If you’re using the same marketing strategy for your app as you are your site, you’re undoubtedly missing out on some low hanging fruit. App stores and search engines are two vastly different online spaces, with different requirements, restrictions and algorithms. Targeting your strategy can help leverage everything they have to offer.
They both fall into the digital marketing realm, so how far apart can they be, right? Wrong. Of course, there are some overlaps, similar terminology, and they both require constant updates. But the means of going about these differ in nearly every detail.
ASO vs SEO: What’s the Difference?
SEO is probably the more widely known term of the two. Standing for Search Engine Optimization, it’s the process of optimizing a web page to get it the highest ranking possible in search engines to drive organic traffic to the site. You want to increase the number of website visits and relevant visitors. There are a variety of ways to do this, but we’ll delve into that in a bit.
ASO stands for App Store Optimization. It’s sometimes referred to as SEO for apps. Except ASO isn’t trying to direct organic traffic to a site, but organic downloads of an app, by optimizing an app to get it to rank as high as possible in the app store. It aims to increase visibility for both the search results and browse-related traffic (e.g. category ranking and being featured under the “Similar Apps” section within a peer app’s page).
With ASO, you’re bound by the restrictions of the various app stores. Even between the two big runners, Apple App Store and Google Play, there are significant differences in requirements. For example, each app title has a character limit, screenshots must fit into particular dimensions, etc.
In iOS, the App Name and Subtitle can only be maximum 30 characters each. In Google Play, the App Name can be 50 and the Short Description 80. Whereas with SEO, you have much more leeway to take your web page in whatever direction you choose. Although certain techniques are bound to perform better than others, it’s not required that you produce it with this in mind.
As for the factors that affect both ASO and SEO, you guessed it… They differ too. There’s a huge list for both, and we won’t cover them all (that’s another topic for another day). For some idea, though, ASO is influenced by the app title and short description, screenshots and other visual elements, localization, the list goes on. SEO is influenced by UX, metadata, user engagement, among many others.
Keywords: Are You Using Them Right?
You’ve got to be tactical about your use of keywords, both in the world of app and web marketing. Nobody wants to read a keyword-stuffed text that offers little value beyond every potentially relevant keyword. Anyway, this isn’t necessary for the App Store because it penalizes you for this, and it isn’t necessary on a web page because Google is pretty clever and can understand what you’re trying to say anyway.
You can only afford to use each keyword once to avoid maxing out on characters, so be extra strategic with what you choose. In the Apple App Store, using a keyword more than once doesn’t impact your ranking anyway. This isn’t the case for Google Play Store or the SEO world, where using keywords more can boost your ranking.
How Does User Behaviour Impact the Marketing Strategy?
Since the web and apps are two different entities, it would be naive to expect user habits to be the same. Apps are mostly only for use on mobile devices and tablets, whereas web pages can be accessed on a desktop too. We’re living in a mobile-first society, where the average US consumer spends around four hours on their phone a day. Within that, research has shown that nearly three out of those four hours are spent on apps.
You can also take advantage of timing, being able to understand at what points in the day users are most active on their phones. Which, considering that we tend to look at our mobile phones around four hours in a day, is a lot more frequent than web browsing (that isn’t work related).
Take Into Consideration the Marketing Funnel
The funnels differ due to the nature of a website being immediately accessible versus an app being available upon installation. The fact that you have to take action in order to access an app means an app’s marketing funnel moves faster and is more geared towards immediate actions.
Generally, the last non-direct touchpoint that engaged a user will receive the credit for the action. For example, if a user clicks on a Facebook Ad to reach a website, and then takes various actions that eventually lead to a purchase, the credit goes to Facebook.
The goals we aim for, and the resources we have at our disposal, differ between app pages and web landing pages. The former gives us a template in which we place our text and visuals while the web gives us more flexibility, albeit – usually – with simpler goals: on web landing pages we want users to fill a form, buy a product, or subscribe to a newsletter.
- Test for the graphical and textual assets; usually screenshots, orientation, videos and USPs.
- Test different copy and designs against each other, but make sure there is only one change per variable so you can easily conclude what impacted the results.
- Analyse the results so that you can both implement the changes and build future tests based off of them. What are the actionable items? Sometimes this requires tweaking concepts or combining the USP from one concept with the screenshots of another.
A/B testing for web is a method of showing different web page variants to different web visitors simultaneously and tracking which leads to more conversions. Although ultimately, the end goal is to segment variables to decipher what performs best, the means of doing so are different from that of app A/B tests.
- Organic ranking algorithms: They take into consideration the app and website’s keywords, popularity and reputation.
- Keyword research should be performed for both. They’re a crucial discovery tool for new users which both web and app assets can benefit from. The metrics we use for this, e.g. keyword difficulty and search volume, are the same for both.
- Mobile and web attribution often have to come together to create a holistic approach to attribution, when considering that many users toggle between both platforms.
- A/B testing applies to both. Statistical best practices, good hypotheses and a hefty budget for testing are prerequisites for both.
Differences:
- Organic ranking algorithms: In web, it’s based on the quality of content, the amount and quality of incoming links, and the engagement metrics (e.g. bounce rate, time on site etc). On mobile apps, it’s about ratings and reviews, category rankings (which affect keyword ranking), download velocity and conversion rates on the app page.
- Keyword research in ASO requires far less long-tail keywords and at least 50% are branded keywords. Also, you’re subject to far more limitations in ASO as app names and subtitles have maximum character counts.
- The marketing funnel for web is less action-oriented at the start due to the fact that the conversion happens at the end of the funnel, e.g. with a purchase, whereas with app marketing an initial conversion is required in the form of a download.
- Mobile attribution is far more complicated than web attribution as there are more disconnect points along the user journey.
- Landing pages for web have more freedom to determine the points of engagement, as opposed to app pages as landing pages where the engagement points are fixed.
- A/B testing for web marketing has many more points of engagement to choose from. There’s no option for free testing for iOS, and if using the free platform Google Play Experiment’s for Android it’s worth noting that it’s weak and provides few insights.
The two marketing strategies, although sharing some similarities, are generally more different than they are similar. If you want to get anywhere with either, it pays to take this on board.
