How to increase downloads - Whats working and whats not

Hey all,

perhaps you are in the same situation as we are: After month of work you have finished your app, did proper testing and then with desperate released it to the App Store. After a week or so you realize that there is simply no traffic coming to your App and thus no downloads are generated.

On various forums, blogs and websites you can find lists on how to boost your downloads. They all tell you the same things:
1) ASO (App Store Optimization)
2) Review exchange
3) Advertise (z.B. AdWords)
4) Make a Promovideo
5) Get an review from professionals

Okay, let's go through the list and the experiences we gathered for or app Hexagonian - Connecting Colors:

1) ASO (App Store Optimization)
Theory: The idea of ASO is to provide the right keywords in order to get found from the search engines. The most prominent place for your keywords obviously is the title. Be sure that you choose it well. A good site for free research on keywords is AppAnnie. You can look for similar apps as yours and see what keywords they are using. These keywords can be placed in the title (limited space) or in the description. But dont exaggerate it since the search engines will interpret it negatively.

Truth: Okay, ASO really is important -I think that is clear. This is especially true for the interaction with the visitor for your app. But ( ! ) if you have a lack of downloads the ASO for higher ranking within the Play Store will not work. Let's see our app Hexagonian - Connecting Colors. If you enter Hexagon in Google Play you will find the game. Okay there is no competition on that name. But if you enter Connecting Colors there will be all kinds of apps but no Hexagonian. So even with these keywords in the title there are no hits. That emphasizes the statement "Without downloads, ASO will not boost your downloads".
But keep in mind that a good placement of keywords is still needed to help you interact with people.

2) Review exchange
Theory: There are some websites that offer a review exchange service. The idea is that you give a review to an app and in return you get a review from someone else back. There are some rules to that exchange: You have to really test the app, giving appropriate feedback and keep the app for at least 2 days on your phone.
This is not like buying 5 star reviews (which would be against the Google policy)! From this portals you can also get low star reviews.
Actually I like the idea much since you get feedback, downloads and reviews.

Truth: The theory sound very good. However the drawback is that people using these portals just download your app because they want reviews in return. So it might not be your target group that is giving you reviews. This might result in low star ratings because they lack interest in your apps topic.
But there is also another important thing to mention. Hexagonian got 8 reviews from these portals; 6 five stars, 1 four star, 1 three star. However Googles Play Store seems to filter out reviews it thinks are bought/fake/whatever. After some days all the 6 five star reviews vanished leaving just the four and three star review. Google seems to distrust the higher star reviews more than lower star ones. In the end you will get a lower review rating than you hope for.

3) Advertise (z.B. AdWords)
Theory: Advertising is straight forward. In order to get more downloads you have to reach the people. We tried AdWords and the setup for Apps is quite simple. You choose your campaign which will use your Play Store images as base setup. Then you add some advertising text and enter what you want to pay per install (CPI = costs per install). The CPI could be 1$ for example. You are basically just paying for real downloads.

Truth: It really works as stated in the theory. However to get a high number of downloads will be expansive.

4) Make a Promovideo
Theory: Use different sources to promote your app. You can use YouTube to upload an video for promotion. The good thing is you can link the video directly to your Play Store entry. Without great afford you can provide your visitors another channel of interaction.

Truth: We also did a little promotion video (search Hexagonian in Youtube). Like with ASO you have a problem that almost nobody is finding your video if you dont have any other promotion channel. However this method might work good if you have a big social network or a well visited YouTube-Channel.

5) Get a review from professionals
--This is something we haven't tried yet. But it will be interesting to see the effect.*

All these topics mentioned above might work different if you have big community in the first place. This is just how it worked out for us. It is also not intended to discourage you. But be sure after finishing your app the real work has just begun.

All the best,
Christian

Hi Zoe,

thanks for your additions. Social media really could also be big influencer.

I also looked at your link and as stated above ASO is important but if you lack downloads it is not the method to really boost you downloads. Dont get me wrong, everybody should do ASO but as newcomer with low number of downloads dont hope for a big boost from that alone.

Best,
Christian

Hi Agustin,

releasing an app for sure can be frustrating. If you go for AdWords think about doing a video first. Because you can add that to a universal app campaign and thus use another promotion channel.

Wish you the best,
Christian