Today we will touch on a topic that worries everyone involved in the development of applications for iOS - getting into the collections of Apple ecosystem stores. Last September,
there was a global update of the App Store , in connection with which developers have more chances to attract (benign) attention of the administration, to win a new audience, increase profits, increase conversions and just go into the trend.
Types of features on the App Store
To begin, we define concepts. On many foreign resources, the authors of articles understand only one type of it, the most hard-to-find - Application / Game of the Day. In fact, Apple helps developers promote their products in several ways, each of which deserves attention.
1. Today tab“Every visit to the App Store now begins with the Today tab, where you can learn everything about games, applications, and virtual culture,” says Apple’s official website. Now this tab resembles a news feed.
Every day in the compilation "Today" there are new cards compiled by Apple editors, which cover a variety of games and applications. The number of cards varies depending on localization: for example, there are 6 of them on the market in the US, and 4 in Russia. Without a doubt, the Today tab is the best engine for promoting applications. Each card has its own stated theme, name, short story and link to download the application.
Graph of the popularity of used topics for collections in the Today tab (US market)According to a
recently published study , the most popular category that the App Store editors from the United States promote especially willingly are games (41%), which is not surprising. 8% are in the Education category, 5% each is Health and Fitness, Stickers and Performance.
The Games and Education categories attract the App Store editors more than others.
To get to the Today tab, the application must be really cool, in a trend and just like the editor. According to rumors, there is a significant handicap for those about whom they have already written large resources. But what will it give? According to official data from Apple, more than 70 million unique users from around the world drop in the App Store daily. About 18-19 million users visit the American market every day. The results of hit in the selection can seriously stun the developer. So,
according to a Sensor Tower study , feature is able to increase the influx of new users by 800%.
Positions of applications before / after getting into the Today tab (free applications).Accordingly, the influx of new users is guaranteed, as well as getting into the top 10 in its category. In theory, the appearance in the “Application of the day” category should increase the number of downloads by 685%, and in the “Game of the Day” - by 802%.
2. “Games” tabThe category of games, according to official data, is the most popular on the App Store: the market features over half a million gaming applications. Selections of games and applications are updated once a week. To make it more convenient for users to find really worthy projects in all their variety, editors present recommended releases and updates, videos of the best titles, top charts and interesting articles.
Here you can get into different types of collections: from editorial selection with the placement of a large banner at the top of the page, to the top paid and free applications at the very bottom of the page. Of course, the effect of all these types of promotion will also be different, and in some places quite unexpected. For example, our comrades from App Tractor
mentioned in their article the possibility of dropping downloads recorded by the Sensor Tower service after getting into the feature application with videos and screenshots.
3. Tab "Applications"In iOS 11, applications and games were placed in different tabs, which in itself makes it more likely to light up.
One of the Store Intelligence's studies concerned this type of feature: according to their data, getting into the “Applications” tab can increase downloads by 141% (which shows a comparison of weekly periods in installations before / after features). By analogy with the "Games" section, in the "Applications" tab there are large banners of the top selected pages, below there are collections on topics that are currently burning, and at the very bottom are the tops of free and paid projects.
Apply with an eye to the result
After the release of iOS 11, a convenient
form of communication has become available for submitting an application for fichering. It is necessary to fill in all the standard fields: application name, company name, whether there will be an application for a new application or for updating an existing one, into which languages the interface is localized, the business model of monetization, and also the expected release dates. Apple administrators advise you to submit an application 6-8 weeks before the intended release of the application. From what we read about the experience of other teams, sometimes the moderators contact the developers after the selection, but in most cases no alerts come - you have to check the selections manually or find out about the successful outcome already in hindsight, by the increase in downloads.
A more detailed review deserve non-standard form fields:
Version Highlights: here you list what will be new and interesting in the very version that is sent to the feature.
Marketing Plans: in this field you can talk about future plans for the development of the project. We focused on the opportunities that we want to provide in future releases, but we believe that it is permissible to write about other aspects - for example, a promising partnership.
Your Story: this block is useful for editors in the event that your product is selected for the “Application of the Day” section. This does not mean that what you write will be displayed in the App Store: the editor will compile your text based on the information provided. Accordingly, your task here is to interest him, to stand out among the other applicants. This can be done in different ways: tell the story of a company or a project, reveal your mission, paint, where you found inspiration - in a word, do not be afraid to show imagination.
