How We Helped Expand the European Market Presence for an Online Payment App

Solution

To promote a new application, it’s important to apply a comprehensive approach. We outlined the strategy and came up with a timeline that would allow us to simultaneously work through the multiple locations in order to bring fast results and lay a solid foundation for the app’s further organic growth.

ASO

The service that best suited our client’s needs was ASO.

ASO stands for App Store Optimization. It is the process of optimizing mobile applications (apps) to make them easier to discover in various app stores, such as the Apple App Store for iOS devices and Google Play Store for Android devices.

The goal of ASO is to increase an app's organic (non-paid) downloads by making it more attractive and relevant to potential users who are searching for apps in the app stores. Similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites, ASO involves optimizing various elements of an app's listing to improve its chances of being found in app store search results and featured sections. This service typically includes text and visual optimization of app’s pages on the app store.

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Text Optimization

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1. Building a semantic core.

For text optimization, we started with compiling a semantic core - the main queries for which similar applications are searched. In our case we aimed for keywords like “money app”, “personal finance” etc. For this, we typically use special services, for example Asodesk, which provides keyword research tools that help app developers find relevant and high-traffic keywords used to discover apps in stores. 

We researched the keywords separately for each of the countries, and the keywords turned out to be the same. For the sake of localization we focused on providing highly-relevant translation. Since we couldn’t solve translation to 12 different languages in-house, we have involved professional translators. 

In addition to local languages we also included English keywords since it’s a lingua franca and users throughout Europe use it to search for apps.

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2. Updating metadata

Once we had the necessary keywords at hand, we took on the metadata optimization for each of the languages and app stores. 

For the Apple app store, we updated the app title and the meta description that is only visible to the algorithms and is up to 100 words, for which we used the brand name and the most popular generic queries.

For Google Play we did the same, but also wrote and translated app summaries that were up to 2000 words. 

Working through the metadata for multiple languages is a long and meticulous process, considering that we approved each piece of text with the client and their translators to achieve the best results. 

This approach allowed our team to significantly increase the keyword positions in the targeted countries in one month.

Let's consider the preliminary results for a few target regions - Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.

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Germany

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Positions for the highly competitive keywords:

geld app - 20

geld - 36

geld sparen - 42

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UK

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Positions for the highly competitive keywords:

finance - 12

money bank - 20

finance app - 21

money app - 31

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France

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Positions for the highly competitive keywords:

application de portefeuille - 33

mon portefeuille - 37

portefeuille virtuel - 38

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Visual Optimization

The app stores already featured creatives made by the client. Visuals play a crucial role in influencing users' decisions to install an application. After looking into the app’s conversion rate, we realized that out of all the visitors who saw the app page, only 23% decided to download. This signaled that the initial visuals weren’t working. 

We analyzed the creatives and identified 2 main problems with them:

• The banners were heavily overloaded with text, and the visitors simply didn’t want to read that much information.
• The banners had a plain white background that blended with the app store interface, and more importantly, didn’t help to differentiate the app among competitors.

Recognizing the importance of compelling visuals in driving user engagement, we worked on optimizing the app's visual assets. By creating visually appealing and informative assets, the aim was to attract users and increase click-through rates. 

We conducted an A/B test, but unfortunately could not rely on its results, because the target group was too small. Therefore, we decided to trust our designers with creating visuals for the app stores that aligned with the overall brand image, had high contrast and could be told apart from competition. 

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The visual optimization allowed us to increase the conversion rate by 1.18 percentage points in the first month only.

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Motivated Traffic

A common issue with brand-new applications is that the system doesn’t recognize them, making them unlikely to be indexed without additional support. Therefore, we decided to find real people, who would download the application and leave high ratings and positive reviews in return for compensation. 

Another reason why we decided to do this is because usually new apps are rolled out with multiple bugs, thus they receive low ratings from the first people who install them. Those low ratings and poor reviews are very hard to compensate for organically, and they repel new visitors - nobody wants to install an app with ratings below 3 and an abundance of negative reviews. 

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After involving motivated traffic, the average app rating across all the countries grew from ≈3.5 to ≈4.5.

Results

The collaborative efforts between Promodo and the client yielded positive results across multiple metrics. 

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• Number of visitors grew by 38.46%, indicating improved visibility and increased user interest. 
• App Store search grew by 16.7 percentage points.
• The app page conversion rate experienced a boost of 1.18 percentage points, showcasing the effectiveness of the optimization efforts.
• The overall traffic sources recorded an impressive growth rate of 45.55%, with Google Play search seeing a remarkable surge of 95.34%. 
• However, third-party referrals experienced a decline of 20.06%, indicating potential areas for further analysis and optimization.

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Through the localization of app content, our team successfully tapped into the unique characteristics and preferences of each targeted European market. This resulted in improved market penetration, allowing their clients to establish a strong presence and effectively compete within these regions.

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