One of the most important questions to ask in ASO is:

“how do we know our ASO efforts are producing a tangible impact on installs and revenue?”

While this is a simple question to ask, it is a difficult question to answer as the algorithms that govern the fate of millions of apps are constantly evolving which can cause swings in performance, and also isolating a specific optimization and cutting out noise is also tough; indeed all manner of data attribution/analytics technologies have sprung up with solutions because of these problems.

Today’s article focuses on some tips for clients and bosses, app marketing managers and consultants alike to deduce the impact of an app store optimization strategy:

Step one: Familiarize yourself with the full impact of an ASO strategy

App store optimization, like SEO is made up of many activities, each of which individually and combined produce many outcomes. Here is a list of some of the most important places to look when determining the return on ASO:

  1. Installs — are you driving more installs than you were before?
  2. Revenue — are you earning more revenue than before?
  3. Keyword rankings — are you ranking for more important keywords than before, at higher ranks?
  4. Category rankings — are you ranking higher in your category than before?
  5. Conversion rate — are you converting more store impressions to app views, and app views into installs at a better rate than before?

Image credit: App Annie

Step two: Know your metrics and KPIs

Get to know the data and love it, too. We wrote a popular post and made an infographic detailing some KPIs and metrics for app marketing in general, but here are some metrics and KPIs specifically for analyzing the efficacy of an app store optimization strategy:

  • > App/Play store:
  • KPI Higher installs — “up and to the right” installs is the single most common method of analyzing the impact of ASO.
  • Higher revenue or number of buyers — Crafting the right messaging to prime users to purchase or ranking for keywords that attract higher value users can improve ARPU; or vice versa.