The Version Highlights and Marketing Plans fields are marked as optional, you can skip them and let the application speak for itself. We would not, however, recommend such a policy. Very much depends on your ability to convey the main advantages of the application, to show how you stand out in the category presented and why you are worthy to get into the selection. So it is better to use the symbols provided to you in full. By the way, the limit for the field Your Story is 1000 characters, for the fields Version Highlights and Marketing Plans - 2000 characters.
According to rumors, the App Store administration has a weakness for those who are actively using new features for Apple developers or have mastered other trend technologies well (blockchain, AI). Frankly, writing science fiction is probably not worth it, but if you are introducing or even planning to introduce something like this, you should mention it.
In addition to text descriptions, the App Store allows you to attach three links to materials of any other formats - you can add even a video, even an infographic, or even multi-page documentation. This opportunity should not be neglected either; As you know, visual information is perceived better and more readily.
Finally, a few words need to be said separately about the Mac Store. The application for picking is submitted on the same form and on the same link as on the App Store; the only difference is that in one of the drop-down lists you will need to select the MacOS platform. Unfortunately, neither us nor our acquaintances have had any experience of getting into fichering here. However, in our immediate plans there is an update and promotion of applications for the desktop - we hope that soon we will have something to say about this.
How it was
So, the theoretical base is clarified. We now turn directly to the real examples. The further narration is based on the experience of the developers of the
FinEco company, our partners, from their words written correctly and read by them. The guys are engaged in the development of cross-platform financial applications, some of which were recently selected by Apple editors to participate in the feature.
To increase their chances of getting into the selection, they applied for two projects at once, both from the Finance category. One of the selected projects was the
application My Income and Expenses , designed to control personal finances. Niche, to put it mildly, lived-in, but the developers decided to focus on reasonableness and careful study. The first version was released exactly a year ago, and during this time the interface has been significantly improved and the range of possible operations has been expanded. Active communication in the comments (thanks to iOS 11) allowed us to better understand the audience, their requests and modify the initial functionality to the point that the user really needs. They submitted an application for this application three weeks before the scheduled update.
On the advice of moderators in personal correspondence, the fields were filled in English, although the team focused primarily on the Russian audience. In the above blocks, the emphasis was placed on everything that distinguishes the application from its peers - the speed of actions, the intuitiveness of operations and visual display of results. In the Marketing field, they talked about future plans for automating and recognizing different types of information, trying to show a logical connection between the mission withered in Your story and new features so that the latter do not look assigned simply for beauty.
The team sent the application for promotion of the second project several days before the update. It was before the adoption of the law on raising the retirement age, but
My Pension , an application for calculating pension savings and tracking savings, turned out to be on the topic of the day even then. Probably, it was the social topic that helped the product so quickly attract the attention of moderators. Exactly on the date indicated in the application, he got into the selection of the Today tab of the Russian market. As already mentioned, the news feed is updated daily, but this collection still hung 7 days in the Applications section.
In the case of the first application, we had to show a little more patience - it was selected for the Today tab only a week later. All this time, the team diligently tracked performance through the embedded analytics system in appstoreconnect, on
App Annie and directly on the market itself. When the happy moment finally arrived, it became obvious at first glance.
The data of the application "My Pension", April 18, there was an increase in viewing the product page and settings.In general and in general, the approximate figures that we cited in the first part of the article were not exaggerated. Installation of applications soared that the promised 800% was quite achievable abroad. On average, each day of stay in the collection gave an increase in page viewing and installation settings by 20 times.
Entering the feature tab Today, April 26, 2018, My Income and ExpensesA week before and after getting into feature. My Income and ExpensesMain conclusions
- Getting into the App Store feature is really achievable
- There are several types of features: an application can be placed in different tabs and selections. The best result comes from getting into the Today section, but collections and tops are also able to give good growth.
- A lot of things are solved by literate, intimate texts in the application form, which could be of interest to the editor.
- The chances of success increase if the application has unique features and / or solves burning problems.
- When the application hits the selection, page views of the product and the influx of new users is increased up to 20 times.
We hope that this material was useful to you. If you have experience getting into different categories of collections of the App Store and Mac Store, we will be happy to read about it in the comments.