Shipping
How to rank in the app stores
Store ranking is mostly a velocity game, and the listing is what converts a visit into the download that feeds it.
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Rank follows recent download velocity.
Top-chart position is driven far more by downloads in the last day or two than by lifetime totals. That’s why a coordinated push beats a steady trickle, and why the charts are so unforgiving after the spike.
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Charts refresh several times a day.
Positions update on the order of a few hours rather than instantly or daily. Useful to know on launch day; useless to refresh compulsively, which you will do anyway.
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The first screenshot does most of the work.
Most people never swipe. The first image has to carry what the app is, in one glance, legibly at thumbnail size. Text on the screenshot is doing more than the description ever will.
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Screenshots must show the actual app.
Beyond being a How to avoid getting rejected risk, mismatched screenshots produce installs that uninstall immediately -- which damages exactly the How to keep people coming back signal the stores reward.
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Keep the store name and the home-screen name the same.
A user who installs “Braindex: Daily Trivia Quiz” and finds “BdxApp” on their home screen has lost the app. Keep the display name and the store name recognisably identical.
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The name field is the strongest keyword you own.
Apple weights the app name most heavily, then the subtitle, then the keyword field. Play reads the title and the descriptions. Spend real time on those thirty characters.
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Don’t stuff keywords -- it’s a rejection and it reads badly.
A name that is a list of search terms gets rejected under the metadata rules, and puts off the humans who do see it.
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Ratings gate conversion more than rank.
Below roughly four stars, conversion falls off a cliff. Prompt at the moment of delight -- after a win, a streak, a completed level -- and never while the user is losing or stuck.
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Localise the listing before you localise the app.
Translating the store metadata is cheap and often lifts installs in markets you weren’t targeting. The app itself can stay in English far longer than the listing can.
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Treat the listing as a thing you iterate.
Both stores support testing variants of the product page. Most independent developers write the listing once and never touch it again, which leaves the easiest available gains on the table.