The amount of noise out there in any of the mobile applications portals is apparent the first time you load one up. It reminds a person of the first time they walk into their local liquor store looking for a good wine or new micro brew. There’s plenty of choices, but what’s good and how can you really know what you’re about to pay for is good?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a knowledgeable associate there waiting to help you out, so what is a person to do? Well, it’s not up to the customer, it’s up to the app store and the creators of those apps (you) to describe the product effectively in order to allow the user to find the application they are looking for.
I’ve read some good explanations, from the quick: App Store SEO: Using Specialized SEO Techniques to Promote Your App by Teresa Lane to the more descriptive: How To Successfully Promote Your App: iPhone App Marketing by our good friend Carla Kay White.
For the most part the basics come down to making a good first impression. App stores are in the infant stages of properly utilizing meta data to classify the apps that are displayed on their shelves, but they are slowly getting better.
First and foremost, the name of the app is king. You need something catchy but you also need it to be descriptive. Finding the proper mix is tricky.
After the name, you’re really hostage to the constraints put on your by whatever app store you’re dealing with. You will most likely though have access to things such as keywords and description to help you along, so figure out how to use these to your advantage. It is very similar to the early days of internet searches. It’s a crude system currently, but you need to do what you can to make it work for you. The weakness of the system is the lack of intelligence that can be built into the searches due to the very minuscule proportions of meta data available, but because of this you really need to be creative with your marketing.
Advertising outside of the app store is really where you really need to start to look after you’ve done everything you can inside the app store when you set things up. Social media is a major factor and old fashioned networking is always a valuable tool.
So once you’ve read up on the standard configuration type settings that are available to you to describe your app inside the store and you’ve done your initial networking through social media and locally don’t forget to get creative with how you get your app out through the noise.
Here are just a few of the great ideas I’ve seen for getting your app out beyond the noise:
- Creating / Joining a tribe: this is something that Carla speaks about in her “Inside Secrets to an iPhone App”. The basic idea of it is to see what group of people your app really strikes a chord with and networking with those people to get your message/app to them.
- Pick a vertical: even if your app can be used with multiple different groups of people, it may be a good idea to keep the app’s focus on a specific vertical that you think will be most useful
- Think like a website: As stated previously SEO inside an app store is going to follow most of the same rules SEO follows on the web, so tuning your product page and product itself to fit with a solid SEO strategy will get you a long ways.
These of course aren’t the only good ideas out there, so what are some of the good ideas you’ve seen strewn about the web?
This past weekend I was able to relax a bit and focus on two of my favorite things, music + application development, at the 