Marketing
App Store Optimization is search engine optimization for app stores — the discipline of getting your app to surface for the searches your future users actually run, and then converting that visibility into installs. It's easy to underinvest in because it doesn't require an engineering sprint, but the fields you fill in on your store listing meaningfully change how discoverable your app is.
On the App Store: the app name (30 characters), the subtitle (30 characters), the hidden keyword field (100 characters, comma-separated, never shown to users but read directly by search), and your primary/secondary category. On Google Play: the title (30 characters), a short description (80 characters), and a full description (up to 4,000 characters) — all of which factor into search relevance.
This is the part people get wrong by treating both stores the same way. Apple's search weights the app name, subtitle, and that invisible keyword field heavily, and does not meaningfully index the long-form description for search purposes — so stuffing keywords into your App Store description does close to nothing. Google Play's algorithm behaves much more like traditional web search: it does read and weight the full description text, so relevant keyword usage there — written naturally, not stuffed — actually affects ranking.
Once someone lands on your product page, screenshots do the selling. The first two or three matter disproportionately, since that's what's visible without scrolling on most devices. If you have meaningful markets outside English, localizing screenshots (not just translating the description) measurably improves conversion in those markets. An App Store preview video autoplays muted in the listing — treat the first few seconds as if sound is off, because for most viewers it is.
Both platforms offer a native in-app rating prompt (SKStoreReviewController on iOS, the Play In-App Review API on Android) that doesn't take the user out of the app. Trigger it after a genuinely positive moment — right after a task succeeds, not on first launch — and note that Apple limits how often your app is allowed to show the system prompt to a given user, so you can't spam it even if you wanted to. Responding to reviews, especially critical ones, is visible to every future visitor reading them and is worth the time.
App Store Connect shows impressions, product page views, and conversion rate as a funnel, so you can see whether a listing change actually moved the needle. Google Play Console goes further with pre-launch reports and native store listing experiments — genuine A/B tests of icon, screenshots, and description variants against real traffic. Apple's closest equivalent, Product Page Optimization, lets you test alternate icons and screenshot sets. Both are worth running before assuming a listing change helped or hurt.
Some of what drives installs happens outside the store entirely — Universal Links and App Links let a regular web link open directly into your app instead of a browser if it's installed, which matters for anyone landing on your marketing site or a shared link from an existing user. A smart App Banner (iOS) or Play Instant experience can convert web visitors who don't have the app yet, and neither of these substitutes for in-store ASO, but both compound with it.
Category selection deserves more attention than it usually gets, too. A crowded primary category (Productivity, Health & Fitness) means more competition for the same searches, while a well-chosen secondary category can put you in front of a smaller, more targeted audience with less competition. Neither store lets you change primary category casually without it affecting your ranking history in the old one, so this is worth getting right at launch rather than treating it as easily reversible later.
ASO isn't a one-time setup — it's a listing you keep tuning as you learn what search terms and screenshots actually convert, the same way you'd tune a landing page.
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