The search for success

ASO had a major impact on mobile marketing in 2015, but it’s undergoing a major shake-up as we head into the New Year

App Store Optimisation, or ASO as it is better known, changed dramatically during 2015 and not necessarily for the better. What used to be a relatively simple way to gain an edge over the competition has become a commoditised, complex part of the business nobody can afford to avoid.

At the heart of ASO is the Apple App Store and its constantly changing search algorithm. While in no way as complex as the infamous Google search algorithm, its changing nature has become a real test of the agility and analytical powers of mobile marketers in the online gaming industry.

The big change to the Apple search algorithm came at the beginning of November where it seems the technology giant is placing a lot more importance on app reputation ahead of the more easily hackable factors like keywords. “It favours those who are going to invest some time and effort into it,” Richard Downey, director of global business development at The Mobile
House, says.

“Things like downloads over time and ratings history are becoming more important and the quick fix of sticking some keywords in the app name doesn’t seem as successful as it once was. It’s all part of Apple’s ongoing mission to make the App Store as user friendly as it can be,” Downey adds.

“It’s a very different landscape from when I started two years ago,” Richard Lee, head of mobile marketing at Unibet, says. “When ASO first started it was just keywords and now it’s so much more. Their algorithm dictates that if people aren’t engaged with the app and they are just downloading and leaving then you are going to lose ranking.”

In essence there is currently only one simple way to stay on top of the iOS search algorithm and that’s having an amazing product as Ryan Murton, head of digital marketing at Oddschecker, explains. “All the ASO metrics filter down to you having an awesome product: lots of installs, good reviews, good engagement and low churn rates or un-installs.”

Downey agrees, saying app reputation is central to any successful strategy in 2016. “Reputation is becoming more important and right at the heart of that is user feedback. Ratings and reviews are becoming crucial. If you have the best ASO strategy in the world and you’re not generating regular good ratings and reviews you will struggle to find success. That’s a challenge in the gaming sector, especially in mobile casino,” he says.

Read all about it…
What we should expect then is a rush to the nearest incentivised review agency from the great and the not so good in the online gaming sector. But Downey has a word of caution for those considering this obvious, if ethically challenged, route. “It’s no coincidence that around the time of the algorithm change Apple very publicly fined a publisher for farming reviews. I would never suggest any client uses an incentivised review process as you don’t want to get on the wrong side of Apple.”

Lee is also firmly against the short-term gain of incentivised reviews saying it’s not a strategy he would ever consider. “It’s extremely hard to get people to give reviews unless it’s incentivised and that’s not something I want to do. I refuse to do incentivised reviews and I don’t want to annoy our customers by trying to force them to give us reviews.”

So how do you solve a problem that seems to be at the heart of the new world of ASO? Forcing users to review your app has potential but it’s an extremely risky way of addressing it as it may lead to a number of low ratings from frustrated users. A smarter strategy is push notifications asking for a review at certain points in the user journey. “There are ways of doing it by communicating with them at a point in their user journey where you are reasonably confident they will be happy,” Downey says.

The split between Unibet’s Nordic and UK app profiles is an interesting guide to how you go about solving this problem. And sadly it’s not an easy or a cheap solution. Unibet’s brand is incredibly strong in the Nordics and the reviews there are plentiful, whereas in the UK it’s still in an early growth phase and struggles for the minimum amount with its more regular release schedule. Put simply, the stronger the brand, the more the reviews.

And this points to a wider trend within ASO – there is strength in numbers. No matter how good your strategy and how on-trend you are with the latest workarounds, if you can’t get good volume in the App Store and capture those mythical organic downloads through your off-store marketing and branding efforts, it will be a constant uphill battle.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult as existing apps and brands gain more and more authority,” Murton says. “Their overall profile is building up daily while new apps are sat there waiting to get started.” And Downey agrees, saying the quick fix approaches that saw some brands get instant visibility 12 months back are now likely to be a bust. “The chances of going from zero to hero in one go without the basis of a strong history in the store seems to have declined considerably,” he says.

