellow.

Lior Eldan

Lior Eldan is the Co-Founder & COO of Moburst. As an ASO and Mobile media expert, Lior mentors and supports startups, helping them develop and execute their mobile marketing strategies.

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

At long last, the release of iOS 14 has arrived, and with it what was expected to be a major shakeup for app developers and advertisers. In case you’ve been off the mobile marketing grid for the past three months the de facto elimination of the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is what we’re talking about. While iOS 14 is loaded with lots of great new features for users and interesting ASO opportunities for analysts, for those looking to advertise their app the IDFA “phase-out” has been a major source of uncertainty and concern. Even before the changes to the IDFA were announced the release of iOS 14 was already a big deal. However, with more strict privacy rules and regulations as part of the package, the new operating system was set to send shockwaves throughout the industry regarding changes in the way app marketers choose to spend their ad budgets. Fortunately though in a much welcome stroke of good luck Apple has decided to delay the changes to the IDFA until next year. While this is great news for app marketers who have been scrambling to figure out what to do in the absence of the highly popular unique identifier, the change is inevitably coming and there’s no way around it. So, in the interest of setting yourself up for the best chance of success, we’ve put together some suggestions to help you take advantage of your new-found gift of time. IDFA Privacy Enhancements First things first, let’s define exactly what the IDFA is and why it’s perceived numbered days are garnering so much attention. In short, the IDFA tracks user data across apps and websites, and not just ones not necessarily owned by the company doing the tracking, in order to provide targeted advertising. Its technology is similar to a cookie, but even more powerful because it allows for full mobile attribution tracking of individual users from install to usage. Previously an active IDFA on an app installed by an iOS user was the default, buried deep away in the app’s Settings and hard to find (provided you even knew about it to look for in the first place). However, as part of the iOS 14 shakeup, the new policy will require users to consent permission to be tracked. Source: Apple The New Order of Business The way in which this process will play out will be as an opt-in delivered in the form of a pop-up notification with messaging to the effect of “[App Name] would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies.” Not surprisingly, expectations are slim at best of a high conversion rate for gaining users’ permission. In fact, the general sentiment around the industry is that even just a 10% opt-in rate would be borderline wildly optimistic. Clearly this development is going to have far and wide-ranging implications on the entire $80 billion industry, so needless to say this is hardly small potatoes and one that not even the most cleverly worded opt-in message alone will miraculously solve the problem. So How To Prepare Your Business For the New IDFA Rules Now, while automatic access to the IDFA may be going away, the good news is it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Yes the IDFA gets the lion share of the attention, but it’s important to keep in mind that it isn’t the only game in town. Apple announced its own attribution framework called SKAdNetwork providing an, albeit limited, alternative: Source: Apple Most of the MMPs already have bundled the SKAdNetwork into the SDK that enables advertisers to control the data flow from the MMP’s UI without needing to implement another SDK. Moreover, the MMPs are also offering data enrichment that should provide some level of attribution. To what extent we’ll probably never know before the IDFA deprecation part of iOS 14 is fully rolled out. Besides that, publishers with many apps could leverage IDFV and there are already talks in the industry regarding the next big identifier (email / credit card are 2 big and obvious ones which Apple is already taking on with their sign-in with Apple/ Apple Pay products). Even beyond these efforts though you can also prepare on your own end if you’re willing to put in the work and get creative. The following are a few different solutions and workarounds you may want to consider depending on your team size, budget, and more. What Is Your Data Modeling Structure? If you have a Business Intelligence team and the resources to support it, this could be the option for you. First things first is to assess how you are currently measuring user data. Is your business relying solely on IDFA? If so, that’s going to be a problem. Are your data gatherers working off of raw data or aggregated reports? If the answer is raw data then switching to aggregated reports that rely on multiple identifiers could provide a good hedge and something you want to do. AppsFlyer’s Aggregated