This year has been most bountiful for industry experts sharing what they know about ASO, reputation management, and everything in between. We’ve prepared the main insights from each webinar we held so that you can get the digest on all the most important tactics you should carry into 2024.

Let’s dig in!

AppFollow Webinars of 2023

Be sure to watch the whole webinar(s) if you find the quotes useful—plenty more wisdom hidden inside.

Holiday Season: Top ASO & ASA Strategies from Leading App Marketers

Speakers:

• Yaroslav Rudnitsky, Senior Professional Services Manager at AppFollow
• Nat Abell, ASO Manager at Yodel Mobile
• Viktor Orlov, CEO at Asapty

"The holiday season holiday season starts from Halloween and up until early January. It’s the most important time for app marketers due to consumer demand—not only on desktop but mobile too. ASO and ASA are important tools to reach good results during this time."

"You need to have good ASO to have good ASA campaigns. If you do not have a good, relevant headline for your app or a bad icon or screenshots with some old designs, you won’t have good conversion rates during your holiday campaigns."

"Be sure that the keywords that you are buying in ASA campaigns are relevant to your App Store Connect metadata. By metadata, I mean headline, subtitle, and keywords."

Improve Your Brand Reputation by Closing the Feedback Loop in Mobile

Speakers:

• Jonny Davies, Head of CX at AppFollow
• Robi Ganguly, GM and Founder at Alchemer Mobile

"How your app appears in the App Store is similar to taking a walk down the High Street and wondering which restaurant to eat in. There's lots of choice of course but let's imagine that next to its menu, there is a list of Live reviews of people that have been in that restaurant before you. Food quality, the price, the service—all of that hugely influences whether you enter that restaurant or not. It's exactly the same in the mobile stores."

"Mobile app reputation is important. People pay attention and make decisions based on public feedback. It increases the likelihood of the app being downloaded if you're a 4-4.5 star rated app. A 4.9 star rated app has a much higher rate of the people who end up on that page taking an action converting and downloading."

"Every product team has a road map a mile long. They start to tackle the things that they think were after launch, but the beauty of the App Store is that you've launched it and then you monitor that App Store feedback. Hopefully, you will get some people who are downloading it, and then some of those people are starting to talk. Once you see some feedback, iterate on that."

Unifying Worlds: The Cross-Platform Gaming Odyssey

Speakers:

• Dana Pavel, Customer Success Lead at AppFollow
• Sue Shakiba, Customer Happiness Mobile Lead at Star Stable Entertainment

"We recognize the need to be more specific in developing a monetization strategy for mobile, as our players have given us feedback regarding pricing and they desire to have more in-app purchases and deals for mobile devices. In response to this, we have been working on introducing more one-time payments, subscriptions, and other deals."

“I strongly believe in the importance of active listening since it allows for positive communication that makes users feel heard and understood."

The Feedback Loop: Enhancing Apps, Ratings, and Reputation with User Input

Speakers:

• Greg Posner, Global Partner Engineer at Keyword Studios
• Ksenia Sukhova, Product Owner at AppFollow

"Feedback is probably one of the most important aspects of customer engagement that companies should be collecting whether it's from the alpha stage all the way until the end of the product life cycle. The idea is you want to be able to hear from your users and your audience and how they're interacting with the app whether you're a small company building an app for the first time or you're an Enterprise company building an app for the tenth time. It's always important to understand what is my user feedback."

"Having something summarized is very helpful. I'm manually reading everything that a certain group of customers is writing to us. So it will be on everything they write about our help center, everything they write in our polls within the product, everything we got from anywhere we can find it. So I have my channels, and I'm reading that, but it is impossible to read everything."

"Once you start understanding the type of feedback that you're getting, you can start to take a look at the product team and the engineering team and say, 'Hey, how are we gonna how are we going to put these onto our roadmap? How are we going to build this?' We've talked to many companies that have things like public-facing roadmaps, which I'm a big fan of, but I would not tell every company to put a public-facing roadmap out there. It's a very risky thing to do, but it's a fun way to be able to see, 'Hey, what are these companies listening to, like are they actually listening to their users? What are they doing? How are they building this feedback into their product lifecycle?'"
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Mastering the Art of App Advocacy: From Users to Loyal Brand Ambassadors

Speakers:

• Jeffery King, Community Advocate at Grindr
• Alon Rivel, Vice President of Marketing at Soothe
• Jonny Davies, Head of CX at AppFollow

"It's about ways to empower your app fans and it's also top of mind because if you make support or market an app you must pay attention to what I would call the three C's: conversations, constituencies, and communities. Now in theory, it's all about drawing from everything you know about the user to deliver good customer experiences and show you listen and respond to what your users want or require."

"Aligning your app experience with user needs and their needs states isn't so straightforward sometimes. You can read it in the reviews and other times well you have to read between the lines and it's complicated but well worth the effort. When you get it right, you have a loyal customer base and more importantly, advocates that power a tremendous positive flywheel of growth and commitment."

Revolutionize Your Business With Competitor and Market Intel

Speakers:

• Jonny Davies, Head of CX at AppFollow
• Michael Stysin, Co-founder and CEO at Qonversion
• Jaap Gerritsen, Head of Product at AppFollow

"Analyzing your competitor set analyzing your Market is more important now than ever... there's an average of 3,800 new apps added daily to the App Store on Google Play alone... so it's pretty important to stand out."

"We are seeing an exponential change in terms of trends, consumer preferences, and AI computing power. AI is everywhere and innovation is happening in almost every sector. Soon it will be in every sector, therefore, it makes total sense to first have a look at what your competition is doing."

"There are very large teams behind successful top apps and they have spent a lot of time and a lot of resources optimizing the onboarding experiences, running A/B testing, optimizing their pricing offers and feature sets. It's worth checking what they are doing and using it as guidance for your app."

Reputation Management: The Key to Acquiring Your Customers and Gaining Their Loyalty

Speakers:

• Dana Pavel, Customer Success Team Lead at AppFollow
• Waleria Pągowska, Product Marketing Specialist at Brand24

"People do their research a lot more and rely on other people's opinion before buying a product or a service.”

"Nearly three out of four consumers trust a company more if it has positive reviews. 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. 60 percent of consumers say negative reviews made them not want to use a business."

"Prioritize customer satisfaction, build strong relationships, monitor your online presence, and adapt to it. Think proactively. Train social media managers. Monitor what people are saying on your fan pages. Address the issues and listen to what they are saying."

Afterword

We hope you found the insights from these webinars useful, as they most certainly will be. The digital landscape is changing nearly every day now, but one thing will always remain true—apps that actively engage with their customers will always have higher star ratings. And higher star ratings will always mean higher revenue.

Endeavor into 2024 with confidence, and keep building bridges. Your audience will thank you for it. Also, a little bonus: learn how to craft the perfect app review prompt. You'll need it.

FAQ

Is the Holiday Season important for ASO and ASA strategies?

During this time, consumer demand surges not only on desktop but also on mobile platforms. ASO and ASA strategies are key to capitalizing on this demand. ASO ensures your app is visible in app stores, while ASA helps in acquiring customers through targeted ads.

Does app rating influence sales?

Apps with higher ratings, typically around 4 to 4.5 stars, are more likely to be downloaded. A 4.9-star rating increases the likelihood of an app being downloaded even more substantially. Customer feedback in app stores plays an important role in this.

Is app feedback required during app development?

Feedback helps developers understand user interactions, preferences, and issues. With it, teams iterate and produce a better app that will, in turn, get more downloads and sales.