Last year was a big one for Apple and app developers around the world. With the release of iOS 15 and its three new features the App Store Optimisation (ASO) game has been drastically changed and, with it, the way we attract users to our apps on the App Store. Why is that you’re wondering?
Imagine putting a lot of effort into developing a well-thought, easy-to-use app and planning a marketing strategy without knowing who your audience is and what they like and having little to no options to find that out. Well, let’s leave that to just your imagination because now, thanks to the release of In-App Events, Custom Product Pages and Product Page Optimisation, you’re spoilt for choice!
If we were to talk about all three features and their advantages, you’d probably never finish reading. Hence why we’re just going to focus on one of the three for now in-app events.
As described by Apple "in-app events are timely events within apps and games - such as game competitions, movie premieres, live-streamed experiences, and more"
They appear as event cards across the App Store: in the search results, on your product page and in the App Store’s curated sections such as the Today, Games and Apps tabs.
But what does this all mean for your app’s ASO?
A big advantage of using in-app events is the increased visibility that your app will immediately get. This will be the result of different factors that will come into play, such as:
- Higher volume of search results, by targeting relevant keyword your in-app event will be indexed which increases the likelihood of your app being discovered by new users
- More opportunities for targeting returning users; the screenshots that would appear in the search results will now be replaced by your event card providing you with a new, more creative way to engage returning users
- Boost your app’s exposure thanks to being shown in the curated sections of the App Store.
Once this new feature was released, it was crucial for our team to let our clients know what an amazing opportunity this would represent for them and their app’s organic performance.
Poply In-App Events Example
It was a few days after Apple announced that in-app events were now live that one of Redbox’s ASO clients, Poply, engaged with us to start working towards creating their very first In-App Event.
Being an invitation maker app, Poply generally experiences a lot of traffic from users during the winter holiday period. Therefore, we agreed it was a good idea to boost Poply’s visibility by advertising the release of a new content library which would include holiday-themed templates.
Once the plan was in place, Redbox started work on appealing creative mock-ups that would showcase the new content library while keeping faith to Poply’s brand image. With the creative mock-ups ready and metadata suggestions approved by Poply, the in-app event was ready to be set up.
Client's Feedback
Thankfully, Redbox did all the hard work of figuring out the appropriate in-app event badge to use, as well as adjusting our promotional materials to work with it (images, text, etc.)
Here are some things we noted while preparing our first in-app event:
- All images first - the title and descriptions get added as you enter ‘in real time’ which is nice for seeing placement
- Be prepared to change up your text since you can’t control the exact placement
- You’ll need to have a deep-link ready that takes the user to your promotion, or as close to it as possible
- The biggest lesson for us - submit your promotion separately from your app release. We submitted both together and, while our app was accepted, the promotion was held up in review and that delayed our app release quite a bit
Our Team has been beavering away creating strategies to help support this new functionality, Contact Us Today to discuss how we can help implement these into your next round of updates…