Your iOS App is losing traction.

The first step towards improvement is understanding why.

There are a plethora of possibilities that could be causing your app ailment. Let’s examine 5 issues that could be hindering your app’s success in the App Store.

1. Boring, Basic, and Blah

Your app blends in far too much in comparison to your competition. Your app’s icon and screenshot graphics, core features or your listing itself has painfully unoriginal messaging. This iOS app is failing due to a lack of uniqueness! It’s important to stand out from the crowd when it comes to grabbing attention in search and delivering a convincing experience through your graphics and key points of difference.

To do this in an efficient manner, it’s important to split test different options. This allows you to know with certainty what your winning combination is!

2. Absentminded Search Ads

Either you aren’t yet running Apple Search Ads for your iOS app yet, or the campaigns you are currently serving are not optimized. Before you go crazy with the new advertising platform, you must make sure your house is in order for visitors. If your listing isn’t cleaned up (title, description, graphics, etc.), you are likely to lose conversions.

How to:

Next, it’s important to research your keywords on the Search Ads platform. Here you can see the “Search Popularity” data of keywords. Unfortunately, this isn’t currently depicted with a numeric score, but instead a popularity bar.

In order to simplify this for developers, we’ve created simple Chrome [Chrome Store] and Safari [direct download] extensions that add a numeric value to the platform screen, which makes a developer’s research much easier! Both extensions are free to download and open to the public.

3. Keyword Krazy

Are you targeting too many competitor keywords? Stop trying to run a losing race and differentiate your iOS App with a fresh perspective. You only have so many characters to use. So why waste your keywords on attempting to rank using a competitor’s name (i.e. a match three game trying to rank for the infamous Candy Crush)? The reality is that you may still show about 15 apps down the search list!

How to:

What is a long tail search term? The 100 characters you can use for keywords should comprise of words, that when combined, create phrases that users would naturally search for. Take, for example, a generic dating app. They would not want to exclusively target competitor branded keywords like “tinder”, “okcupid”, etc. Instead, they should use terms like “meet, new, single, people, near, me”. These words can be rearranged in various ways that users may be searching, i.e. “meet people” “meet single people” “meet new people” “meet people near me”, etc.

4. Lack of Localization

Did you know the App Store is available in over 150 different countries? That’s a lot of people to try and reach and resonate with!

Localization is the process of translating your app into multiple languages. Apple says that it is important your app “appears as if it is a native app in all the languages and regions it supports.” This increases its acceptance around the globe. Apple also says that localization/internationalization are important because “users in other countries want to use your app in a language they understand and see dates, times, and numbers in familiar, regional formats.”

5. iOS App Atrophy

App atrophy is a cute way of saying that your listing stale. If you are guilty of setting and forgetting, your app will grow stagnant. It’s important to have an ongoing ASO, or App Store Optimization, strategy by refreshing your keyword structure, your description, title, and graphics. In addition to refreshing your app’s ASO strategy, be sure you’re updating your app to utilize the most recent technologies from Apple, and keeping up with design trends!