Attribution Solution Be aware though that while this may sound simple, changing the way you model your data is quite an involved process. Yes it can definitely be effective, but we’re talking about a pretty big fundamental shift in your BI’s modus operandi, and the time, manpower, and financial costs to implement such a change can add up in a hurry. How Are You Pulling Your Data? If you don’t have the resources to change your BI operations (or don’t have a dedicated BI team at all) then looking into your MMP and its capabilities must be high on your priority list. It’s important to remember that not all MMPs are created equal. Some were devised mobile-first while others trace their origins back to web attribution. Do you know the backstory behind the one you’re using? If your MMP is on top of its game then they are probably hard at work with solutions already in beta. Without naming names there are definitely two MMPs we know of, albeit in the more expensive price tier, that have already made great strides in this area since the IDFA news broke back in June. Unfortunately, others of the slightly lesser expensive variety who typically don’t trace their roots back to mobile attribution are somewhat behind the curve with getting solutions into beta. While they may be excellent products in their own rights, you truly do “get what you pay for” and with a development as disruptive as the required IDFA opt-in, the end may justify the means when it comes to spending a little bit more. However, and this is important, don’t jump without looking first - as we mentioned above every MMP is its own creature, so don’t assume you can or can’t get what you need from yours based solely on its size or price tag. Rethinking User Acquisition If you’re a small agency or publisher without a high level of technical experience the first two suggestions probably aren’t the right fit for you. However, even if you don’t have a BI team or aren’t using an MMP there are still some tactics available to you if you’re willing to put in the work. Think Outside the Box First things first you will need to get users to opt-in to allow you access to their IDFA. As we mentioned above and with an expected conversion rate of 10-20% tops, the outlook is rather bleak. While that intrusive consent pop-up that users are going to be presented with is the same for everyone, the messaging inside that pop-up doesn’t have to be. With developers free to get creative with words it still provides one last shot (albeit a long one at that) to stand out, show a little brand personality, and entice users to opt-in. Even if you’re successful with converting just a small percentage of users into IDFA consenters you’re ahead of the game and have now set yourself up to target them with their own unique campaigns featuring different messaging. It isn’t exactly a retargeting campaign, but rather a separate step in your user acquisition. Obviously it’s going to be a far smaller audience that you’ll be targeting, but one that’s composed of quality over quantity, and even more important, one that’s trackable and attributable. Higher Learning In addition to giving your creative team a new assignment with your opt-in messaging, you’re also going to need to put your UA manager to work in getting more statistically oriented when it comes to analysis of upper-funnel analysis. Up until now for performance marketers, the focus has been all about down funnel and mapping in-app events. However, with the IDFA no longer a given, conducting deeper analysis on metrics like impressions, CTR, CVR, and clicks are more important than ever before. Key Takeaways IDFA may be going away, but not all is lost. It certainly won’t be an easy change, but with the right planning it doesn’t have to be a catastrophe.If you have a data team and the resources to go with it, a restructuring of how you model your data, including switching to aggregated reporting rather from raw data could reap the dividends that justify the costs of doing it.Take a good hard look into everything your MMP has to offer. Do they already have solutions already in beta? If yours doesn’t, does it make sense to possibly spend more and switch to one that does?Treat your opt-in messages like ads. Make them as enticing as possible. It would be naive to expect them to move the needle a tremendous amount, but why leave any chips on the table?Change up your focus from down funnel to upper-funnel analysis to help identify trends more quickly.Stay alert. Yes, the changing trends in privacy present a huge challenge for everyone, and it’s not just iOS. Even Google is eventually expected to make its GAID an opt-in identifier as well. That said, keep in mind that Facebook relies on the IDFA for a significant percentage of its advertising technologies so they’re on it, as are many of the major MMPs. It’s a fluid situation that is pretty much guaranteed to change so in addition to doing your legwork make sure to check back with us as we’ll no doubt be keeping our eyes on the situation and sharing updates and insights when we have them.