Size really matters
Compounding this move towards rewarding the powerful and punishing the poorly reviewed is the way ASO has moved from a dark art into something that is a core function of any mobile marketing team. Most of the key strategies are quickly disseminated following any major update and the visibility of the App Store makes it hard to keep secrets from your rivals.

The most obvious example of this to a newcomer is app names. Within the egaming sector App Store names read like Google Index entries from the early 2000s with keywords stuffed to the point of bursting at the seams. For example, Paddy Power’s latest sportsbook app name is: Paddy Power Sports Betting. Bet on Horse Racing, Football & Premier League Results. William Hill’s is the equally snappy: William Hill Live Sports Betting – Bet on Football, Tennis and Horse Racing Results.

Most of these words aren’t even visible in portrait view on an iPhone and exist solely for ASO purposes, trying to catch some of the more long-tail search terms in the store. It’s almost impossible to compete for terms such as football with betting brands up against the likes of Man Utd, the FA and FIFA. But football results or football betting is less competitive and operators go for a strategy of capturing as many keyword combinations as possible.

“There are tools online that enable us to see the rankings of keywords, but the problem is football is extraordinarily difficult. There are thousands of apps with ‘football’ as a keyword so where is the value for us in having it? That comes in when people search for ‘football betting’. You can combine keywords so if someone wants to search football, tennis, rugby, betting we will probably rank number one,” Lee says.

Unibet’s result is the somewhat verbose app name of Unibet Sports Betting: Bet live & in play on Football scores, Horse Racing & Tennis results. “It’s very hard to stand out because everyone is doing the same thing,” Lee says. “But if you don’t use optimal strategies you are going to lose ground on people. The only edge you can get is who can get the app out first and then that lasts for a week at most. Where you can get advantages is behind the scenes with continued research on keywords, images and videos and keep doing new stuff.”

And as Murton explains, Apple doesn’t give operators a lot to play with when it comes to ranking high in search results. “The title of your app and keywords are your only way to signal what keywords you want to rank for. Your description, screenshots and app icon is the only way you have to signal to users what your app is. Why should a user download your app and use it? Give them a reason.”

What this means in practice is the fairly brute-force approach adopted by most of the major operators, but it’s unlikely to be an approach the aesthetically minded Apple will want to stick with. And Downey suggests the algorithm might be becoming more sophisticated in an effort to allow operators to clean up their app names and descriptions a little.

“Before November the only way you could be certain you would be discovered was using a combination of keywords and app name. Now you don’t necessarily need football betting in your keywords, if it is in the reviews, for example. The algorithm is taking more into account than just the 100 words.”

Data beats opinion, apparently
A move towards a more sophisticated approach to ASO is finally being led by science and hard data rather than educated guesswork. “What used to be people saying, ‘We think best practice is XYZ’ has become genuine testing and analysis. We get the keywords right, the app name right and look at what competitors are doing but we’re opening our minds to new  opportunities,” Downey says.

Lee says the team at Unibet regularly analyse downloads in relation to the search rankings and release dates, and there is a lot of testing and analysis related to these factors. They also take on advice from agencies that may be closer to Apple than the gaming industry. “Apple is not very forthcoming, and you’re almost relying on hearsay,” he says.

What this can mean in practice is more frequent updates as you try and keep on top of ever-moving trends and best practice and take advantage of small edges in a hugely competitive space. “With every release we do, we’ve got to make ASO changes. Before I was making changes every three months, but now it’s more like every four weeks. It’s no easier or harder than it was a few years ago, but it’s such an important part of any app strategy you need to constantly adapt and stay ahead of the game,” Lee adds.

But Lee says at its heart ASO is just about doing things in the way the user wants. This is, aſter all, what Apple is aiming for. “We focus on doing stuff correctly anyway as we want people engaged with our app. We’re looking for the same things as we want good reviews and people downloading and using the app. ASO is not a campaign, it’s about making sure the app ranks highly and performs well in organic downloads in the long term.”

Murton echoes this. “Nothing has really changed. The same core principles exist when it comes to the execution of your strategy. The only caveat here is that new apps are getting further leſt behind. As brands spend more on above-the-line and below-the-line advertising, the authority of existing apps is ever growing and it’s getting extremely difficult to compete with these.”