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11 Comments

How to get more app installs?

Hey indies, first of all I want to say I'm thankful to be a part of this community.

I would like to know from some of you who have 100k + iOS app installs, how did you get your first 1k and 10k app installs? How did people know that they made the right choice when buying your app or making an in app purchase ?

And how many things are wrong with this: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/artsy-photo-editor/id1574084850

  1. 1

    I'm working for a long time with App Store, and the most important thing on which you should center is on ORGANIC TRAFFIC. Organic Traffic is the downloads that are coming directly from App Store search, for this reason, you need to focus on improving on how your app is ranking by specific keywords, ex. [Photo Editor]. In your case, I would sacrifice the brand name [Artsy] and would try to highlight the [Photo Editor] or any other keyword. Sometimes, focusing on the most competitive keyword can be a wrong strategy, due to the low amount of downloads.

    Also, I would recommend you to investigate more what is ASO and how it works. Finally, you need some ASO tools to monitor how your changes impact your app discoverability. Right now, I'm working on a new ASO tool (ASO by 2Stable) for developers, you can give it a try if you want it's absolutely free at the moment.

  2. 1

    The hardest part is definitely not finding a team of programmers to technically implement your vision. What is most difficult to achieve, in fact, is promoting the application.

    I’ve wrote an article few weeks ago about how to promote a mobile app for free, hope this helps.
    https://cmevo.com/promote-mobile-application/

    1. 1

      Hello boobo94, thank you for your thoughtful article.

      This is what I have taken away and think will be best for the app:

      Promoting the app on Social Media
      Promote the mobile application using videos
      Provide Free trials
      Post the application on ProductHunt
      Post the app on review sites

      After implementing these I will come back to the list and see which has worked best and which have made the least impact, I will be sure to come back and share with the community what has worked best in a month or two, thank you!

      1. 1

        That is the best way to grow in my opinion. I applied these tactics on my own.: built a landing page, promote it on social media and not even that I get new users for the app, but the seo for that page get a big boost.

        Let me know about your progress. Hope all the best!

        1. 1

          Thank you very much! I will most definitely let you know of the changes, thank you!

  3. 1

    Your biggest challenge is that you don't have any ratings/reviews. And it's a chicken-and-the-egg problem. To get downloads, you need reviews. But to get reviews, you need downloads.

    Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling:

    • Ask friends to leaving ratings/reviews (discreetly). I would not ask family because Apple may be able to link those people back to you.
    • If you have any contact with your customers (e.g. an email address) ask them for ratings/reviews. Apple makes it really hard to have direct contact with your users, but this is incredibly valuable. Try building a fanbase/audience through social media (maybe in your case Instagram, Pinterest etc.), your website (you should build one), build an email list and ask them to help you with ratings/reviews.
    • Use the in-app rating prompt to collect ratings
    • If you have a budget, you can try apple search ads to boost your downloads. I hate doing this, it can be expensive. But it sometimes works.
    • Try to get your app reviewed or featured or written about by relevant bloggers/review sites

    It's much harder to get users for a paid app, so you may want to consider trying a free app with an in-app purchase upgrade or free trial period. Especially if you have no reviews, most people want to try the app before buying. I think asking for money up front only really works if you have a lot of ratings/reviews and a bit of a brand reputation in your space so that people feel comfortable opening their wallet just based on your screen shots.

    Last, many app developers cheat by buying reviews. Some of these get caught, many don't. I personally wouldn't do it but you should be aware that it happens.

    Re: your app store page, you should add some text to explain what the features/benefits are. Most people use text and put their screenshot in a iPhone mockup. There are services too where you can submit screens and they generate mockups for you. Video is also a real attention grabber, but can be a bit costly if you don't know how to do it yourself. My recommendation is do a search in the app store for "photo editor" and study what the top 5-10 apps do and try to learn from them.

    Your app looks really nice, but trying to succeed in the app store is really hard. My experience with iOS apps scarred me for life, I don't think I would ever do it again😢

    But I wish you the best of luck!

    1. 1

      Hello Steven, I’ve tried running apple search ads, basic ads to be specific but to no avail, I think they work best for free apps, I stand to be corrected on this because they only seemed to be effective if one of my apps was free.

      I haven’t tried getting my app reviewed or feature by blogger or review sites so this will be going into my “How to get more app installs” to-do list

      Judging by what you've just mentioned in regards to making the app free I think I switched into the right direction as I am working on implementing in app purchases as we speak. Another very important pointer is one of video, I see a lot of apps that have inspired me have a short video explaining benefits and features of their app.

      Thank you for your kind words, I’m sorry it scared you for life, who knows what kind of wonderful things you would have given us had it not done so, for myself I really don’t have a choice but to go through whatever hell it may throw at me, I’m not a fan of 9-5’s so am hell-bent, thank you for your well wishes, Steven!

  4. 1

    Just one tip from my side related to the store listing. Get the app screenshots right please - focus on benefits and not features. Use something like smartmockups.com to create awesome screenshots with phone frames. Bold texts, etc. You should do some research on the top apps in this space and see how they position.

    1. 2

      Thank you for taking time, it seems your one tip is the most crucial factor in convincing people to install the app, many others are pointing out at this as well, thank you for your detailed response, ama head out and work on this, thank you!

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